Oh, well, Samsung has done it again.

With the company’s drive towards innovation, Samsung now comes up with the SCX-4500 -- a multi-function printer that is sure to appeal to style-conscious consumers. This monochrome laser printer is designed in portrait orientation.

And that’s not the only thing that consumers immediately would notice.

The SCX-4500 is an all-black device with the top portion (or the flatbed scanner lid) sporting a mirror-like gloss finish. Unlike conventional printers, the printer looks like two rectangular plastic slabs placed on top of the other. From a distance, you would notice that the only button visible is the one situated on the bottom half of the printer. This button ejects the media tray at the bottom, and it only does just that.

A closer look and you will see that the top, glossy portion of the printer is actually the scanner lid. On

the lower right portion is where the control panel is located. No buttons here, only a soft-touch panel with labels and symbols in gray color (which may not be visible in a dimly-lit room).

When turned on, the power key is highlighted in blue, which is quite pleasing to the eyes. There is a discrete dot-matrix display that tells users the ongoing functions of the printer and it, too, lights up in blue. Error messages, on the other hand, comes out highlighted in red.

Loading the toner cartridge is a bit tricky, so we suggest you read the manual first. You will find out that the "top cover" (the upper half portion of the printer which comprises the flatbed scanner) has a "lever" or lock located underneath, at the middle, which you have to press upward. This unlocks the top cover which you still need to lift up to reveal the toner cartridge compartment.

I wouldn’t exactly say that the SCX-4500 is one easy-to-install printer since the quick guide points out that the PC must first be turned off before you connect the printer (which is quite irritating if you’re busy with another PC task). It also said that you have to install the driver from the supplied CD first.

Once I finished the installation process, the PC (running on Windows XP, by the way) still asked me to install another driver, this after all the things I just did.

The SCX-4500 multi-function printer may have features other brands also offer, but as a stand-alone device, it can be your ideal photocopying machine.

One very noticeable drawback is the scanner glass which can only accommodate letter-sized documents. The media tray, on the other hand, can handle A4-sized sheets, at the most. By the way, it is a monochrome printer, so colored documents would still come out in black and white.

If connected to a computer, you can scan images of the documents or photos and save them on your PC as a Bitmap (.bmp) image. Its "Scan to PC" function does that in one simple touch, but there is something weird to this feature when I used a wallet-sized photo. It did scan the photo and saved an image file, letter-sized but with the photo still the same size as the original.

But with the SmarThru software (included in the CD driver), it gives users more options to copy, scan, and print.

Scan to email is possible, and Scan to Web lets you save a scanned image directly to your own online storage.

Now, imagine how flexible the SCX-4500 would be if it has a built-in facsimile features.

It’s too bad the Reduce/Enlarge key only functions during photocopying and the maximum setting is only up to 199 percent -- better if it also works hand-in-hand with the Scan to PC function.

The media tray, again according to the manual, can accommodate 100 sheets of various media sizes like letter-sized, A4, A5, JIS B5, ISO B5, and Executive plain paper. Envelopes, transparencies, labels, and card stock media are also accommodated, but only one sheet can be placed in the tray for each print. Just don’t forget to attach the output tray support to catch every printout.

According to the manual (yes, the manual), the standard yield of its print cartridge would reach approximately 2,000 pages (okay, let’s see you try it).

The Samsung SCX-4500 printer can be used in either Windows, Mac (10.3 or 10.4), or Linux.

Overall, it’s an easy-to-use printer which is more stylish and, surprisingly, more silent (at 45 decibels) as compared to others. I just can’t help but wonder if the SCX-4500 has (or will have) a color-printing sibling.