When it comes to printers there are three basic criteria which will impact the level of usefulness of a particular printer. The first is its ability to print a solid black page with no evidence of streaking or uneven areas, the second is the speed with which it can print pages of text, and the third is the speed it can print pages of graphics.

The first point usually lies with the quality of the toner cartridge, and how long it has been in use. On a side note it's important that if you remove a toner cartridge (and you can see the internal drum) you should take care not to put that toner cartridge down on any rough surfaces. If the internal drum accidentally gets scratched it will transfer those marks onto every printed page thereafter!

In the first test the printer spit out a jet black page of even intensity, and without any visible streaking. While testing ppm, we were pleasantly surprised to see that our test results of 7.3 pages per minute came quite close to Samsung's rating of 8 pages per minute (of just text). The ML4600 did not fair so well when printing straight images, scoring only 2.5 pages per minute though.

Print quality of text is legible down to font size three, Times New Roman, and while there is slim chance of any font size lower than six being used in reality, those letters came in quite sharp none the less.

Conclusions:

Make no mistake this era of the monochrome ink jet is over. Why spend the cash on a black and white ink jet printer when a monochrome laser printer can be had for around $300? The ML-4600 is priced competitively enough to persuade anyone in SOHO environment who doesn't need colour printing as much as clear, crisp black and white text, or images.

The ML-4600 proved itself quite close the manufacturers specs of 8 pages per minute with a recorded 7.3 PPM output. The 1200dpi resolution makes this printer capable of outputting some decent images, though it is much better suited to solid text or shapes than light gradients. Solid black features are duplicated with consistent contrast and clarity.

I might be a bit concerned about operating this printer in a potentially dusty environment knowing that there is no filter to stop dust entering the printer however.

All around this is a very good printer for a small home office environment, a student, or for desk-top printing of reports. The feature set on the ML-4600 is kept to the bare minimum for the most part but still manages to offer a few useful tools on the software side. The biggest plus for this printer would have to be the ability to connect it to the host computer via USB or parallel, and the ability to upgrade the memory if desired. With its cost of about $300USD it raises the accessibility of a good quality monochrome Laser Printer, and delivers a price per page that would make anyone with an Ink Jet printer think twice.