PRINTING. The Samsung Xpress C1860FW 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. Photo printing was very quick, only 0.4 minute for a 4x6, costing 20 cents. Its text quality is Excellent, as we've come to expect from a laser printer. Text printing was very quick, 10.3 pages per minute, costing 2.8 cents per page. It prints color graphics such as charts and web pages beautifully, in presentation-quality, with no noticeable defects, at 3.2 pages per minute, costing 13.8 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 250 sheets, a generous size.
SCANNING and COPYING. Scanning performance was Very Good, fine for general-purpose scanning. It can scan or copy an area up to 11.4 x 8.3 inches (letter size). Copying performance was Very Good, suitable for most purposes. It has an Automatic Document Feeder (ADF) for easily scanning/copying a stack of pages. Includes OCR (optical character recognition) software, useful for making scanned documents editable in a word processor program.
CONTROLS and DISPLAY. The printer has a large, 4.3-inch display screen with a touchscreen.
CONNECTIVITY and NETWORKING. You can connect directly to a PC with a USB cable, or to your network router wirelessly with WiFi. There's a WiFi Auto-connect feature that makes it easy to link to your wireless router. Apple AirPrint and Google Cloud Print are built-in, to print wirelessly from smartphones, tablets and PCs. You can also install Samsung's app on your smart phone or tablet, as another option for printing over your WiFi network. This model has built-in faxing, can store incoming faxes if the paper runs out, and can send faxes from an attached PC.
COST OF OWNERSHIP AND TONER. When this section was last updated, the printer's purchase price was about $450, expensive for an all-in-one 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-K504S, CLT-C504S, CLT-M504S, and CLT-Y504S. At the time, their prices were all $80 each. We estimate the cartridges to last an extraordinarily long time: around 1.9 years. After 2 years of typical use, we estimate the total cost to be $630, typical for a color laser. The estimated yearly cost is $90, low for this printer type. So the 3-, 4- and 5-year estimates are $720, $810 and $900 respectively.
NOTE. The printer takes up a lot of space and might be more suitable for an office than a small desktop. The power switch is inconveniently located on rear panel, though like most printers, it goes into a low-power 'sleep' mode a few minutes after use. This printer was noisier than most while printing, so you might want to locate it away from sleeping areas.
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. The firmware version of the Samsung Xpress C1860FW was V4.00.02.07.
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 3.12.38.1.
