RichMSN

I had a Brother color laser MFC for a long time and when I decided to replace / upgrade it, I bought another one. I have an MFC-9340CDW and I couldn't be happier with it. Good print quality, wireless connectivity, scans well, faxes well, etc.

wdwright

The Brother laser MFCs are my go to machine for individual/small office printing. They are inexpensive to buy and inexpensive to operate if you use generic supplies. Unless you REALLY need color, I avoid inkjets due to the cost/page for ink and the nuisance of the maintenance.

chx1975

Brother has real solid Linux support. I had nothing but trouble with HPLIP when I had two HP devices. Brother is much easier.

Craig6z

Another Brother laser vote. Estimate that I've bought about 15 of them in the last five years, for small offices in my company.

I've avoided the least expensive lines, which used to be machines in the 7xxx series. The paper feeders tend to be flakey. However we've had good luck with those in the 8xxx and 9xxx series. Decent quality non-OEM toner is available on Amazon, and its cheap.

Only thing about Brothers that bother me is that the "Replace Toner" messages come on too soon. Googling the issue reveals hacks which trick the cartridges. On some models all it takes is a half inch piece of black electrical tape, and you can get another 500-700 copies from a cartridge after it goes into "Replace Toner" mode.

ProleOnParole

They will all be more or less similar so check the cost (and availability) of consumables. You can also make sure the driver UI isn't particularly annoying, some have a lot of bloatware. Personally I have good experience with Brother devices. If you have the choice, try to get a black or dark gray one -- white plastic doesn't age well.

OverThereTooMuch

Another thing you might want to consider is the noise they make when printing. HP provides that detail in their specs, not sure about the others.

For color laser, isn't the cost per page significantly higher than for inkjet?

MAN Pax

I have an HP Officejet 8610 which gets limited use and now suffers from a blocked printhead. It may have been the 3rd party inks, either way, the printer cost £10 nett and will now be junked as it's used mainly by the kids. I'll look at cheap colour lasers to replace it.

Elsewhere in the house, I have a Dell Colour Laser C1765 which has been a great workhorse - even though the toner is ruinously expensive.

Loren Pechtel

Yes, if you print enough that you don't have ink drying issues. If you rarely print color the laser is the better deal, though, as you actually use up a toner cartridge rather than waste it like you do with a low-use ink cartridge.

MSPeconomist

If you're going to use this as your main equipment in a home office or for a small business, think about the functions you want/need. When there machines first appeared, it seemed that they all did everything (phone, answering machine, fax, printer, scanner) but now the ones advertised in the USA tend not to include all these features.

BTW, if you're using the same landline for voice and fax, I assume that the recognition of dialing tones and fax noises works with Argentina's phone system, especially if you're thinking of purchasing one outside of the country.

pseudoswede

I have a b&w Brother multi-function (with wireless and duplex) that I use, on average, 30 pages per month--and that's being generous. I use the copier and color scanner options much more often. Replacement toner cartridges are about $15. I also have a very simple wireless HP color laser printer that I use even less; I have been on the same starter toner cartridges for almost two years now.

In short, given how little I print/copy, there's no way I will go back to inkjet printers.

lhrsfo

I've had Brother and Canon recently and am very happy with both for fairly low volume printing (get through a ream of paper every other month). The key is that it will continue to work even when the colour cartridge is showing empty.

Loren Pechtel

Yeah. In my case it's a B&W laser + a color multifunction. I print a few pages/year to the multifunction, although the copier and scanner functions gets used considerably more. The b&w probably gets a ream every month or two. I also have a thermal label printer (load rolls of the desired labels) and a thermal label tape printer (load cassettes with a supply of tape, cut to length.) Both would be on the expensive side for heavy use but for one label now the convenience is wonderful.

madison8

Also have had blocked printheads with HP printers with HP ink. Very low quantity user but never have problems with Canon printers.

nkedel

I've long since given up on inkjets. Lasers are just no more expensive for B&W and they last longer and have vastly lower cost per page. If you need color, color lasers are still rather pricy, but no longer awful.

For multifunctions, Brother and Canon have had much better scanners in my experience than Dell or HP. One nice thing is these days the scanners tend to be able to scan to email/dropbox/google drive or a local file share without having to have any drivers on the computer.

One thing to look for is single-pass duplex scanning. I need to get both sides of things far too often for "scan the pile twice" to be acceptable, and automatic two-pass duplex scanning chokes far too often.

I can't recommend a specific multifunction device, as I use a separate Brother scanner and Dell color laser printer, and the go-to models from Brother and Canon I used to recommend have been superceded.

Specs-wise, these seem to be pretty good:
Brother MFC-L2740DW
Canon MF229dw
Canon D550

All right around $200. If your budget is higher, you can spend more on the printer being faster, on color, or on large format printing.

Dodge DeBoulet

I mentioned the MFC-L2740DW upthread. I love the thing; reliable, quiet, and plenty fast enough for my home office needs.