Depending on your point of view, the Samsung Multifunction ProXpress M3370FD$168.17 at Amazon is either the next step up in Samsung’s current monochrome laser multifunction printer (MFP) line from the Editors’ Choice Samsung Multifunction Xpress M2875FW$327.19 at pcRUSH.com, or the first step on the ladder for the ProXpress MFP line. As a ProXpress model it’s built around a bigger, heavier-duty engine than the Xpress M2875FW. That makes its natural home a small office or workgroup with light to medium-duty needs by small office standards, although it can also be a good fit as a heavy-duty workhorse in a micro office.
Part of what makes the M3370FD more definitively a shared printer than the Samsung M2875FW is its larger size. At 17.7 by 16.3 by 16.6 (HWD), it’s too large to share a desk with comfortably. However, a better indication of how much more heavy duty it is than the M2875FW is its 50,000-page maximum monthly duty cycle, which dwarfs the 12,000 pages for the M2875FW.
Keep in mind that maximum duty cycles for printers are far higher than recommended maximums. Even so, the higher rating means that the M3370FD is designed to churn through a lot more pages per month than the M2875FW.
Basics
As you would expect, the M3370FD offers a full set of basic MFP features. It can print and fax from, as well as scan to, a PC, including over a network, and it can work as a standalone copier, fax machine, and email sender.
Paper handling features for printing include a 250-sheet drawer, an automatic duplexer (for two-sided printing), and a single-sheet manual tray standard, so you can feed a different paper stock without having to swap out the paper in the main tray. A multipurpose tray would be more useful, but a manual feed tray is typical for mono laser MFPs in this price range. If you need more capacity, you can also add a 520-sheet second drawer ($200 street) for a total of 770 sheets, which is something you can’t do with the Samsung M2875FW.
For scanning, the M3370FD offers a letter-size flatbed plus a 50-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF) that can handle up to legal-size pages. The ADF does simplex (one-sided) scans only, but, as a nice touch, there are options in the menus to let you copy single-sided originals to your choice of single- or double-sided copies.
Setup and Speed
Setting up the M3370FD is standard fare, with Ethernet and USB as the only connection choices. For my tests, I connected it to a network and installed the drivers and other software on a system running Windows Vista.
Samsung rates the M3370FD at 35 pages per minute (ppm), which is the speed you’ll see when printing unformatted text or other pages that need little to no processing. I clocked it on our business applications suite (using QualityLogic’s hardware and software for timing), at 10.8 ppm. That makes it just a touch faster than the Samsung M2875FW, at 10.0 ppm, and well within the typical range for the engine rating. However, it’s well short of impressive. The Editors’ Choice Canon imageClass MF4880dw$224.93 at B&H Photo-Video-Pro Audio, for example, with a rating of only 26 ppm in simplex mode, managed 12.5 ppm on our tests.
Output Quality
The M3370FD’s output quality earns much the same description as its speed. It’s good enough to be useful for most business purposes, but not particularly impressive. Text falls in the middle of the range that counts as par quality for a mono laser MFP, making it good enough for virtually any business need, but a little short of what you might want for high-quality desktop publishing.
Graphics and photos both fall at the low end of par for monochrome laser MFPs. For graphics that makes the output good enough for any internal business need. Depending on how critical an eye you have, you may or may not consider it suitable for, say, PowerPoint handouts. For photos it means you can print recognizable images from photos on Web pages or the like, but the quality will be roughly equivalent to what you’d expect to see in a newspaper.
The Samsung Multifunction ProXpress M3370FD doesn’t offer any particular feature that might make it a compelling choice, like fast speed or impressive output quality. However, it offers all the basics, including printing, scanning, faxing, copying, and direct email, plus some welcome conveniences, like copying from simplex originals to duplex copies. It also delivers an appropriate level of speed, output quality, and paper handling for a small office. If a workhorse MFP is what you need, that makes the Samsung Multifunction ProXpress M3370FD a potentially good fit.
original article
- Samsung Printer ProXpress M3320ND(pcmag.com)
