As you know I’ve been running several Samsung MFPs (including the 60-PPM A3 X7600) to test their merit and see if they could really stand up long-term. While the larger equipment is going to a million pages, the A4 MultiXpress M4580FX was slated for 500,000 pages in effort to simulate a customer printing and copying over 8,000 pages/month. As the recommended monthly volume (according to the Samsung UK website) is 2,000 – 10,000 pages, this seemed like a realistic target.

We did everything we could to push this device as some of the toughest customers might. The test environment is not a “clean room.” In fact, if anything, it’s a bit dusty. Nearly 100,000 pages were copies, the rest prints. Almost all were done in duplex mode.

It took just under 54 days for the M4580 to hit 500,000 pages, giving us an average page count of over 9,000 prints and copies per day. Not bad for a 47-PPM A4 device. I ran a variety of jobs throughout the test, both long and short runs on typical 20lb. paper bought from Staples. This was the cheap stuff – decent but by no means “premium” paper that might run a bit cleaner. We experienced only two unplanned service calls, both towards the end of the test.

Based on my experience, a customer running 8,000+ pages a month would experience one unplanned service call requiring a technician (not a PM) every 2.5 years. Not bad!

This was a great little machine. It’s fast, has a very small footprint, a pretty good paper supply (I had 4 paper drawers) and it rarely jams. In fact, most of the few misfeeds I experienced were the result of me not putting the paper in straight in the drawers.

Nice job Samsung, this is a very good machine.

~Andy Slawetsky