The Samsung CLP-315W color laser printer offers wireless connectivity, a stylish design and small form factor. While it was mainly designed for a home office it will do quite well in a small working environment with a few employees. With measurements of 15.3 x 12.3 x 9.6 inches and weighing merely 24.3 pounds, it’s probably the smallest compared to competition. In fact, most laser color printers on the market are nearly two times as big as the CLP-315W. The printer’s design is pretty simple.




It comes with a black case with accents of glossy plastic here and there and features rounded corners. The control panel of the printer sitting near the top is also very simple. A big button serves for on/off and next to it a couple of LED lights announce when you’re either of ink or a paper jam has occurred.

Oddly enough Samsung didn’t add a cancel button. So if you’re using this printer in a workgroup and you’re PC is in the other room, off you go running to it to cancel the print job. This assuming it’s more than 5-6 pages otherwise you’ll have no chance to get there in time. For paper storage Samsung included a 150 sheet paper input tray. For easy use and even easier replacement of consumables, the cartridges are mounted on the front of the device (right under a drop-down panel).

There are three color and one single black cartridges that come in only one type of capacity, enough for 1000 pages. Another important details is that both black and color cartridges cost the same. Due to a monthly cycle that limits the printer to 20000 pages, the Samsung CLP-315 is as mentioned before best suited for home offices or businesses with lower volume printing needs. Ethernet or WiFi allows the use of this printer in a workgroup, and the alternative connection is the usual USB 2.0.

The low price is a clear indicator for the quality and speed of prints as no one ever expects manufacturers to cut down cost while offering the exact same quality of their top of the line devices. In this case, the CLP-315W will print out about around 14 pages per minute for regular text and under 3 pages per minute for color imagery. The printer seems extremely easy to set up on any operating system (that includes Windows, Max OSX and ‘Various Linux OS’). The manufacturer’s claim that you’ll get started in no time at all really is accurate and installing the printer won’t seem difficult.

The conclusion is simple. This printer is lightweight and has a small footprint so it will easily fit on your desk, but once it’s gotten there it might simply not be worth of the space it takes because of relatively poor printing quality (compared to similar lasers), slow printing speeds and consumables that make owning the Samsung CLP-315W color laser printer a bit more expensive than similar printers. It’s not a horrible device and will most likely do its job, but there’s a wide variety of entry-level lasers that can perform better.

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