TIGA31328

The Brother HL-3170CDW Color Laser (LED) Printer is a great one. It has automatic duplexing, which is why this model is around $40 more than the next cheapest one, that one has manual duplexing and is an older model. https://www.bestbuy.com/site/brother...?skuId=8821264

Patrick

TIGA31328

LED gives you more crisp edges, and overall better print quality.

TIGA31328

I know, right. I am in the same boat, I bought some good quality generic toner cartridges for my B&W Brother Laser Printer and I still have one in the closet after 4 years of moderate printing. I finally threw in the towel and got a color laser, tired of having to buy inkjet cartridges every time we need to print in color because one, or more of them dried up. I have nothing but great things to say about my Brother printers. HP used to be good 10 years ago, not anymore, and avoid the Dell printers at all cost.

nmenaker

the Brother color lasers are quite good and often many features.. also their consumables are cheaper than most without sacrificing quality. I wouldn't say they are for professional photo printing, but usually color laser one wants speed, quality and low cost. I put several of these into SOHO and medium businesses (Brother-HLL8360CDW) and they do medium duty without fail.

there are more home office, light duty models that perform mostly the same (checkout pc world 2017/18 best SOHO or light duty printers reviews)

I've also done this canon for a small home office and the printer can be inexpensive but the toner is more than the brothers but for these inexpensive HO versions I just buy third party toner from amazon

Canon imageCLASS LBP612CDW

Frankly, these days I just stay away from the HP's

MareLuce

Which brand generic are you using for the brother 2270DW?

I like it but it doesn't work consistently from my Thinkpad. Always works well from my MacBookPro,

lhrsfo

I have an Oki. The color is significantly more vibrant than that from other color lasers that I have seen and it will print banners. But it's not the cheapest option .

Need

I had been buying the ones from V4INK on Amazon for the last 5 years.

gfunkdave

Staples has a Dell wireless color laser printer for $85.

https://slickdeals.net/f/11469351-de...-printer-84-99

cubbie

Wow! Any guess how long this will last?

Dodge DeBoulet

In the spirit of "give away the razor and sell 'em the blades ..."

An OEM replacement toner cartridge set (black, cyan, magenta, yellow) will run you anywhere from $220 (standard) to over $300 (high yield). Fortunately there are 3rd party options starting at around $40 for a full set.

nmenaker

back away, just back away and get out alive.

cubbie

Wow again! Thanks for the tip.

cardsqc

I've always kinda linked the Dell color lasers that aren't the bottom end, but somewhat of a step up from there, generally in the $400-$600 range. They're not small, but they generally pretty reliable. And the model I tend to buy comes with full sized cartridges. But then I also find that when it comes time for a complete set of replacement toner cartridges, it costs more than the printer costs - even though the printer is shipping with the same sized cartridges. Most of my printing tends to be black and white, so I've found I tend to replace that cartridge, and then when I run the color cartridges out, I end up buying a new printer because it's been cheaper.

B&W printers I find that anything that's not expensive isn't good for more than a year or two, but you have to pay too much for it to last long enough that it's not just worth living with the disposable ones.

BigLar

As I mentioned in another thread,I have two color lasers and an inkjet or two - I avoid the latter like the plague 'cuz they'll drive you broke buying ink. They do tend to make very nice photo prints, though.

The color laser I use as a normal printer is a Dell (3130cn) and it does nice work, but not really photo quality. Fine for ordinary business uses. A full set of Dell toners would run somewhere north of $700, so I'm looking strongly into generics (hopefully with the chip). Keepin' mah finders crossed.

The other one (two, actually - I have a spare) is a Xerox Phaser 8560 that uses solid ink. Man, does that thing turn out gorgeous color photos. Couple problems with it:

1. Never turn it off! The start up involves melting (and wasting) a lot of ink.
2. I have no experience with generic replacements with the ink sticks, and genuine Xerox stuff will eat you alive worse than inkjets.

For a while, I did have an HP 1518, which is a small (and slow) color laser. It worked OK, but I really didn't need yet another color laser, so I sold it. I don't miss it much.

For B&W lasers, my Hp 8000 has been around since the Jurrasic era and weighs in at about 100 pounds, but like the Energizer bunny it just keeps goin' and goin'. Fairly easy to fix and parts are available everywhere. Got a couple other HP's (OK - nice output and also work great with third party toners), and a Brother. The Brother hasn't had much use yet, but what I've seen has been impressive.

Just picked up a Brother copy machine (DCP-7040) because my old copy machine weighed more than the big HP. It handled 11x17, but it still took up way too much room. I have great hopes for the Brother. Has a little problem, but a quick check on the web reveals this is a fairly common problem with a pretty simple fix. I imagine the office where it was used didn't want to bother with it, so that's why they dumped it.

Yes - I'm a bit nuts when it comes to output devices. I go to confession every week to confess it, but 5 Hail Mary's takes care of that.

nkedel

I've got the exact same printer (I guess it's a 3130CDN now, although I bought the duplexer separately.) Been a real workhorse; for a color laser, I find it does fine on photos -- for real photos, there's no substitution for dye sub, although I did like the quality of the solid ink printers back when I had access to one at work.

FWIW, I've had a very good experience with generic black toner in the 3130. I thought I was the one who last ordered it and could provide a link, but it looks like my wife did. LMK if you want me to have her track down which brand we used. We don't use a lot of color, and are still on all the original toners (over half, I think) after 6 1/2 years and two black toner replacements.