Samsung CLX-6240FX colour laser multifunction

Samsung's high-end colour laser multifunction has some design flaws and can be confusing to use

PC World Australia (online)

Samsung's CLX-6240FX colour laser multifunction printer is surprisingly large and offers a decent set of features. With automatic duplex, an internal hard drive and a decent amount of memory, this multifunction printer is suitable for small offices. It can print quickly and offers good monochrome print quality, though colour graphics leave something to be desired.

Pros

  • 80GB internal hard drive, direct USB printing, good monochrome print quality

Cons

  • Overly large, confusing control panel, some colour print quality issues, can't scan to internal hard drive

Bottom Line

Samsung's CLX-6240FX multifunction printer is a vast improvement over cheaper models from the company, providing better print quality and speed. Some design flaws do remain, however, and the control panel is confusing for first-time users.

Would you buy this?

  • Price

    $ 1,949.00 (AUD)

Special Offers

The Samsung CLX-6240FX colour laser multifunction is an imposing beast. Thanks to vertically aligned toners, it is 651mm high; that's even taller than its cheaper sibling, the CLX-6210FX. Unfortunately, Samsung hasn't taken advantage of the extra height, setting the multifunction's maximum input capacity at 350 A4 pages. If this isn't enough, a second 250-sheet cassette is available for $473.

A standard array of connections — USB, Ethernet and RJ-11 fax ports — are slightly recessed into the side of the CLX-6240FX; connected cables jut out slightly. A second USB port on the front allows you to directly print from or scan to flash drives.

Of the printer's various design shortfalls, the control panel is the most worrying. The Samsung CLX-6240FX provides a large array of buttons including fax keypad and speed dial options, copy settings and even a dedicated button for automatic duplex options. The panel is often confusing — particularly for first-time users — and could have been simplified by moving many of these options to the multifunction's on-screen menu.

Like most Web-based interfaces, the SyncThru Web service allows you to monitor printer usage and change network and security settings, including an IP filter and UPnP network discovery capability. Administrators can also configure password-protected users and guest access. The Samsung CLX-6240FX colour laser multifunction's interface lacks the Java-based Job Manager found on the Samsung SCX-5835 multifunction, so you can't upload print jobs without installing network printer drivers.

Samsung has included an 80GB internal hard drive on the CLX-6240FX, allowing you to store jobs on the hard drive for security or reprinting later. These settings allow you to store the documents publicly or protect them with a password, as well as schedule a job to print at a designated time. Unfortunately, you can't scan to the hard drive nor use it as storage for an internal FTP or SMB/CIFS server.

The Samsung CLX-6240FX colour laser multifunction prints both monochrome and colour documents at a rate of 25 pages per minute, which is a decent result for its price. Of course, that is as long as you can bother waiting: the multifunction seems to go to sleep or run a colour registration process at every opportunity, significantly lengthening print times. Waiting for each document to begin printing can be frustrating.

Monochrome documents are readable and have accurate characters even when printing 7-point type. When using default settings, documents can appear somewhat grey, but the CLX-6240FX colour laser multifunction's Print All Text to Darken feature darkens the text without inconsistently bolding words or sentences.

Colour printing isn't quite as good. Though colours are largely solid, they tend to be oversaturated, and we noticed some alignment issues between text and coloured backgrounds. The Fine Grain print option fixed the same problem on the CLX-6210FX, but this feature is missing on this multifunction. You can manually adjust colour registration but, without a reference sheet, this can be difficult.

Scans can be initiated directly from the multifunction to USB flash drives, networked and local PCs, e-mail, and external FTP and SMB/CIFS servers. Scanned documents are of adequate quality, though colours are generally under-saturated.

Monochrome print quality and the 80GB internal hard drive are definite highlights of this Samsung colour laser multifunction. However, design flaws and colour print quality issues hamper the CLX-6240FX. At 17.5c per A4 page, consumables are somewhat dearer than alternatives like the Konica Minolta Magicolor 4650DN.

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