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Samsung SCX-4720f Multifunction


Date
: 07/28/05 – 04:14:54 AM

Author
:

Category
: Printers

Page 1 : Introduction

Here at Overclockers Online, Samsung needs no introduction. We have been working with them for quite some time now, turning out reviews such as Simon's latest Samsung YH-820 MP3 player and other printer articles like Samsung's CLP-510n, CLP-550's, and the ML-2251n.

Today we will show you another category of printers called the multi-functions. Samsung offers a variety of multi-functions, but today we are going to take a look at the SCX-4720f.

Page 2 : Package/Specifications

The SCX-4720f comes in a pretty standard box, with few features print on the outside.

The other angle of the box has the same information, except in different languages.

Inside the box, we have a variety of parts, including the toner, instructions, a power cord, a phone cord, and a software CD.

Also inside the box is the actual SCX-4720f; before we actually start looking at that, we'll give you with some of the specs.

Features:

From Samsung's website:

Page 3 : Exterior

The SCX-7420f seems to have a pretty standard multifunction layout. A flatbed scanner on the top and paper tray on the bottom. One of the differences in the SCX-4720f, compared to other MFP models, is the location of the output paper try. Samsung built the output tray into the middle of the printer so it saves a lot of space which the multi-function would take up if the tray extended to one side or another like many competitor's multi-functions.

Also on the front of the printer, you see the access door to the toner.

The top of the printer shows you the automatic sheet feeder for scanning.

If we open the access area for maintaining the sheet feeder, we can see the pickup rollers, and the mechanics of the feeder.

This is a very easy way to get in and perform the necessary maintenance on the feeder.

The control panel is in a pretty standard spot on the top towards the front of the printer.

The control panel contains everything from your speed dial buttons (far left side), copy quality buttons (to the right of the speed dial buttons), the LCD screen and menu control (in the middle), to the main number keypad and fax controls on the right.

Moving around to the right side of the printer, there isn't really anything too exciting.

However, on the left side is the access door to many of the electronics, including the PCB to add additional RAM and network cards.

The back of the printer has some standard connectors, such as parallel port, USB port, and power input. Since this unit also has fax capabilities, it has a phone line in, and a phone line through jack as well.

The cover on the back opens to reveal more maintenance components.

Now that the grand tour is complete, let's get the printer ready and test it out.

Page 4 : Installation

The Samsung toner fit easily into the front access door, and another nice feature about the Samsung toner is that there were no annoying clips to break off, or toner coated plastic slides to pull out! It was definitely a very clean and easy installation.

Next we can put some paper in the default paper tray (which holds 250 sheets), or if you prefer, the front of the printer has an manual paper feeder.

The other thing to get our multi-function ready is to actually install it onto our system. One thing about this multi-functional printer is that it is not network ready out of the box. So for an office installation, it is not as straight forward as plugging it into a network jack and adding it to everyone's computer.

However, you can share the printer through your operating system or even purchase the optional network card for this unit.

Installing this printer was very straight forward on my Windows XP Professional system. I simply popped in the disc…

And that is all there is to it! Samsung's setup installed the printer driver, a maintenance utility, a printer settings utility, and a ScanToPC application.

Some screen shots of those pieces of software are:

Now that we've got the printer installed, let's take it through some test runs.

Page 5 : Testing

Anther great feature, coming from a user and a technical support team member, is the Samsung's printer settings utility, where you can edit the speed dial phone entries directly from your PC! This saves a ton of time typing in all those speed dial numbers through the number pad on the control panel.

To test the Samsung multi-function printer out, we will run it through a variety of tests. We'll test print speed, copy speed, and image quality.

After installing the software, simply plugging the printer in was all that was needed to get the printer up and running on Windows XP Pro.

First we can start out with a pretty generic print speed test. We will use the same document we've used with previous printers including the Samsung CLP-510n and the Samsung 4100. We can compare the results to both of those printing systems as well.

Here is a link to the test document.

Again, we are performing these tests with Windows XP Professional, using the drivers supplied on the Samsung CD, version 4.0, and a standard LPT parallel port (sorry folks, USB cables are hard to come by around my house!). The timings will start as soon as the printer receives the full print job, and begins to warming up, since we cannot control the speed at which the printer is receiving the data.

25 Pages Black and White: 86 seconds (or 17.5 pages per minute)

The straight printing pages per minute did not quite live up to the claimed 22 pages per minute.

Another test we can run, is the copy test. We'll use the same document, already printed, and make a single copy of the entire document (25 pages) and time the result.

25 Pages Text Quality Singly Copy: 105 seconds (or 14.3 pages per minute)

Using the automatic paper feeder for input to the scanner, the SCX-4720f pulled out 25 pages of scanned and printed copies for an average of 14.3 pages per minute.

Unfortunately, I was not able to test the fax, I only have one phone line and it would be very difficult to fax to myself! However we can get a good idea by looking at the modem that is built into the SCX-4720f, which is a 33.6 Kbps modem. I don't quite understand why a 56k modem couldn't be used, unless it has something to do with the data/fax support, I am not quite sure. The fax does have 4MB of internal fax memory, which allows it to store about 320 pages according to the Samsung specifications.

To be able to compare the SCX-4720 to other multifunction reviews, such as Simon's SCX-4100 we will also perform some copy and scan tests on images to get an idea of what kind of quality this multifunction is capable of. Simon used 3 images from the Hubble space telescope, and we will also use these, file 1, file 2, and file 3.

First we will take a look at how they print straight from the original:

Second, we will test the copy feature; the original is on the left side, and the copy is on the right:

Text quality copy:

Photo quality copy:

Overall, the quality is very decent, but by far not a photo printer. The SCX works great for text documents and even text documents with small images embedded.

Another feature on the SCX-4720f that we'll take a look at is the Scan-to-USB. Being the small office multi-function it is, chances are multiple people will be using this printer. So what better way to set up a scanner than to be able to allow people to scan images directly to a USB jump drive? Well Samsung did just that, so let's see how it worked.

First you stick your USB drive into the front, then you choose the "Scan to" button on the control panel. The LCD will supply a variety of choices, including scan to an application, scan to the network, and also scan to USB Memory. Now of course we can't use scan to network because this machine is not equipped with a network card, but we will try out the next best thing, scan to a USB Drive! You hit select, then viola, it starts scanning! This has to be one of the easiest ways to scan images. The SCX-4720f creates a new folder on your jump drive, with the current date, and places each of the scanned pages inside of it, with surprisingly good quality! Remember these were scans of the printed originals as tested above so you can get a good idea of the detail that is picked up, including the not so great photo printing by the SCX-4720f.

Image 1 Scanned

Image 2 Scanned

Image 3 Scanned

Page 6 : Conclusion

Overall, it looks like Samsung has made a very competitive multi-function printer. This printer is beefy enough to handle most any office environment's print needs, as well as provide all the other support offices need such as copying and faxing. An added bonus beyond normal usage to this printer would be scanning. For about $500 you can have your entire office's needs take care of.

For a black and white printer, the quality is pretty decent, it is by far no CLP-510n, but it is good.

So if you look at buying a $79 scanner, an $80 fax machine, a $300 22ppm laser printer, and a copier; you're looking at quite a bit of money.

The capacity of this toner is about 3,000 pages, which is a little lower than some of the other printers we've looked at by Samsung, such as the ML-2551n which rang in with about 5,000 sheets, and the CLP-510n coming in between 5,000 pages black and white and 2,000 color.

Overall this seems like a great addition to any small business or home office which is in need of a multi-function printer, and Overclockers Online is hoping for the chance to get some other multi-functions that we can put up against these great Samsung products!

Advantage
:
- Multi-functional
- Quality scans
- Speedy prints and copies

Disadvantage
:
- Scanning on high quality can be slow
- Somewhat low toner capacity
- Not network ready ot of the box

Overclockers Online would like to thank Samsung USA for lending us this evaluation sample.