Laser Printers? What to look for and what to avoid?

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Sid Post

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After writing off another $100 color ink jet printer and it's $50 ink cartridges, I'm thinking a laserjet for home use isn't so far out these days. I have averaged about $100 a year with inkjet printers themselves and way too much on over priced ink cartridges to keep them running. My biggest gripe is that in addition to the expense, they never seem to work when I need them.

After witnessing much abused HP laserjets at work continue to perform well beyond all reasonable expectations, I am looking at them as a replacement for my home printing needs.

At the bottom end of the market I am looking at the HP 1200 and, at an unrealistic top end the HP 4300. Looking at duty cycles and sheer pages per minute, I am leaning towards an HP 4000-series printer with its additional cost. The thinking here is that a printer built for that much usage on an average month should be plenty durable and reliable for personal home use. The initial purchase price sure is steep but, 6 years later if it is still working effectively I doubt I would regret the purchase.

Can I get HP reliability and durability at a lesser cost? I looked at a Lexmark E-312 but, its operating costs seemed way out of wack compared to per page costs from a smaller HP printer. Perhaps I should approach this from the BIC disposable perspective and just buy a relatively cheap laser printer with adequate features and print quality and plan on replacing it every couple of years.

What experiences and suggestions do you have? :confused:

Thanks!
 
Don't forget that Laser printer have cartriges of toner that need to be replaced. The one that we use at work costs $130 to replace the toner. Not that cheap, especially compared to inkjet. My color cartridge is ~$40, and lasts quite a while. I imagine the top of the line one you are looking at costs a pretty penny also to replace toner.

Mike
 
its true that a toner cost more, sometimes , mine cost $40, most are higher though. But you also get alot more, most lasers will put out 2,000 - 4,000 pages on one toner, most inkjets get under 1000 pages per cartridge, usualy closer to 500. So while a toner may cost more it is still alot cheaper when you look at cost per page. I have a HP Laserjet III and it is a workhourse of a printer, too bad they dont make them anymore. Most lasers are not really that good until you get into the higher priced office/commercial models. However any laser is still better than a inkjet :D
 
I work for a small company (only 4 of us) and about 4 months ago my boss got a wild hair about how cheap color laser printers had become, relative to where they had been only two years ago. So he bought us one. I'm still not sure we need a $2500.00 color laser printer, but it sure is cool when you do print someting in hi rez color. So far it's been quite reliable. I can even print from home over the VPN I have set up with the office!

jmx
 
I hate inkjets and always have. I can always tell an inkjet page apart from a laser printed page, because the laser looks much better. Laser printing is the professional way to go, and you should definitely stick with HP. After 20 years, they're still the industry standard.

My wife has a LaserJet III that has been running perfectly for about 10 years now. I currently have the 1100A, which is a printer/copier combo. The current equivalent would be the 1220. Being able to make copies directly from the printer is great, and since it's connected to our home network, I especially like the standby power feature, so I don't have to manually turn the unit on to print. Paper handling is very good, and it works well with envelopes and labels.

When you note the relatively high price of toner cartridges for HPs, remember that the cartridge contains the photosensitive drum as well as the toner supply. The drum is the part that's most likely to wear out over time, so replacing the cartridge is almost like getting a new printer. This is also why you should be wary of purchasing recharged HP cartridges. Some companies just shoot more toner in and leave the old drum, which may already have processed tens of thousands of images.

I think the 4000 series is way overkill for a home printer, unless you do a tremendous amount of printing. If you're willing to spend over $1000 on a laser printer, at least get something out of it besides speed, such as 11x17 printing or automatic duplexing.
 
I've had a laserjet 5L for about 7 years now - works great, puts out excellent prints. I've gone through about 3 toner cartridges in that time (I dont't print a ton, maybe 500 sheets/year). Toner runs about $60 for mine. Definitely better than my old inkjet. I have heard some good things about Minolta & Brother, but no first hand experience.

Sam
 
I had a HP Laser Jet III for about 8 years and it did a ton of work. It was second hand when I got it. The pickup mechanism failed twice and cost about $100 (AUS) to fix. On the second failure I got a Brother HL-1040, which has served well for 3 years. It has a facility to only replace the toner instead of the toner and drum, which saves a little on consumables. I print a lot less now because of Adobe Acrobat (send a lot of stuff electronically) but the brother hasn't skipped a beat yet. Laser printed copies definetly look more professional and will save you heaps of cash if you print high volume.

Because the toner is baked on to the page rather than squitred on ink, laser printed pages fade a lot less as well.
 
i have a samsung ml1210 printer (it was about 180euro which is ~180USD). its absolutly satisfying. dont need more of a printer at all. the manual said using the "toner save" button the printer will output up to 5K pages (theres no really perceivable difference in printout quality to me). i've searched the web for cadriges and they seem to be around 60-70euros which is acceptable.
works flawless on M$ systems and linux (need to test on other unix systems too :D)
personally i wouldnt spend more than ~300euro on a printer, on the other hand i wouldnt spend >300euro on any hardware in the first place :D. rather use equipment of workplace or something ;).
 
I have had a NEC SuperScript 870 for 3 years now and it's a great laser printer. At 600 dpi, the quality is unbeatable. In fact, I bought it to print resumes. :) I don't print a whole lot, because I am still on the original toner cartridge. I believe a typical cartridge is for about 6000 pages.

I believe in HP printers on the high end. However, for low cost home laser printers, I think other brands may offer better values.

(Woops, looks like NEC is out of the printer biz! :o)

YMMV.
 
My lab has 2 HP LaserJet 4000n printers and have been running since Fall of 1998. We change cartridges something like once a month, but our print count is pretty high. The cartridges run from around $75 (state contract/bid list) to a little over a hundred. There's been a few times that we had to have them serviced, but the first time was because some idiot ripped a paper jam out of the printer and left some pieces in there. Another time was just some sort of sensor problem that was fixed pretty easily. It rarely jams and we don't exactly use high quality paper in it. I do think it's overkill, but if you have the money then I don't see why you shouldn't buy it.

The only thing I have to add is that if you go with a lower model printer, try not to get a top load printer. I work with a hell of a lot of printers (both inkjets and lasers) and we have the most problems and complaints with top load. They're fine if you keep the tray filled, but if you don't have enough paper then the printer will begin grabbing several pages at a time and then inevitably you will have a jam. They do take up less space, but personally I would try to stay away from them (both inkjet and laser top loads). Hope that helps somewhat.
 
I would spend a LOT of time researching the cost of the "consumables" - replacement ink cartridges, toner, drums, etc. I have three mint-condition (but out of warranty) Brother laser printers sitting in the basement. All they need are new drum units. Problem? The drum unit is $250.; a brand-new laser printer with full warranty is $349.

Right now I use a Xerox WorkCenter XE82 laser printer/copier and I have been very pleased with the performance and operating costs. And the Xerox tech support has been very good.
 
Hi All,
I'm the IT manager for a Law firm. (don't start boo'ing just yet ) The newest of the HP 4000 series before I started to replace the '97 5Si's had done 250,000 copies and still ran like new. 'Nuff said!

Temper
 
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