It's time to look at Samsung's MFPs from all angles. The model is no longer new, but, nevertheless, this does not prevent it from being at the forefront of sales among competitors. The first thing that catches your eye and distinguishes it from the rest is the black color of the plastic from which the body is made. We can safely say that this is not only a design trick, but also a rational solution - to replace the soiled white color with a more practical black.
The SCX-4300 is slightly wider than your average laser printer, but takes up almost the same amount of space in depth and height.
The control panel includes a 16-character LCD display, which, however, is not backlit, but easy to read in normal lighting conditions. Eight control buttons allow convenient operation of the display and system menus. It is quite easy to navigate the basic settings, the intuitiveness is at the proper level.
Directly below the control panel there is a slot for the output of freshly printed pages. There is a small pull-out bar, although the sheets usually do not fall on the table without it. At the bottom of the front panel is a 250-sheet tray, and a slot for feeding a single sheet or special media.
The scanner cover does not lift completely and is supported by a spring device, which creates enough space to reach your hand in the event of a paper jam. It would be more convenient if it opened completely, to a vertical position, as in most MFPs. On the back of our test subject are the power connectors and a USB port only for transferring data to this machine.
On the front of the device, you can also find a hinged cover that provides access to the integrated front-loading cartridge. It is quite firmly planted and you have to make an effort to remove it. Samsung is installing a "starter" cartridge in the SCX-4300 that can only print 1,000 pages, which is only half of the normal print capacity. But given the price of the printer, this is perhaps forgivable.
The software that comes with the printer is Samsung's standard set of SmarThru 4 and printer utilities. The first deals with scanning, copying and printing, as well as image exchange, and utilities are used to diagnose MFPs. The driver itself applies watermarks, images and makes various settings for print quality. All of this is contained in a logical and easy-to-navigate panel.
The SCX-4300 is a fairly nimble little printer, capable of producing five pages of text in just 30 seconds, or 10 per minute. Pages with text and graphics (five of them were repeated) came out even faster: at a speed of 11.54ppm. And when we printed our 20-page document, the speed increased again to 14.81ppm.
One page of the photocopy was printed in 11 seconds, so the speed was in the order of six or so pages per minute. It took a little more for the 15 x 10 cm photo, 13 seconds. Both of these speeds are impressive, especially for devices at this price point.
The print quality is decent in most cases. The maximum resolution of the SCX-4300 is only 600 dpi, if you look very closely, you can distinguish jagged diagonals or curves in the text. When adding black and white graphics, some areas of alternating shades of gray are visible on the page.
This is especially noticeable when reproducing photographic prints, which, similarly when printed on a dot matrix printer, also suffer from the obvious loss of many details in dark, shaded areas. Finally, grayscale photocopies, especially those printed by the machine itself, look terrible. This is typical for other MFPs from Samsung and other manufacturers as well.All these are the consequences of using Contact Image Scanner - contact scanning technology, the result is a bit like moire stripes.
The SCX-4300 uses an integrated drum and toner cartridge capable of printing 2000 pages. This is a fairly typical performance for a non-color laser device, plus do not forget that it performs the functions of both a printer and a copier at the same time.
Conclusion
Samsung SCX-4300 is a solid, multifunctional printer that will be useful both at home and in a small office. It prints pretty quickly, shows good results in text output. It copes well with graphics, although copies of drawings, especially gray shades, can be very heterogeneous. The running costs are reasonable and, if your budget is tight, buying is a good way to provide yourself with a complete unit at a reasonable price.
