The Samsung Multifunction Printer ProXpress C3060FW ($549.99) is a good choice as a color laser all-in-one printer to anchor a small or micro office. It's speedy and has a solid feature set, but what really sets it apart from the competition is its output quality, which is good enough for printing marketing materials. For that reason, the C3060FW earns our Editors' Choice as a color laser all-in-one for a busy small or micro office, or a small workgroup.

Design and Features
The ProXpress C3060FW is typical in size (19.8 by 17.8 by 18.4 inches, HWD) and weight (58 pounds) for an all-in-one laser printer of its price. You'll want to put it on a table or bench of its own, and have two people to move it into place. The C3060FW prints, copies, scans, and faxes. You can control its all-in-one functions from the 4.3-inch color touch-screen display set in its front panel. To the screen's right are an alphanumeric keypad and a few other physical function buttons.

On top, along with a legal-size flatbed, is a 50-sheet reversing automatic document feeder (RADF), which scans one side of a two-sided document, flips it over, and then scans the other side. This is slower than a duplexing scanner (found in the Dell Color Cloud Multifunction Printer H825cdw and the Editors' Choice Dell Color Cloud Multifunction Printer H625cdw), which scans both sides of a page in a single pass. In front, on a pylon beneath the flatbed, is a slot that fits a USB thumb drive.

The C3060FW's standard 300-sheet paper capacity is split between a 250-sheet main paper tray and a 50-sheet multipurpose tray, and there's an automatic duplexer for printing on both sides of a sheet of paper. These features are typical for a color laser multifunction printer (MFP) in its price range. You can add up to two additional 550-sheet trays for a maximum capacity of 1,400 sheets. The Dell H625cdw and H825cdw both have the same standard paper capacity, but only support a single optional 520-sheet tray for a maximum of 820 sheets. The maximum monthly duty cycle of 60,000 pages is appropriate for an MFP intended for a busy micro office, or a small office or workgroup, and slightly higher than the Dell H625cdw (40,000 pages) and H825cdw (50,000 pages).

The C3060FW offers USB, Ethernet, and Wi-Fi for connectivity. You can print from a mobile device via Google Cloud Print, Apple AirPrint, and Samsung Mobile Print. It also supports printing via near field communication (NFC) from a mobile device placed next to the NFC decal on top of the printer. The C3060FW includes both PCL and PostScript drivers. I tested the machine over an Ethernet connection with its drivers installed on a machine running Windows 10.

Print Speed
I timed the C3060FW at 31.4 pages per minute (ppm) in printing the text-only (Word) portion of our new business applications suite, effectively matching Samsung's 31ppm rated speed for this printer. Its first-page-out time averaged 16 seconds. In printing our full business suite, which includes PDF, PowerPoint, and Excel files in addition to the aforementioned Word document, the C3060FW averaged 14.7ppm.

As this is the first color laser all-in-one printer we've tested using our new test protocol, its speed can't be directly compared to that of printers tested on our old business applications suite—which included a higher percentage of complex, graphics-heavy documents. Based on points of similarity between the two tests—for example, both have a four-page PDF file and a four-page PowerPoint file—it's clear that the C3060FW is quite fast for a color laser all-in-one in its price range.

See How We Test Printers

Output Quality
Overall output quality for the C3060FW counts as a plus, with average text, above-par graphics, and slightly above-average photos. Text was good enough for any business need, except for those requiring very small fonts.

In our graphics testing, the C3060FW did very well in printing thin lines, and reasonably well at handling gradients. Colors were well saturated and background fills were smooth. I noticed a couple of small discolored spots in one illustration, but when I reprinted the page they were gone. Graphics should be fine for PowerPoint handouts, even if they need to go to important clients.

The C3060 did well in printing both monochrome and color photos. All the prints were at least average for a color laser, and about half were considerably better. I did see some mild dithering in the form of graininess, but you'd have to look closely to catch it. In one print, there was some loss of detail in a bright area.

Taken together, the C3060FW's text, graphics, and photos are of a quality good enough for use in printing basic marketing materials. With this printer, you could save money by bringing your printing of marketing handouts and brochures in-house.

Running Costs
Samsung doesn't sell toner for the C3060FW directly, and the toner isn't widely available, but based on Samsung's price and yield figures for its highest-capacity cartridges (the black cartridge is rated for 8,000 pages and each of the three color cartridges for 5,000 pages) plus waste-toner bin, cost per black page is 2.4 cents and cost per color page is 13.5 cents. The Dell H625cdw and H825dw both came in at 2.2 cents per black page and had slightly lower color costs (12.2 cents per page).

Conclusion
The Samsung Multifunction Printer ProXpress C3060FW is a well-rounded color laser all-in-one printer, with typical paper handling for a machine at its price, a solid feature set, and good speeds. Where it really shines is in output quality. Although both the Dell H825cdw and the Editors' Choice Dell H625cdw have reasonably good print quality, they're no match for the C3060FW, which has text, graphics, and photo quality up to printing most anything from graphics-intensive reports to PowerPoint handouts and even marketing materials. That's good enough to make it our new Editors' Choice for heavy-duty SOHO or light-duty SMB use.