Samsung SCX-4500
Manufacturer: Samsung Part number: SCX-4500/XAA
- More product information:
- Editors' review
- User reviews
- Specifications
- Accessories
- Manufacturer info
- Bottom Line:
- Long on design and short on features, the Samsung SCX-4500 multifunction laser printer is best suited for light home or office use. Unless you're willing to pay for a showcase printer (two words we've never seen next to one another), your money will buy you more features and faster task speeds elsewhere.
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CNET editors' review
Samsung SCX-4500 price range: $235.08 - $431.57
- Reviewed by: Felisa Yang
- Edited by: Matthew Elliott
- Reviewed on: 10/09/2007
- Released on: 08/30/2007
The good: Sleek, sophisticated design; great print and color scan quality.
The bad: Light feature set for the price; grayscale scan needs to be improved; on the slow side with task speeds; output tray mars the all-black aesthetic; lack of an onboard LCD means you'll need to turn to your PC for advanced tasks.
The bottom line: Long on design and short on features, the Samsung SCX-4500 multifunction laser printer is best suited for light home or office use. Unless you're willing to pay for a showcase printer (two words we've never seen next to one another), your money will buy you more features and faster task speeds elsewhere.
Currently, the SCX-4500 is being offered exclusively by the Apple Store through January 2008 (though the printer is compatible with both Windows PCs and Macs). You can go online or walk into a store, but don't bother looking for it elsewhere until the exclusive distribution agreement is up.
Design
The Samsung SCX-4500 truly breaks the mold for printers in terms of design. The multifunction unit doesn't even look like a printer. The sleek, glossy black body consists of a rectangular scanning unit and control panel sitting atop a same-size printing unit. The whole device measures 13 inches wide, 15.5 inches deep, and just 6.5 inches tall, and weighs 19 pounds.
The control panel consists of several touch-sensitive buttons and blue LEDs on the top surface (next to the scanner lid). Although the buttons are touch-sensitive, they require a firm touch. The buttons include Start, Stop/Clear, Scan to PC, and three option buttons: Copies, Reduce/Enlarge, and Darkness. Pressing any of the latter three causes up and down arrows to appear and lights up a small display area that reads out the number of copies or shows how much you're reducing or enlarging a copy. Although the design is undeniably attractive, the lack of a graphical or text LCD means you can't check on toner levels or check on and perform other maintenance tasks. It also means you'll have to turn to your PC for advanced scanning tasks.
The paper input consists of a 100-page cassette that ejects from the bottom-front with the push of an actual button. The prints and copies issue forth from a gap between the scanner unit and the print unit. You'll need to attach the provided clear-plastic panel to the front of the printer to catch the prints as the output area is very short; the panel is necessary, but it mars the all-black aesthetic.
The SCX-4500 is mono only and uses a single toner cartridge. The entire scan head lifts up for easy access to the cartridge. The multifunction ships with a starter cartridge calibrated for approximately 1,000 prints. The replacement cartridge for this model is good for about 2,000 pages. The replacement cartridge for this model is good for about 2,000 pages and costs about $70 from the Apple Store, for a per-page cost of approximately 3.5 cents--a bit high for a mono laser.
Features
The SCX-4500 offers the basic features we expect from a laser multifunction and none of the extras. It's not network-ready, so it's better suited for home or home office use. Samsung offers this design only as a mono laser printer so far, because adding color would require the printer to be much larger to accommodate three additional toner cartridges.
When copying, you can make as many as 99 copies at once and reduce or enlarge in 1 percent increments from 50 percent to 200 percent. You can't reduce or enlarge according to preset values (letter to legal, for example). You can also tweak the darkness of the output copies using the control panel. Features you won't find on this printer include the ability to make N-up, 2-on-1 or 4-on-1, or image repeat copies.
Because the SCX-4500 lacks an LCD, all scan tasks are referred to the PC. Pressing the Scan to PC button on the control panel will launch a scan that, by default, is saved as a bitmap file to a folder called Samsung within your PC's My Pictures folder. One nifty feature we noticed is the progress marker--a pretty blue light that courses alongside the scanner lid to let you know the progress of the scan. It's similar to seeing the actual scan light progress along the miniscule gap under the scan lid on other scanners, only prettier and with less potential blindness. If you want to do any other scan tasks, you'll have to launch the SmarThru 4 software that was installed when you installed the printer (from CD). SmarThru 4 lets you scan to PC, to e-mail, into an application, or using optical character recognition software. You can choose the file format (bitmap, JPEG, PDF, TIFF) and the destination of the resulting file.
As we said, the feature set of the SCX-4500 is on the basic side. We haven't reviewed any other $250-to-$350 mono laser multifunctions, so we can only make comparisons to slightly more expensive units, but $400 can get you a lot more, if aesthetics aren't your first priority. For example, the $400 Canon ImageClass MF4690 comes with an automatic document feeder, a manual feed tray, fax capability, a front-mounted USB port that you can print from and scan to, an Ethernet port for easy networking, and a built-in duplexer--far more than $100 worth of features. While the SCX-4500 is certainly alluring, you should know what you're not getting.
Performance
In CNET Labs' speed tests, the Samsung SCX-4500 was a bit slower than the competition--not surprising, considering it's about $100 cheaper (though see the previous paragraph to see the difference $100 makes). It printed black text at 13.05 pages per minute (ppm), about 1ppm slower than the Canon MF4690 and far slower than the Lexmark X342n and the Dell 1815dn. It was similarly slower with black graphics prints, producing them at a rate of 12.68ppm. For both color and grayscale scans, it was roughly at the middle of the pack: 4.80ppm for color and 6.20ppm with grayscale.
Out of curiosity, we also compared the SCX-4500 to its sibling, the Samsung SCX-4200. The SCX-4200 is much cheaper at $180, but interestingly enough, its task speeds were on par with those of the SCX-4500. We also compared it to a $300 office-oriented inkjet multifunction, the HP OfficeJet Pro L7680, because the $300 price point tends to be occupied mostly by inkjets. The SCX-4500 was the faster of the two, though the HP offers more features.
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
| Grayscale scan | Color scan | Black graphics | Black text |
Thankfully, the Samsung SCX-4500 made up for slower speeds with better task quality. The black text prints were everything they should be: crisp, clean, and nicely dark. The grayscale graphics print was quite good, too. It had some minor cross-hatching that's fairly common to low-cost laser printers, but otherwise, photo elements were nicely detailed. The color scan was very good, as well, with excellent details and smooth color gradients. Our only major complaint is that the colors were a bit soft and washed out. The SCX-4500 had the most problems with grayscale scans. The image was overly dark, due to severe compression in the dark end of the grayscale. It also had problems handling some of the test patterns. Overall, the task quality was definitely good enough for general office tasks.
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
| Grayscale scan | Color scan | Graphics | Text |
Service and support
Samsung backs the SCX-4500 multifunction printer with a standard one-year warranty. Toll-free phone support is available 24-7. Samsung's site also has downloadable software and drivers, manuals, and FAQs, though currently there are no FAQs specific to this model.
User reviews
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Vista ready printer
by XBR on January 5, 2008
Pros: Installed like a charm
Cons: Haven't found any yet
Summary: The most important thing I can tell you about this product is that it is VISTA Ready, and Vista friendly, and easy to set up. I purchased this product to ...
Summary: The most important thing I can tell you about this product is that it is VISTA Ready, and Vista friendly, and easy to set up. I purchased this product to replace an HP1020 which I bought 1 month ago. After upgrading to Vista Premium I found that the HP1020 drivers were not compatible. After neary 5 hours of customer support with HP they managed to get the HP1020 working but it had a line down the side of every page in printed. Will never buy another HP product again. The Samsunge SCX4500 is a beautiful looking machine, with fast easy set up. Installation took less than 5 minutes and was flawless. I purchased this unit January 4, 2008 in a Future shop in Canada for $279(future shops regular price). Well below the suggested list of $400. Was able to scan a document to file and attach to email with considerable ease. Scan feature and photocopier were and added bonus. In January 2008 there are many printer brands, models, available at deep discounts. Many are being discounted because they have know compatibility issues with Windows Vista. Very pleased with this Samsung product and strongly recommend the printer. Also be aware that many new software titles require direct x10 which is only available on Vista. All the more reason to buy a Vista ready printer.
2 out of 2 users found this user opinion helpful.
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HIgh quality and style
by szachary on May 6, 2008
Pros: Stylish, Fast print times, small footprint, cheap
Cons: Not packed with a ton of features
Summary: Its a standard printer, there is truth to that. It is stylish, has fast print times and does its job well. For a monochrome this is the way to go.
Summary: Its a standard printer, there is truth to that. It is stylish, has fast print times and does its job well. For a monochrome this is the way to go.
1 out of 1 users found this user opinion helpful.
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Best Home Printer
by sec09 on April 27, 2009
Pros: Looks great compared to all those other uglies. Does everything I need it to. Fairly economical to use. It's fast enough.
Cons: There are no cons. No jamming and much faster than many others home printers.
Summary: Recommended if all you need is monochrome. Copier comes in handy at times.
Summary: Recommended if all you need is monochrome. Copier comes in handy at times.
Specifications
- Manufacturer: Samsung
- Part number: SCX-4500/XAA
- Description: Imagine the excitement and sense of pride that this sleek jewel of a printer will bring to your life. Banish unattractive technology and welcome a trendy laser that will sparkle on your desk and light up your printouts. With Samsung SCX-4500 it?s not that hard to imagine.
General
- Width 13.1 in
- Depth 15.5 in
- Height 6.5 in
- Weight 19 lbs
Miscellaneous
- Consumables Included 1
- Microsoft Certifications Works with Windows Vista
Manufacturer Warranty
- Service & Support Limited warranty
Environmental Parameters
- Min Operating Temperature 50 °F
- Max Operating Temperature 89.6 °F
- Humidity Range Operating 20 - 80%
- Sound Emission (Operating) 45 dB
Accessories
Manufacturer info
- Samsung
- Manufacturer profile
- Browse Samsung products on Shopper.com
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- Website: http://www.samsungusa.com/
- Address:
105 Challenger Road, Ridgefield Park, NJ 07660 - Phone: 1-800-726-7864
- Fax: 1-973-601-6001








