Samsung SCX-4200

Purchased my Samsung SCX-4200 about a year ago from it247.com for few pounds short of eighty quid, delivered and promptly arrived next day.

No problems installing driver and printing, good copies both on printer and scanner use.

Only "hassle" is the units infalibity when it comes to the "toner cartridge needs replacing" message on the LCD screen. You can normally run it for another 500 or so pages before the printing gets so bad you have to replace the toner cartridge - which is damn simple to replace.

Some of the non-Samsung toner cartridges are a bit "leaky" with the toner and just a little bit gets everywhere - watch it.

Fairly inexpensive to purchase, simple to use and now non-Samsumg toner cartridges are available, very inexpensive to run. Only bad point is warm-up time on a cold morning - my office has no night heating.

I had bought the SCX 4200 to replace a multifunction inkjet of mine for two main reasons:

1. Ink for inkjet printers is ridiculously expensive, and I wanted to cut running costs.

2. Laser printers tend to feed the paper much better for some reason (my Canon LBP5200 is flawless in this respect).

Having had another pair of inkjet cartridges dry out on me after about 30 prints - I don't use the printer often - I found myself reasoning that for the cost of two genuine inkjet cartridges I could almost buy a multifunction laser printer.

I decided to get a cheap one and this meant monochrome so the Samsung SCX 4200 Multifunction it was.

It cost 80 quid (delivered) from PC World.

Setup was a breeze, plug in, turn on, install drivers, go.

The first niggle is that the power cable sticks out of the back so that it can't be positioned close to the wall or the back of the desk unit. This may well be a design feature to increase air flow, but it remains annoying. A shame as it has an otherwise small footprint - 40.9 cm x 36.2 cm x 23.2 cm.

The first test was to photocopy a cereal packet (it was close to hand in case you were wondering).

The copy came out as quickly as I have seen some dedicated photocopiers manage " I was fairly impressed.

Sure, the shading isn't up to much but then the unit doesn't pretend to be a photo printer, it's aimed at small offices where you would need to copy and print documents.

The scanner works just like all the others

The resolution goes up to something stupid that you would never use in the real world (the kind of DPI that fills your PCs memory and takes 17 hours to transfer) and it scans in colour.

No scanner I have ever used copied photos that didn't need some touching up in a paint package to get them something like, and this one is no exception.

Next up, print some text out of Word.

The printer makes a familiar scrunching noise and I remove a nice Japanese fan from its innards. It's still saying there is a jam so I open and close every opening on the thing.

Still complaining. It's only when I remove the toner cartridge and replace it that it works again.

The next 8 prints have a variety of intricate folds in them and are all retrieved in a similar fashion to the first.

Finally I get one out that only has a couple of wrinkles on it followed by more jams.

At this point I would have suspected that one of the kids had lost a plastic toy somewhere in the thing, but this is not the case, they haven't been near it yet, so I guess I've been unlucky with this printer.

Back to PC World - who handled the return brilliantly " no fuss, no questions, just a collection from my house the next working day for a full refund.

Like I say, I may have been an unlucky customer in a crowd of happy campers, but the experience has left me thinking that perhaps I should spend a little more cash next time.

I haven't ordered another one to replace it.

A shame, this is the first Samsung product to have ever let me down.

By the way, it comes with a power lead but no USB lead.

Thumbs up to PC World, thumbs down to the SCX 4200 from me.