X-bit labs

Personal Laser Printers Roundup: Monochrome Printing (page 29)

Category: Other

by Vasily Melnik

[ 01/19/2006 | 06:23 PM ]

Samsung ML-1615

Design and Ergonomics

The ML-1615 printer from Samsung was designed to be the bare minimum of a personal printer as the developers tried to save on almost everything. Externally this printer resembles a sculpture, but roughly hewn with an axe rather than chiseled with an artist’s hand. The smooth outline of the face panel jars with the angular shape of the output tray. When folded up, this printer is quite small and easily fits on the top or on an inside ledge of your PC desk (but you may want to shove it somewhere out of sight, because this model does not even try to please your aesthetic feeling).

So it takes somewhat more space when opened. The flip-down front panel serves as an input paper tray. Width-setting guides are behind it and the load limiter is located right on it. The tray is covered with a translucent polymer lid that protects the paper in the tray against dust and also works as a kind of per-sheet feed port (without any guides, of course). The flip-back support of the output tray makes the printer look even uglier.

The strange protrusion on the back panel contains the integrated power adapter. I wonder if they wanted to save some plastic this way or maybe it is just a designer joke.

A power connector with a switch and vertically oriented LPT and USB ports are located here.