At a Glance
The Samsung ML-2250 has a distinctive, glossy white surface. From the front, its design seems extremely compact, but the paper tray bulges out on the backside, so the footprint isn't quite as small as it looks at first glance.
We were impressed with the Samsung's crisp text on our print samples; even the smallest characters were well-defined. Line art looked sharp, too, though we saw some banding in areas of close parallel lines. Our photo print sample was marred by excessive horizontal banding.
Print speeds for both text and graphics were a bit above average. The ML-2250's main paper tray holds up to 250 sheets; you can buy a second 250-sheet drawer for $150. You can fold down the manual feed tray from the front of the printer to supply another 50 sheets or a small stack of envelopes. The rear output tray folds down to produce a straight path through the printer for thicker media such as card stock, labels, and envelopes. Up to 150 sheets of regular paper arrive face-down in the output bin on top.
The unit has both parallel and USB 2.0 ports. You can add networking cards for ethernet ($200) and Wi-Fi ($250) later.
Unlike most small-office laser printers, which have separately replaceable toner cartridges and drum assemblies (where the drum outlasts the toner several times over), the ML-2250 has a combined cartridge. This reduces the number of consumables you have to deal with, and theoretically it should help preserve print quality, since you'll be replacing the drum more frequently. You might expect this to make the printer more expensive to run, but a cartridge rated for 5000 pages costs a reasonable $99.
This slightly above-average performer impressed us with high-quality text, but its graphics didn't wow us.