Samsung SCX-4321 Review

The SCX – 4321 is a printer scanner and copier and it neatly puts itself in the office printer category where individuals require fast, no nonsense printing of a large volume of documents. Besides the printing abilities, it also doubles up as a scanner and copier. But is it as quick as four..three..two..one – printed? Let’s find out. 

Plain jane looks

Design and Build Quality

The SCX-4321 comes in a singular gray colour. Based on your office surroundings, it may either look absolutely uninspiring or completely inconspicuous. Whichever way you see it, this MFP has been pretty well designed. This printer has a matte finish, so fingerprints don’t really pose a problem. Let’s have a quick tour of the SCX-4321 after the break. 

On the top we’ve got the copier and scanner functions and buttons, along with the Start and Stop button. The paper input and output slots are located at both, the top and the front of the machine and the cartridge is front loading as well. A detachable paper tray box is situated at the lower end to stack up all your printing papers together. The various functions on the machine itself allow you to adjust the darkness, type of paper, reduce the print size, copy it, scan to MS-Paint or e-mail and Toner save mode settings, as well. The menu option onboard allows you to adjust the machine settings, clean the drum, clear memory and report system data. Basically, all maintenance options can be adjusted on the printer itself.

Connectivity options at the back

There are a lot of plastics involved in the construction of the SCX-4321, yet it’s quite sturdy. It does have a bigger footprint than the ML-2951ND with a wider breadth and length. It has a height of 14.5 inches and a weight of 10.4Kg. Like most office printers, the SCX-4321 doesn’t disappoint (or impress) in the looks department. 

Features

This three-in-one laser MFP offers laser printing, colour scanning and digital copying features. It is capable of printing up to 20 papers per minute in A4 quality and has a first print out time of 11 seconds (from Standby mode) at a resolution of 600dpi. The copy out time stands at a similar 11 seconds time period. We’ve put these numbers to the test in our performance section. This machine has support for a wide variety of media sizes, including Legal, A4, Letter, Folio, Executive, A5 and A6 for print and Letter, A4 and Legal for copy functions. 

Buttons on the top

Media types, include Plain Paper, Transparency Paper, Labels, Card Stock, Envelope, Bond, Thick, Thin and Colour Paper. Input capacity is good with a 150 sheet multi-purpose tray 30 sheets at a time. The LCD on board supports 2 line x 16 characters and the printer comes with a 

Performance

We put the 4321 through a series of tests to find out how quick, accurate and fast it is. The printer had two modes – normal (at 600 dpi) and draft (at 300 dpi). Here’s what the scores from our tests look like. 

Under Normal mode, the printer took 12 seconds to print one entire page full of text, which included warm up times as well. The warm up time is roughly around 6-7 seconds every time you initiate a print, so you’ll have to keep that in mind, while printing. It’s a second or two slower than the ML-2951ND, which we reviewed a while back. For instance, the ML-2951ND took a bare 9 seconds to finish printing the same page, which the 4321 took 12 seconds for. Even in draft mode, we couldn’t get the time quicker than 11 seconds. A full sized image took 24 seconds to print, while a page filled with text at different sizes clocked in at half that time. A ten page group of prints took the printer 53 seconds, which was definitely not up to the same speed, we witnessed with the ML-2951ND, that completed twenty pages in the same time. The twenty page group took 1 minute and 13 seconds, which means it still has some catching up to do with the ML-2951ND.

Easy to slot cartridge

Scanning, however, is an added feature you get with this printer and scan speeds are pretty quick as well. But, it’s an office printer – so it needs to quietly do its work. Unfortunately, if you’re sitting in a silent room, you’ll feel the noise levels of the SCX-4321 quite high. In fact, even with a substantial amount of background noise, we could clearly hear the printer chugging along trying to complete its task. Definitely one of the negative points of the SCX-4321. Next up, quality and cost. Paper jamming issues have been handled well, so in case of a paper jam, you can quickly open the front flap and remove the paper. 

In monochrome images, we did see quite a number of horizontal lines, so you’ll definitely have to look elsewhere, if printing images is top priority. Otherwise, text appears pretty crisp for both normal and draft modes. With a cartridge price of approximately Rs.3,000 and an average yield of 3000 standard pages, you do get a good value for your prints. 

An average performer

Verdict

The Samsung SCX-4321 is priced at Rs.18,892 (MRP), but with a lot of market vendors you'll get it for around Rs. 11,000. For that price, you’re getting a printer, scanner and copier. It has a well priced cartridge and per cartridge yield average, but the machine itself is quite expensive if you're buying it at MRP. With an 11k price tag though, you're definitely getting a more value for money product. If you're in the market for a good MFP, then the SCX-4321 is a good purchase