One of the most important things to check before buying any printer is the cost of its consumables as these are the true price of the printer. Consumables for the Samsung CLX-2160 consist of a single imaging unit, which only need changing every 20,000 pages, a waste toner which needs to changed every 5,000 pages, and of course the four Samsung CLX-2160 toner cartridges. Each of the three colour toners lasts for 1,000 pages and the black for 2,000 pages with 5% coverage. This gives the printer a cost per page ratio of 2.77p for black printing and for colour just over 11p. These figures aren’t great and the colour cost is particularly high compared with other devices in the same category. There are compatible Samsung toner cartridges available for the CLX-2160 which can reduce the cost per page by half and may be worth considering these types of printer cartridges if you are on a tight budget. The biggest problem with the CLX-2160N is its print quality. Printing plain black text is fine, although it’s a little heavier than most laser printers, but colour graphics appear fuzzy and text printed over colour is far from sharp. Printing colour photos is definitely not the CLX-2160’s strong point as the images it produces lack depth in the colours giving a washed out effect. Printing speed in mono is pretty average with a speed of 16ppm while colour printing is below average at 4ppm. This slow colour printing is direct result of the CLX-2160 being a budget printer and having a single imaging unit for all of the colours to share and it means that the printer must make four passes over the imaging unit when printing colour documents and therefore reduces speed four fold. The Samsung CLX-2160 overall leaves you felling that you should have spend a little bit more on something with better colour printing capabilities.