PRINTING. The Samsung Xpress C410W prints using laser technology, which picks up powdered 'toner' on a roller and fuses it to the paper with heat. It prints color photos with only Fair quality, which is not unusual for a laser printer. Its text quality is Excellent, as we've come to expect from a laser printer. Text printing was very quick, 11.5 pages per minute, costing 3.7 cents per page. Its color graphics printing is Very Good for reports, newsletters and web pages, at 2.2 pages per minute, costing 30 cents per page. If the black ink runs out, it stops printing—it can't be set to just use the remaining color ink. The capacity of the main paper tray is 150 sheets, a typical size.
CONTROLS and DISPLAY. The printer has no display screen.
CONNECTIVITY and NETWORKING. You can connect directly to a PC with a USB cable, or to your network router either wirelessly with WiFi or with an Ethernet cable. There's a WiFi Auto-connect feature that makes it easy to link to your wireless router. Google Cloud Print is built in, to print wirelessly from smart devices via the internet. You can also install Samsung's app on your smart phone or tablet, as another option for printing over your WiFi network.
COST OF OWNERSHIP AND TONER. When this section was last updated, the printer's purchase price was about $230, typical for a color laser printer. Printing uses up toner. Over time, as you print, the costs add up. This printer uses 4 cartridges. The Samsung toner cartridges used in testing were the CLT-K406S, CLT-C406S, CLT-M406S, and CLT-Y406S. At the time, their prices were all $55 each. We estimate the cartridges to last a very long time: around 9 months. After 2 years of typical use, we estimate the total cost to be $573, typical for a color laser. The estimated yearly cost is $172, high for this printer type. So the 3-, 4- and 5-year estimates are $745, $916 and $1088 respectively.
PRINTER FIRMWARE. Firmware is software that exists inside the printer. All models are evaluated using the latest firmware version available at the time of testing.
SOFTWARE. The collection of software accompanying the printer may include: the printer driver, printer applications, electronic user manual, (and for all-in-ones:) scanning, faxing, and OCR apps. These get installed on your personal computer. All models are evaluated with a Windows 10 PC using the latest version of printer driver and printer support apps available at the time of testing. The software version was 3.12.13.1.
