In normal times companies didn't have an issue with overspending for equipment, consumables or even vacations for their employees. Now that things are not so peachy anymore it seems like even top companies are taking some serious measures to control and reduce costs.

This is why if small offices are considering the acquisition of a printer, it probably results in a search for the cheapest color laser printer they can find. Because of this, the Samsung CLP-315 seems to be selling a lot. While the CLP-315 is a color laser printer, it also manages to be everything that most color laser printers aren't, small, light and affordable. At this point you could probably find one for a bit under $200.

As mentioned before, the Samsung CLP-315 is smaller than most color laser printers and many mono laser printers as well. Ideal for a small office or home office (though only fit for a single user) it comes with a rounded robust design and a shell that makes use of both matte and glossy plastic. The control panel includes a single button that can be used to cancel a print job.

Also on the control panel are the six LED lights that indicate ink running low, power on etc. The only way to connect this printer is through USB. The USB port can be found on the back of the CLP-315. If the user must have Ethernet or WiFi then Samsung is selling an improved version as well, the CLP-315W that can do both. To keep the weight down, the CLP-315 was only equipped with a paper drawer of 150 sheets. But if slightly more is required, an optional extra 150 sheet paper tray can be bought as well.


Setting up the CLP-315 is extremely easy. The printer ships with the cartridges inside. Even if it didn't, the vertical alignment of the printer cartridges right underneath the front cover of the printer makes inserting or replacing either of them extremely easy. Installing the software is also very fast and problem-free. As soon as you're done with that and you've connected the printer through USB you're ready to start printing.

But the two most important details about a laser office printer are speed and quality. When it comes to speed, the CLP-315 is decent for monochrome but rather lousy for color printing. One of the options Samsung had to cut some costs and keep this printer affordable was the use of four-pass printing. This means that four passes are made on the paper, one for each individual toner color.

This obviously led to very low printing speeds in the case of color, of only 4 pages per minute. For black, the CLP-315 can manage to squeeze about 16 pages per minute. So what about the quality of the cheapest color laser printer you can find on the market at this point? Black text doesn't impress very much, but what does is the color graphics the CLP-315 can produce. The quality of graphics is actually better than what most color lasers can offer. For a printer this small and affordable, it's quite amazing.