Samsung ML-2955DW

The Samsung ML-2955DW is compact printer with an off-white and light grey appearance. It is easy to set up and use, thanks to a single-piece drum and toner cartridge which is available in two yields of 1,500 and 2,500 pages. Controls are grouped in a small column to the right of the output tray and include buttons for WPS wireless setup and eco-mode which saves toner by printing either two pages per sheet or in duplex.

There's a 250-sheet paper tray at the bottom of the front panel. Just above it is a single-sheet, multi-purpose feed. There is no optional second tray, though, if 250 sheets isn't enough. A cover over the top of the printer flips forward to form a full-length output tray.

Samsung claims a speed of 28 pages per minute (PPM) for this machine and when we tested it, we saw real-world speeds of over 22PPM. This was only on longer documents, though, with more typical five-page prints giving around 15PPM. Even so, these kinds of speeds are impressive on a printer in this price range.

Duplex print is standard on this printer and we saw a speed of 12 sides per minute. A 15x10cm photo printed on an A4 sheet took 13 seconds and an A4 width photo, printed from a Samsung Galaxy Mini Android smartphone, took 24 seconds. Samsung's direct print Android app works well and detected the printer automatically. It also allowed the smartphone to print directly to the ML-2955DW wirelessly without having to connect through a router.

Print quality is very good, with sharp, dark text at an enhanced 1,200dpi and good-quality greys, with very little banding. Running costs, based on the higher yield, 2,500 page cartridge, are just 2p per page which is very good for a budget printer.

For printing day-to-day correspondence with the occasional black and white graphic, a simple mono laser printer, such as the Samsung ML-2955DW, should be more than enough. It also has some useful features not usually found on entry-level mono lasers. It costs a bit more than the competition, but it will pay dividends in convenience and running costs.