Samsung SL-M2020W/XAA Wireless Monochrome Laser Printer for Home & Office - Fast Printing, Compact Design, Mobile Printing Solutions for Documents & Reports

I helped my friend set this up for their chromebook. This means I needed to set up google cloud printing. It wasn't particularly easy, but I think I figured it out. Read on to figure out what I needed to do..Before all that stuff, the printer itself is very small, and seemed to print well. We printed out a few things.. some test pages and a few multi-page recipes. But that was about it. I was pleased with how it worked. Hopefully it serves my friends well. I'll definitely hear about it if it causes problems in the future.It does have a few quirks. The weirdest thing is the power button light.. The power button light is ON when the printer is in "POWER SAVE" mode.. which essentially means the printer is OFF, but on stand-by. When the printer is ON and ready for printing, the power button light is OFF, but the "WPS" button light is on. Beats me.. But that's that.Next up is that "Power Save" mode I just mentioned... The printer essentially turns itself off during "power save" mode, and according to the manual, you must press the power button to wake the printer back up! I think that means you CANNOT wake the printer by printing, for example, from a different room in the house (everything is wireless, right? Shouldn't I be able to leave the printer on and print to it when I want??) NOT THIS PRINTER! And guess what! The default amount of time before the printer goes into Power Save mode is ONE MINUTE. That's pretty stupid... That's REALLY stupid. Seriously. 1 minute! You can change this value in the printer setup (see below), but the value must be between 1 and 60 minutes. You can't just leave the printer on at all times. I tried setting it to zero, and it gave me an error. I eventually left it at 30 minutes, as that seems pretty good.. Any printing should be able to be done within 30 minutes, or else they can walk back over to the printer and turn it back on.NOTE: This "time before power save" setting is very important for cloud printing!!! 1 minute is TOO SHORT for cloud print to even work, it seems..Okay! Let's get to business.. First things first: Setting this printer up with a wireless network! This is kind of straightforward, but weird. The directions come with the printer, but they aren't exactly elaborate. There are 3 ways to do this.1) Using WPS, which I didn't do. My friends don't have a WPS enabled router, so that was a no go. I'm also not particularly sold on WPS, so I probably wouldn't have used it.2) The manual (which you can download online) indicates you can use your computer to create a network, to have the printer connect to, to set it up.. I didn't do this either.3) Download (or use the included CD-ROM) the installation software (for Windows or Mac) and during the first few steps of the installation (no need to actually install the drivers, in the case of setting it up for cloud-printing only), you are prompted to plug the printer into your computer via USB, and then you can give the printer the wireless network/password you want it to connect to. This is the option I used. It's a good thing I had my laptop, because this option cannot be done with a chromebook! I was a bit skeptical about it, since i didn't want to install the software (not my printer, no need to install the drivers..), but it was very easy, and I was able to cancel the installer after this step, and everything worked just fine.OK, At this point, the printer was on the network! Time to connect to the printer! Alriiight! Wait a sec.. what's the printer's IP address? The manual states you can print out a network configuration info page by holding down the WPS button for more than 10 seconds.. I did this.. Nothing. The printer makes a printing noise, like it's going to print something, but then nothing happens.. Then if you try again, it prints out printer configuration info, but nothing about the network.. YarrgggGG!!! SOOoo, then I connected to the router and looked up what IP address the printer got. That worked!You connect to the printer by a very simple and very easy to use web interface, similar to connecting to a router. Just the printer's IP address into the URL area of a web browser. Once you've got the printer pulled up in a webpage, click on "Login" in the upper right corner, and you login (with default admin/password, which happened to be "admin/sec00000" if I recall correctly.. This info is available in the manual and on the Cloud Print setup page (available through Samsung's website.. I searched for setup google cloud print m2020w" and found the page.). You then are logged in, and you want to click on "Settings -> Network Settings". Then from the left menu, select "Google Cloud Print" and then hit Register in the right panel.. Hopefully that should get you registered! A google URL should pop up, and you click on that while logged in with a google account! (or do as I did, where I emailed that link to my friend who will actually be using the printer.) Pretty much, whoever will be using the google cloud printer will want to go to that link while logged into their google account. Really, this part is very easy! Alright!HOWEVER, WE'RE NOT DONE YET!!! We need to change the Power Save time!! Select "Settings -> Machine Settings", and from the left menu, select the first item, I believe.. I think it's just General Printer settings. "Power Save" is the first option. For me, it said "1". This is the number of minutes (of inactivity) before it goes to sleep (more or less turns itself off). Change it to 20 or 30, at least... you'll find out why in a moment!!OK! So you've got Google Cloud Printing set up! Great!! BUT WHAT'S THIS?! Google is reporting my printer is "offline"?! But my printer is definitely turned on! What's going on here!!?? 1 or 2 of 2 things might be happening here...1) It seems as if this printer doesn't automatically connect to the google cloud print service.. It takes about 10-15 minutes after it's been turned on until it starts printing anything from google cloud print.. YUP, you read that right! Have something queued for the printer, turn the printer on, and about 10 minutes later, the printer prints it. Bam! I didn't time it exactly.. but it's something like 10 minutes. It must be set up to periodically connect with the service and see what's in need of printing... Remember how the default "Power Save" time is 1 minute?! If that's left at 1 minute, the printer turns itself off before it ever even attempts to get google cloud print info!!!! You have to change that value to use google cloud print!!2) Router settings must be set correctly too allow google cloud print services to communicate with the printer!! A couple things seem to need to be enabled here! If you don't have a firewall built into your router, you might be fine.. However, you probably want to make sure port 5222 is being forwarded to your printer's IP address. Also, you want to make sure "Ignore anonymous requests" (or something like that) is NOT enabled (in the firewall area of the router, probably). You do NOT want to ignore those requests. This really isn't anything scary to worry about.. I found that when that was enabled, the printer would print after about 10 minutes, but according to google printers status, the printer NEVER came online / was available.. it always just showed as "offline". Once I disabled "ignore anonymous requests", the printer appeared as being available IMMEDIATELY once it started printing google print stuff (which was about 10 minutes after it turned on). It showed as being online, and if you printed anything after that 10 minute point, it would print IMMEDIATELY. No waiting 10 more minutes, etc...Soo, something wacky is just going on, where the printer doesn't connect to google cloud print for a while, I guess.. But once it does connect, and you have the right router settings set up (to pass info along to the printer), the printer is fully online and instantly available until it goes to sleep (into "Power Save" mode). So, you definitely want to change that "Power Save" mode to at least 15 mins, etc..Once these options are setup, the printer seems to behave just fine, but again, it takes about 10 minutes before it connects to the google cloud print servers/service.. Kind of annoying, if that's your only option for printing and you're in a hurry. I have no experience with printing using the printer drivers from a local network, etc.. I imagine it just prints instantly and works just fine.10 minutes from unboxing to printing.If you have any modicum of security on your network you will have to connect the printer to your PC to complete installation. But, even so it is essentially plug and play. No useless coaster comes with it, just connect to website download software, you get a choice whether to install internet diagnostics or just the driver and also a printer manager. I skipped the diags and opted for the manager.It does take a good two minutes to fire up the first time, and there was an aroma of heated plastic. I was ready to run into the kitchen and get the fire extinguisher, but it's all fine. No fire, no smoke. The only other thing that threw me was the the button on the printer for WPS. Normally, on any other device, means Wireless Protected Setup and it only needs to be activated during setup to connect to your network, so after set up was complete and I saw it was still on I hit that button so the light would go out. And I was no longer connected, had to go into the printer manager and reconnect. So, for this printer It really is just a network connectivity light, and if it's not lit, it means you're not connected.After setup is complete you get a choice whether to receive annoying "supplies" messages, and a couple of other notifications which I've already opted out of and forgotten. Actually I may not have gotten those options until I ran the printer manager to reconnect to the network. Either way, you actually have a choice.The prints are clear and the type is dark.It's cute and compact. Little wheezy while printing, and I also got some speaker noise during setup, but nothing since, no constant whine. I've only had it up and running for a half hour now, but so far so good.You might be interested to know that it actually is an HP printer branded Samsung, as HP provides the warranty on the printer.For this money, and not having ink cartridges dry up between infrequent printing, I'm going to say it's worth it. I reserve the last star to leave a place for a future update. But feels like a good purchase.Edit 2.23.2019 I still like this little guy. I see folks after me have not had good experiences. Aside from the hot plastic smell the first time I fired it up, I have had no issues with this printer. I don't print often, and I was sick and tired of paying $75 for inkjet cartridges to have them dry out between printings. The print is still clear and dark, and every time I've attempted to print (maybe four times since my original review) it's fired right up.I can see where dragging it around to every device in the house to connect with USB would be a pain as another reviewer said, but that didn't apply to me.I still say it's a good deal. I bought two cartridges with the printer, so I will be upset if somehow those don't work, but I didn't have any installation issues where I needed to install a "fix". So hopefully that will not apply to me. I guess a year or two from now when I try to change the cartridge I'll find out.For this price and the perfectly acceptable quality of the prints, maybe it won't be that upsetting.