Samsung Electronics CLX-4195FW Wireless Color Printer with Scanner, Copier and Fax Review
Everything it does, it does well. Introducing the Samsung CLX-4195FW.
Price : $400.00
* Get the best price and special discount only for limited time
Samsung Electronics CLX-4195FW Wireless Color Printer with Scanner, Copier and Fax Feature
- It begins with a large 4.3-Inch color touch screen that allows you to print, copy, scan, and fax and quickly access the multitude of interface options with ease.
- Ideal for your small business or home office, the CLX-4195FW features Samsung's latest image processing and polymerized toner formulation for brilliant color and super-crisp text and graphics.
- A 19 ppm print speed, 533 MHz Dual CPU, and Gigabit Ethernet keep you productive and built-in wireless and Wi-Fi Direct makes printing - even printing from your tablet or smartphone - a snap.
- The Samsung CLX-4195FW is a valuable player in a multitude of ways.
Maybe you should visit the following website to get a better price and specification details
Costumer review
23 of 23 people found the following review helpful.
Excellent printer with support for mobile devices!
By Gadget Geek
I was very excited to get this printer to replace an aging Brother MFC-7820N 5-in-1 Network Monochrome Laser Multifunction Center, one of the very early SOHO network printers available at a modest price. This printer served me well but definitely had its limitations, mainly its ability to network print. So I was ecstatic at the prospects of actually being able to house my printer where I wanted to and not be limited by where my computer was, my router was, or how long my ethernet cable could be (ideal for a home office where we generally don't have the entire house wired).
SETUP: First, setup was very easy. Honestly, sometimes the hardest thing to do is to interpret the pictographs that the "easy start/setup literature" is telling you to do. But after everything was untapped and all of the plastic locks around all of the toner cartridges were removed, the unit fired right up and went through a calibration and brief setup. All in all, probably not more than 5 minutes. Depending on your level of comfort with technology or if you are tech savvy, you may want to stop following the "easy start instructions" now. I did, so instead of running the setup CD, i went through the menu and found that I could manually set up my wireless by scanning for my wireless router's SSID, selected it and manually entered the passcode. After that I installed the drivers from the CD that has a setting to set up the printer by USB, wireless, or wireless via USB. I love this feature because I would not choose to keep my printer near my router or my computer(s) so this is great!
Ten minutes later, from the point I opened the box and started, my test print popped out of the printer and it looks pretty good. I have yet to use all of the functions but am very happy so far. After the print manager was installed, the app easily allows you to control the printer's functions such as scanning and faxing. I just played briefly with the scan feature and it seems to work well with the typical options that a decent standalone scanner will allow such as resolution, text/photo scan, color/b&w/graysacle, paper size, cropping, etc., nothing that would be alien to anyone that has owned a scanner before.
NO AUTO DUPLEX PRINTING: Another feature that i wanted to try was the duplexing task. while this unit doesn't have a automatic duplexing feature to print on both sides, it does have an auxiliary feeding tray on top of tray one that you can load up all of the sheets into and have it complete the back sides all at once. Not the easiest thing to use but unless you are constantly printing on both sides, it not too bad.
MOBILE PRINTING: A key feature of this printer that's still not found on many printers is the ability to print from a smartphone or other mobile device. In my household, we have Android smartphones & tablets and iPhone users. Samsung has released apps for the Android,iOS and Windows platforms allowing you to print directly from the mobile device of your choice. I tested this on my Asus Transformer Prime (Android ICS OS). I downloaded the Samsung Mobile Print app from Google Play. Shortly after downloading, the app was able to detect the printer, and I was able to print directly from my tablet. The lack of printer support thus far on Android makes this a must-have feature for me, which makes an already good printer great from my perspective.
COLOR: Color reproduction and speed are on par with most other mid end color laser printers and nothing too noteworthy nor horrible. It was able to print photos with vibrant color, but still can't compare to my dedicated photo inkjet printer (which it shouldn't be expected to...)
CONCLUSION: Overall, I am very happy with this unit and look forward to replacing my old workhorse that while it served me well kept me tethered to my PC or my router. I love the fact that I could completely set up the unit without ever having to be near any computer. Though it would have been nice to have duplex printing support, the ability to print from any mobile device (Android, iOS, and Windows) in my household makes this printer a clear winner.
18 of 18 people found the following review helpful.
Nice home office printer
By RLC
The Samsung CLX-4195FW is a nice home office printer. The setup time was literally 10 minutes from box opening to printing and that was with wireless only network connections. I did not, and still have not, physically connect(ed) this printer to a computer. The setup was extremely simple for me, having a modern router with a pushbutton connect helped tremendously, so I did not have to enter any SSID or password information.
Printing:
Thus far the printer has been fast in black and white and fairly fast with color printing. The time to first print has been about 15 seconds. I have no complaints with the speed or the quality of the prints. Text is clear down to 6 pt, which I find good, and color is good. I find the color acceptable for most busniness applications. Photos come out decent, but not as good as my dedicated Epson photo printer. Though I would not expect this printer to rival or be comparable to the Epson for photos.
Duplexing is done by way of placing pages that have one side printed into a tray that feeds them for printing on the other side. Not being one that uses two-sided printing often, the lack of full-auto duplexing isn't an issue. But it may be for one that does two-sided printing often.
I have found the toner cartridges for $90-$125 each, which is on par for color laser cartridges. So far it has been pretty miserly with the toner. I haven't done a lot of full page color printing yet where 90% or more of the page is covered in color, when I do a large run like that I will edit this review to reflect the toner usage.
It is a bit noisy when it fires up, but quickly quiets down after it finishes printing.
The only two miniscule complaints I have had are:
1. That after extended periods of being unused (after a weekend idle), I need to wake the printer up by touching the touchscreen, as it won't print until I do.
2. The surface where the pages are output makes it hard to just "slide" the pages out toward you and off the printer.
These are as nitpicky as I can be with this unit, it has and is, performing very well under 5-day/week usage.
I have had a few other Konica and Dell color lasers in this price/duty-range and this printer outperforms them thus far. The Android and Apple mobile device apps have worked flawlessly thus far.
Copier:
The copier has done a wonderful job and outputs clean and clear pages. It is as fast as the printer, and gets its first page out in about 15 seconds. it features N-Up copy so will it copy more than one original to a single page. And ID copy to allow copying both sides of an ID to a single page. It has a 25% to 400% zoom. Copying can be done by the single page from the platen or multipage from the 50 sheet document feeder.
Scanner:
The scanner is decent, fine for documents, but definitely not for high quality scans as it is a native 1200 x 1200 dpi optical scanner. Scanning can be done by the single page from the platen or multipage from the 50 sheet document feeder.
Fax:
Though I haven't used the fax yet, the stats show the fax is a standard 33.6 Kps modem with 300 x 300 dpi resolution in black and white and 200 x 200 dpi in color.
Overall, it's a solid mid-level color laser printer, at a good price point, with normal consumable costs.
Update 1/24/13: After over 60 days of use, I still have no complaints. It hasn't dropped from the network once, and since this review was originall posted it has never required the tap on the screen to wake it up after extended periods of idle time. I am still on the toner that came with the machine, it is under mild to moderate use, so it appears to be sparing on consumables. Though, I will update when I start using known full cartridges.
Update 3/29/13: Still using starter toner! I like this printer so much that I just bought 3 more for the office. Mobile device printing and direct from USB have been flawless as well.
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful.
The Tale of Two Apple Installations
By George McAdams
While I have considered purchasing a Color Laser Printer, I never have bought one because of the "sticker shock" that comes when you have to buy the replacement cartridges. Oh, I've had my share of color inkjet printers that cost $450+, and I've always had a black and white laser printer for "office" printing, but I never combined the two and had a color laser because spending $320 for replacement cartridges just seemed too steep for my "Scotch-Irish" genes; however, when you run the numbers on this Samsung CLX-4195FW, the color pages were just over $0.14/each and black and white printing was just under $0.04/each, or slightly less than my old black and white laser printer. Inkjet color printing ran just under $0.14, but if you had larger images to print, or the colors were richer, this increase up to $0.18/each fast. So, money-wise, the color laser was about the same, or less.
That settled, when I got the opportunity to review the Samsung CLX-4195FW, I jumped at the chance. I have used Samsung telephones four of the last 10 years, and two years ago, we did some major remodeling, and after doing all of the reviews with Consumer Reports, talking with friends, and various web sites, we purchased a Samsung range, microwave/exhaust fan, and French-door refrigerator. We have been pleased with the results, so I was eager to try-out the Samsung printer.
First of all, this is an impressive product. it does just about everything except duplex printing, and that can be accomplished the old-fashioned manual way, if you have patience. The color printing is very impressive. I like to print copies of covers of Sports Illustrated magazines that have been signed by athletes, and this printer prints copies, using HP Multi-purpose 96 brightness paper, of those just slightly weaker (to a very discriminating eye) than my HP Photosmart printer using professional grade paper, which made copies that could not be told from the original. I like to print personalized greeting cards, using the Hallmark card program, and I was very pleased to see that the quality of the cards produced was still indistinguishable from the Hallmark cards you can buy in the stores. This said, I am pleased with the quality, and if you need to read more about this, see other people's reviews.
I call my review "The Tale of Two Apple Installations, because it was, and this, I hope, is where I think my review may help people. When Windows went to the Vista operating system, I had so many "issues" with Vista, I started buying Apple computers, and I currently have my second iMac, a huge Mac Pro Desktop (16 GB RAM, 2-Quad Processors, 2-TB Drives, Blu-Ray, etc.), and a Mac Book Pro. Before I began installation of this printer, I read all the installation guides supplied with the printer (there is the "Quick Installation Guide" and a "Wireless Network Quick Guide"), and I downloaded and printed the 368-page manual with my old HP black and white laser printer. While what I am going to be writing here deals with connecting this printer to Apple products, the first two steps I list below, I believe, should be followed by Windows people, too.
Before I get into the installation steps I used, let me say three things. First: The manual is very detailed, and it has very good hyperlinks, but it does not have a Table of Contents or an Index. I first tried to read the manual as a pdf file, and it has you hopping around everywhere. Printing it out, you can at least keep the previous page you were reading open, and then, go the the next page they refer you to read. Second: the two "Quick Guides" are very basic, and they are written in a way that suggests everything will work "just right" for you. Third: With regards to my "two installations," the first did not go well at all, but I was able to individually install the products even when everything seemed to be against me. The second went fine, but the installation process still does not look exactly like the "Quick" guides. The difference between the two installations, with the first being one I had to install program components individually and the second being where the installation program did the installing seems to be because I had already connected the printer to the WiFi LAN, and I had the computer already recognized the printer before beginning the installation of the programs. So, let's begin there. These are the steps I used to install the software on my Apple computers which were using Mountain Lion O/S. I will be uploading pictures that show the steps taken during installation, especially if there is something "different" from what the manual says.
STEP ONE: After unpacking the printer, installing the toner cartridges, loading the paper, plugging-in the printer's to a surge-protected power supply and connecting the USB to the computer, I turned on the printer. I went to "Set-up" on the printer's display, selected "Machine Set-up," selected "Next," Scrolled-down to "Network" and selected "Network," Scrolled down to "Wireless," and selected "Wireless." I turned "WiFi" "On," and scrolled down and selected "LAN Settings." There I selected "Search List" and selected the WiFi I wanted to use. After selecting the one I wanted to use, I input the "key," or password. If you WiFi router has an easy connect button, you can use that by pressing it on your WiFi router, and then activating this feature on the printer's display. You are given two minutes to do anything with the display before it "resets," so this is why I used the key/password approach.
STEP TWO: I went to my Apple computer, and selected "System Preferences" from the Dock, and then selected the "Print and Scan" icon. I "unlocked" my printer selection, and clicked on the "+" button below the list of printers I was able to use to have my computer search for the new printer. I added both the USB and WiFi connections for the Samsung CLX-4195FW. I set the CLX-4195FW WiFi as the "default" printer and "locked" the printers.
STEP THREE: I put the software installation disc into the machine (BTW, you can download the software from the Samsung web site after you have registered the product if you do not have a disc drive on your computer). BTW, the manual says you click on the "Mac_Installer," and then, click on the "OS X" icon, but there is no "OS X" icon, it is called "Installer OS X.mpkg" on the disc that came with my printer. Should begin the installation process for the printer driver. Check the box to keep the "Easy Printer Manager" in the Dock. BTW, you will notice "Set the IP address" and "Wireless Network Setup" buttons. For me, those did not work, and that's why I did Step One and Step Two above.
STEP Four: You will need to set-up the Scan Manager. Do this by clicking on the folder on the disc that says "MAC_Scan Manager." Then, click on the "Scan Manager Installer." If you are going to use the fax, you need to click on MAC FAX, then "Fax Installer.mpkg." After each installation, your computer will reboot. After running the Fax Installer, you can set the fax up using the display on the printer.
BTW, if you cannot, for some reason get the "mpkg" Print Manager to work, you can look in "MAC_PrinterManager" and select "Installer.pkg." You can do the same with "MAC_ScanASSISTANT," and selecting "Scan Assistant Installer.pkg."
Random notes which I will be adding to as I become proficient in these processes:
The Scan Manager did not work as well for me, but I was able to scan images using the "scan" button found with "Print and Scan" in System Preferences. The program came in cropping the image. Using the Scan Manager, I ended-up scanning the image, saving it, then clicking on it and using "Preview" to crop it. I, also, was able to easily scan, and crop, using the Samsung Mobile Print App for my iPhone.
The Samsung Mobile Print App is terrific. I had absolutely no issues with it, which gives me hope they will correct the software installation issues, eventually.
The color images tend to vary in "slickness" of the image by the brightness of the paper.
I gave the overall product four stars. If the manual had been better and the "Quick" instructions had not left-out a few steps, I would have given it 4.5 stars. I wanted to post some images of what I have described in my review, but they no longer allow posting of pictures. If I find a way to do this, I will post some, so that readers can easily visualize that I wrote about.
Hit And Miss Performance