So the thought of a sub-£500 (including VAT) colour laser printer appeals to you, and why wouldn't it? But - and it's a big but - before you rush off and buy Samsung's new 600 x 600dpi (dots per inch) CLP-500 printer you should be aware that it comes with a set of starter cartridges that offer just 2,000 pages of black and 1,500 sheets of colour - not much for the office environment that this printer is aimed at, but unfortunately par for the course in this sector of the market.

Once these are emptied it's back to the shops to part with another £340 for a new set of four cartridges, albeit full cartridges this time, that last for 7,000 and 5,000 pages of black and colour respectively.

Surprisingly, for a printer aimed at the small office, there's no standard networking capability. Ethernet and wireless networking options are optional extras (the CLP-500N has 10/100Mbps Ethernet). All you get as standard is a parallel port and a USB 2.0 port and, as is common these days, Samsung doesn't include a USB cable. On the plus side, you do get built-in duplex (double-sided) printing.

It's a fairly hefty beast, weighing in at 35kg when fully loaded with cartridges and with dimensions of 51 x 47 x 40.5cm. It comes with a 250-sheet output tray in the top of the unit while a 250-sheet input tray sits in the printer's base. If you need more capacity then an additional 500-sheet input tray is available for an £249 + VAT.

Samsung printers are some of the easiest to set up and the CLP-500 is no exception. Just find a USB cable, plug the printer in and off you go. The control panel and seven buttons on the top right-hand side of the unit are easy to use, with the buttons mostly controlling the complex but easy to navigate menu options.

Performance-wise the CLP-500 is a fast printer, with a quoted engine speed of 20ppm mono A4 and 5ppm for colour A4. Under test conditions it produced 19ppm of mono text, while a full-colour A4 PDF document came within a whisker of the quoted 5ppm, which is good going. However, when it came to printing a full-colour, high quality image this dropped down to just under 2ppm.

As far as quality is concerned, the CLP-500 gives better results for graphics than it does for text; line art and black and white photos are sharply reproduced while text lacks a little crispness and tends to be a touch on the pale side. The colour output is much the same; graphics are fine for everyday business use while text is a little disappointing, but only in relative terms.

If you are looking for a low-cost colour laser printer for an office that doesn't have a high paper output, then the Samsung CLP-500 is a good buy, particularly with its built-in duplex function. On the other hand, if your office has a high monthly output of pages then the running costs may outweigh the cheap initial purchase.