The Best Deal Out There!

This is undoubtedly the best deal for laser printer ever. For just $63 I bought fast laser printer with capability to print 3,000 pages per $45 cartridge. This is three times cheaper than comparable HP model and is about the same as last-century technology of inkjets.

How I got so lucky?
I went to local Microcenter looking for a cheap deal on inkjet printer. Something below $60 with cartridges for under $25. A guy in printer department with HP tag started to sell me one of the low-end HP models outlining its great colors and reliability. I liked his talk, but felt a bit concerned about his pushiness. I walked around and... saw Samsung ML-2510 for JUST $63! That seemed to be a no-brainer: laser printer for the price of an inkjet!

The sales pitch
Okay, I thought, where is the catch? The HP dude appeared out of nowhere asking me if I need any help. Well, buddy, tell me why should not I buy this little guy there? Why should I spend $179 on HP laser that looks exactly the same, but has lower resolution?

HP Dude seemed to be very confident though. He explained that crappy Samsung printer has trick in it: you have to change cartridge, drums and few other things after six runs. HP, on the other hand, only requires a $70 cartridge every 3,000 pages.

Well, I would not be myself had I not asked other opinion. I asked a guy without HP tag and he honestly told me that it is just B.S. and it is a great machine. The only difference is that it is better and three times cheaper. I bought the little babe immediately.

Tech Specs
Honestly, I did not care about any specs after I saw a 3X price differential. I did check that cartridges were about the same price and volume though. Later on I did some more research though. Here is the deal:

CNet gives a 8.1 out of 10 rating to ML-2510 (I think it is very good for $63 Laser Printer).
Speed: 25 pages/min for letter-sized,
Interface: USB, parallel,
Resolution: 1200X600,
First page print time: 8.5 sec,
Toner (included): 1,000 pages,
Network: no.

Basically it is a great deal, but has no networking capability.

Consumables price
It is not a secret that the key spending is toner price. HP kills everyone with its $35 per inkjet cartridge prices that lasts for just 200 pages.

Samsung offers an unsurpassable deal here: you can find ML-2510 3,000 pages cartridge for just $91.90 for two. This is just 1.5 cents a page!
It seems like a no-brainer to me if you compare it to inkjets.

Competition
Well, obviously laser is a whole lot better than inkjet killer machine. But what about other laser alternatives?

When I was in Microcenter, I could not find any printer in under $100 range. The next best thing was HP 1020 for "just" $179. However, I was able to find it online for under $100.

These are the specs:

Speed: 15 pages/min for letter-sized,
Interface: USB,
Resolution: 600X600,
Network: no.

You can buy cartridges with 2,000 pages capacity for $47. This makes your cost per page ~2.3 cents or 65% more than that of Samsung.

Looking at the specs above you may notice that HP is worse on ALL parameters. It is slower, prints with lower resolution, more expensive to buy and operate... Thus we arrive to a logical conclusion - HP sucks. They just do not have a comparable product on the market. They are too great to come down to us, regular customers. HP wants to get cash and not to make a great competitive product.

Personal impressions after using printer
As I mentioned earlier, I am not a bit mega-gizmo-gadget fun. I am mostly concerned about ease of operation of equipment and lowest price I can get for it. I spoke a bit about the latter, now I will share some more about the first part.

I found that 2510 is very compact and light. This is very critical for those who (like me) have a computer table with a shelf on top of it. Small dimensions allow installing printer right on top without fear of killing yourself in case of an earthquake. Another obvious advantage is printing speed - it takes 8-9 seconds to print first page without long warming up and strange sounds coming from printer head so common to inkjets. With 25 pages per minute printing speed, Samsung beats all of my previous printers and many more expensive laser machines.

One more important issue I liked about 2510 is that it feels solid. This is something I have not really expected from a $63-piece of plastic. My previous Dell inkjet was constructed from very thin plastic layers and I was always scared that it will break apart at some point of time. Samsung gives you a feeling of a $200 machine with solid design and robust construction.

Conclusions
Buy Samsung 2510 immediately!