Samsung SCX-4600

Samsung’s SCX-4600 is a combined printer-scanner that, unlike most of its rivals, uses a laser printer rather than an inkjet model.

Laser printers are better for people who want to print text and ‘business graphics’ such as graphs and charts (which are also good for school-age children).

The device is squat and well-built, no larger than the average budget laser printer, and it looks good with a matte black plastic finish. The flatbed scanner section is at the top, with a lid covering the main scanner, and a document feeder beneath that.

The printer section is below that, with a paper tray at the bottom. Unlike on some budget printers, the paper tray is fully covered so it will be dust-free. A small slot at the front allows single sheets of headed or special paper to be fed in. Toner cartridges are replaced using a door on the front of the device.

It only connects using USB (there is no networking capability) so the controls are kept simple. There are power, stop and start buttons, and a large control pad for navigating the menus that appear on the two-line text-only black and white display.

Other buttons control copying, which can be done without access to the computer, scanning directly to the computer (a clever feature)and printing what is on the computer screen.

It’s not just the screen that’s black and white though.The printer cannot print in colour, which is no great loss if you are mainly interested in text, but those who want to display their photos should look elsewhere.

Text came out well, although not quite as sharp as we have seen from some lasers and inkjets, and print speeds were excellent, averaging around 20 pages per minute for text. Photo printing took longer, including the time taken by the printer setting itself up, and although images were sharp, the slightly blotchy appearance of large areas of colour mean it’s not suitable for showing off photographs.

Setting it up was quite easy but our Windows 7 test computer did not automatically pick up the drivers. We had to download three separate ones from Samsung’s website, although this process was fairly painless.

The driver has an option for ‘double-sided’ printing, although this is not done automatically. The user has to manually turn pages and feed them back in. Beware also that the mains plug protrudes from the back of the unit so it cannot be pushed against the wall.

Similarly, although the supplied software has a button marked Buy, when we clicked it we were just given a list of online shops to buy new toner cartridges, not a direct link which would have been better.

The software includes a program called Smarthru which can be used to manage printing and scanning and also includes basic OCR, which is a bonus. The device comes with a ‘starter’ toner cartridge that is good for around 700 pages, but a full cartridge, which prints 2,500 sheets, costs around £60, giving a cost per page of 2.2p, which is impressive.

If you do not need to print in colour, this multi-function device is an excellent choice.