Performance

I spent quite some time with this beauty testing its print, scan and copy performance.  This section will show my conclusions based on a variety of jobs thrown at it and will cover all areas, including quality, reliability and speed. 

Print Performance

The Samsung SCX-4500, according to its official specs, is capable of spitting out 17ppm.  That's not quite impressive by any means.  However, I will say that for a product in this particular class, the SCX-4500 is a fairly speedy printer.  Most importantly though, the quality of the prints are above average when compared to even some business class workgroup printers.

Time was captured from a number of different print jobs.  The results are shown in the table below...

Once it gets to spitting out the very first page, it kicks in from there and prints are much faster.  With that said, larger print jobs came fairly close to its rated print speed of 17ppm.  The fastest I could get it to print was 15ppm, which is somewhat acceptable, considering that most of the specs of laser printers in terms of rated speed tend to be a bit higher than normal.  Those coming from most inkjet printers will certainly be happy with its speed.

Now, as far as quality goes, all test were done on high-end laser printer paper designed for best text quality and light graphics.  In the end, I was very impressed with its print quality overall.  Text is crisp, true black and just about as good as it gets.  To my surprise, the printer handled color image prints well considering it is a monochrome printer.  When setting the printer to 600dpi via software (not set by default), it handled text and images extremely well. 

Also, I used special "jam-free" paper that has a very smooth texture specialized for laser printers.  Every single print job performed was flawless without a single feed error or jam of any kind.

Scan Performance

Plenty of testing was done in this area.  A spent a considerable amount of time scanning just about everything, including photos, magazines and text documents.  This was done not only to provide the most accurate conclusions, but to determine any flaws in performance.  Let's start things off with the photo scans...

Scans from the Samsung SCX-4500 are average when compared to a majority of other scanners I've used in the past.  A couple of reviews I've read on this printer highly praise its scan quality.  I beg to differ though.  They are good, but not excellent.  I found one area of slight difficulty, and that was in regards to light gradient shades.  The two scans above are an example.  I wish I can show you all the high resolution scans, but have provided scans large enough for you to see its skyline shades.  You'll see it is not entirely flush throughout.  However, for the average user, the scans will suffice, even for printing on select compact photo printers.

With some tweaking and proper settings, the SCX-4500 is capable of producing some very nice photo scans.  The two final samples above where taken in file mode and saved using the 32-bit option at higher resolutions.

The next set of tests consisted of full color magazine scans.  Now, some may laugh, but my trusty old Microtek Slimscan C6 has been around so long because it was able to scan magazines exceptionally well via the superb filters this old scanner had.  I still prefer this old scanner for mag prints, but I will honestly say that the SCX-4500 is one of the better options I've used in this area. 

Without any sort of tweaking, the Samsung SCX-4500 can scan magazine pages very well.  Plenty of scans were done and above are two sample scans from ExtremeMHz featured articles on Maximum PC and CPU Magazine.  Colors were accurate and natural, without any struggle with the glossy texture of magazines that usually require filters to scan them properly.

The final area of testing was its OCR capabilities.  Now, the results here were very interesting, and is one area that took most of my time.  This is where I will also offer some tips that will help many and avoid having many to go through the whole trail and error stage to troubleshoot such functionality.  With that said, I would like to strongly emphasize that the Samsung SCX-4500 is very capable of offering superior OCR functionality out of the box, without the need to resort to third-party software.

Via the SmarThru 4 application, you can conveniently choose to perform an OCR scan and choose from a number of document output options.  Now, this is where I had to spend plenty of time in order to determine not only what the best options were, but come to final conclusions on its OCR capabilities.  For years, I've resorted to none other than OmiPage for OCR scans.  I have not personally used any scanner that is capable of accurately achieving this without resorting to such trusted third-party tools.  Fortunately, this is one major area where the SCX-4500 does shine and if you follow the recommendations here, you'll most likely be just as impressed.

The first and most important issue I encountered was with the actual scan quality of choice.  Typically, for business use, I like to stick to 72dpi or 100dpi max for document scans.  With the Samsung SCX-4500, scanning using anything under 300dpi resulted in some horrific OCR scans.  Bump up the resolution to 300dpi and above, and 99% of the results were dead on accurate.  Below are two sample Word text documents.  One was scanned at 100dpi and the second was scanned at 300dpi.  Click on the MS Word logos to view or download...

Text Document - 100dpi

Text Document - 300dpi 

Looking at the unedited documents provided here, you can clearly see how the software struggled to properly convert the image to text.  In fact, it even left some text as an illegible image at times.  Now, scan a text document at 300dpi and above and the software will convert it to text flawlessly.  In fact, out of the high number of test scans I performed at this resolution or above resulted in 99% accuracy, requiring absolutely no editing by the user of any kind. 

The second and final recommendation is the output option itself.  The software provides a respectable number of options but after some extensive testing, I highly recommend the "MS Word (with paragraphs)" option.  If you scan just about any text document using this file format, it will result in 99.9% accuracy.  If you must convert to a rich text format, the "RTF (with paragraphs)" option was the only other option the yielded the best overall results. 

Now, some may quickly be deterred by these findings but they are actually quite the opposite.  Even with preferred third-party software, I've had to almost always end up editing the document in some form or fashion to match the source document 100%.  With the Samsung SCX-4500, if you stick to these recommendations, you will likely not have to resort to any sort of change or other option to convert your images to text.  On top of that, the conversion is almost instant, without any additional user interaction.

I leave you with its scan speed results that were based on a high number of scans and compared to determine the absolute fastest scan times under various conditions and/or settings.  The results are shown in the table below...

Copy Performance

In terms of its copy performance, it is a bit more difficult to demonstrate just how well it is capable of managing such a task.  With the right settings in place, I will say that it does very well.  As an attempt to give you a visual demonstration, I scanned two particular documents below.  One is the original printout and the other was a scan of the copy performed by the SCX-4500.

The only reason for taking the extra measures to actually provide scans of its copies was simply to point out that all copies, despite any tweaks and/or other measures, printed lighter than the original.  However, as far as text quality, they were on par with the original without any significant flaws worth mentioning.

So what about copy speeds?  Well, no table is needed here because most will probably end up using the control panel on the device itself for such a function.  It makes no sense to perform this function via its software.  Other than obviously being much more convenient and the fact that it is a laser printer, there's also another reason for not relying on software or a PC for such functionality.  The Samsung actually has a unique advantage in terms of overall copy speeds.  Unlike your average MFC device, what I found is that the Samsung SCX-4500 actually starts the print process before the full scan is even complete (about a third of the way through).  This all resulted in some impressive copy speeds, those of which easily rival that of dedicated business copiers.

Based on the results above, you can see that the SCX-4500 is capable of spitting out a single letter-sized document in under 10 seconds.  That's quite impressive and significantly faster than practically all printers in its class.  Again, this is due to the fact that is actually starts the print process before the full scan is complete.  I also provided three copy test to give you a much better idea of what to expect.  After that initial scan is done, it is solely up to its print performance to spit out the number of copies defined.  Being in the IT field by profession and working with countless printers and copiers, I will honestly say that the performance from this compact device is very impressive. 

Noise & Final Demo Videos

Last but not least, I end the performance section with some important comments regarding its noise levels, as well as some additional demo videos of the excellent touch-sensitive panel in action.

When it comes to noise, laser printers are not necessarily quiet by any means.  Forget what you may read on specs of any such product and there shameless attempt at luring you into purchase.  I've used countless laser printers over the years, including high-end business laser printers.  For those that have used them as much as I have, you know they are far from "quiet".  If I were to rate an average number on them, I will be fair and say that most operate at roughly +-65dBA.  Based on its official specifications, the Samsung SCX-4500 is said to operate at only 45dBA.  After just the first few prints, it was obvious that it was certainly in a class of its own in terms of overall noise.  This printer is remarkably "quiet" and most will immediately notice this upon first use. 

I end this section with two additional demo videos.  For those intriguing by its beauty and design, videos are the best way to demonstrate its high-tech style.

The first video is mainly to demonstrate its cool visual scan marker.  When you perform a scan, you'll not only see real time progress via software, but from the printer itself. 

video clip

**click to play**

Now, this scan was done to demonstrate the visual marker and the scan was performed from the printer itself rather than via software.  Scans don't take this long and the demo shows a scan full surface area scan at a default resolution of 600dpi.  The visual maker is accurate and will provide a very clear look at the scan process from beginning to end.  For example, you if you scan a 4x6 photo with the proper selection, the marker will go as far as the selection area before returning.  Very nice feature that adds to its innovative design.

video clip

**click to play**

The final video is to demonstrate the copy process not only to give you an idea of its speed, but its noise levels.  This clip has audio to give you an idea of just how quiet it is.  Copies are quick and of high quality.  You can also see that sapphire blue visual maker in this demo video.

Next:  Conclusions