Need

Heh I also had the Dell 3XXXcn before I had the Brother B/W. Yeah the Dell works well but it is just so freaking huge and heavy and the toner so expansive. Even with the generic toners from ebay, they were still expansive. I think they were like $60 each color. And the Dell ones are like $100+ at the time. And if you print a lot, the Dell started to break. I was on my 3rd one in about 6 years and when it broke, I went and got the Brother B/W laser as a temporary cheap printer. I was going to order another Dell color laser, but then the Brother seems to work well.. so just kept pushing it off year after year.

phltraveler

I have a Ricoh SP-C250DN (goes on sale for $69 occasionally on Slickdeals). It uses the same toner carts as the Ricoh SP C261SFNw which adds a printer/scanner/fax along with Apple Airprint and Google Cloud Print support. The device is massive (still countertop, but wide/deep), very well built but actually review the dimensions and weight.

The OEM toner is $$$$ but you can refill the existing carts for about $12 each ($48 total across the four carts) for 2000+ pages. Part of that $12 is a $1 chip to tell the printer that the cartridge is new (super easy to replace, you pop the first one out with a flat head screwdriver and then tape the new one on with scotch tape whenever you swap it). Toner is easy to refill - get some salvage cardboard, couple philips heads screws on the side of the cart, squeeze toner in, close and put screws back. Print quality is great (although inkjets are going to be the winners for photos, color lasers are for documents/presentations).

Very reliable and very happy with it.

(The Ricoh also comes with a separate waste toner bin which is good because then you don't have to buy whole new carts or otherwise buy a toner vacuum to suck the toner out - you just buy a new waste toner bin for $10 after 20,000+ prints (10 refills of each cartridge or more).

unmesh

I tried refilling black toner once and there was black stuff everywhere. Has this gotten much better?

unmesh

I have one of these too but the prints become very light about 400 pages into a new generic toner cartridge (Linkyo brand).

I wonder if I need a new drum. Its web interface tells me I've printed 3483 pages.

Need

Seem too soon for drum. It could be just the brand. Also I remember that the default setting for that printer is on toner saver or something. I turned it off on my drivers.

chrisl137

I've got an Oki C330dn that I got a few years ago when I needed a color laser that would print on thick postcards. The flip down secondary feed has a straight paper path and will accept very thick card stock. There are also user settings to adjust the heat used to fuse the toner, which has been very helpful. The printer wasn't cheap, and the Oki toner is super expensive (if you can even find it anymore) but aftermarket toner is pretty reasonable. I just recently had my first problem with it - it seems to be hanging up on the second side of double sided mode. I haven't had time to figure out what needs to be cleaned to get it to behave again because double-sided isn't that critical to me.

phltraveler

Mine is pretty easy, just stand the cart up with one hand and squeeze it in while wearing disposable nitrile gloves on a piece of salvage cardboard. I had a little bit that remained on the cart surface, which I then used a small air compressor to clear off.

Replacing whole carts where someone has done the legwork is easier, but the cost of an entire replacement toner cart for is $50/cartridge * 4 cartridges = $200, which is a tad more expensive than refilling each of the four carts ($12 * 4 = $48)- so for me, worth the extra work.

BobbySteel

If size isn't an issue you can get an old HP 4700DTN (or 5500 etc) off eBay for a steal of a couple hundred bucks. This is a tank and will last forever between toners. If you are patient you can also pickup genuine toners too for about 30 bucks each on eBay as well.

BigLar

Sorry for resurecting an old threrad, but I stumbled on an HP 5550 locally - for free. The guy was sent up here from another part of the country and gave him the printer to use. Well, he didn't use it much, and he was moving in with his girlfriend, so he just gave it away.

Even let me use his truck to get it home (it weighs about 125 pounds or so), but he only lived a couple of miles from my place.

My son, who is a graphic artist, says they used one of these years ago and he had nice things to say about it. Automatic duplexing, Handles 11x17. Nice (if big) machine.

Oh yeah - the toners are about used up, and they cost the earth to replace. Fortunately, he also threw in unopened genuine HP toners for the three that were low, so I'm pretty well set.

Also - re: Brother. I think I had mentioned (maybe in another thread) about how pleased I was with the Brother scanner/printer/copier. I never did get around to fixing the paper jam problem, but it wasn't a big deal. A week or so ago I stumbled across a Brother DCP-L2540DW (print, copy, scan) that a lawyer friend of mine had and didn't use much, so I bought it from him. Man, does that thing hum! Scanning is super fast and also quite sharp, the copy function is very hand to have, and the printer (21 ppm) also does duplexing. Absolutely over the moon with this little gem. Of course, wired, wireless, and USB, so I can access it from anywhere in my house.

One happy camper here.

tmiw

I have a Brother MFC-9340CDW that works great (and a B&W Brother laser before that that also worked well). I'm definitely never going back to inkjets if I can possibly avoid it. ^

This is the first time I've heard of solid ink and the concept sounds awesome from what I've been reading. I can't justify having such a printer in the small space that I live in, though, especially since my current printer works fine. One day.

BigLar

You might look for a used color laser to try them out. They work fine for business presentations, jazzing up documents, etc., but if you're into photo reproduction, you might be a little disappointed.

Inkjets are still superior (as far as I can tell) to lasers for producing high quality photos. Lasers do an acceptable job, but the pros still use inkjets (or dye sub, as mentioned above) for a really stunning-looking product.

I bought my first color laser off craigslist for $15 (or was it $5? - memory is a little foggy) and it still had some toner left. It was enough to convince me I would actually use a color laser but also to keep my photo expectations in check. It was an HP C1518 - small enough to fit on a desktop and easily moved - they're not all big monsters.

Anyhow, new ones get better all the time, so keep your eyes open.

tmiw

The 9340CDW is a color laser printer/MFC. I don't print many photos so that's not the most important feature for me. However, being able to sit around for a while in between jobs without getting screwed up is an important feature; I had a lot of print quality problems with inkjets due to that.

BigLar

Ooops! My bad.

I forgot that Brother model numbers are so simple and descriptive:

C = Color
D = Duplex
W = Wireless

BTW - looked up that printer and one of the reviews on Amazon gave a very detailed description of how to "fool" the 'toner out' message so you can get the last couple hundred pages out of a toner cart.

BigLar

Over the weekend, I was coming home from a little shopping, and one of my favorite thrift stores (Saver's) is just around the corner. So, I went in. It's a good place to pick up books and stuff. They also have an electronics section - lots of inkjets, smaller monitors, etc. Usually pretty cheap, although that depends on who's doing the pricing in the back room.

Anyhow, I spot this squarish black box, and I thought, "Gee. It looks just like my HP 401". As I approached, I spotted the Dell logo on it. Closer inspection revealed it to be a Dell C1760NW. Since I'm now an expert at interpreting model numbers, I assumed it was a color, networked, wireless printer. I took it over to the power plug and turned it on. It went through it's usual startup and then said it was ready. I had no paper with me, so I thought I'd take a chance. The price was $4.99, so what did I have to lose?

Then the voice in my head shouted, "BigLar, are you crazy? You already have THREE color lasers - why do you need another one?" I thought about it for a minute, and then I told the voice, "Shut up, or I'll go back on my meds, and you can't bother me anymore!". Yeah, that quieted him down!

So, I forked over the five-spot and took it home. I brought it in the house (carefully avoiding my wife's exasperated eye-rolling), and tested it out. Sure enough, it printed out a test page right away.

Looking up the reviews, the pros tell me this is a very good printer, especially for photos. The down sides are:

1. Expensive toner (Dell price about $70 each)
2. Slow (12 ppm color, 15 ppm B/W)

A quick check on eBay showed a complete set of toners can be gotten for under twenty bucks, and since the unit already had third-party toners, and they work, this relieved me greatly. Regarding the speed - I can remember when personal lasers delivered 4 ppm, and the expensive pro models got up to 8 ppm. So no worries, mate.

Since eBay monitors everything I look at on their site, the next day I got an offer for $5 off on the toners. So, I now have a full set coming in. Total price with tax about $15.

So, it's installed for occasional use. I can play with the controls to tweak the colors for photo use. Yes, the LAN connection works well, and so does the wireless. Haven't tried the USB port.

It's got a funky paper "tray", and doesn't do two-sided, but I can live with that.

I explained all this to my therapist, and he basically just tut-tutted and rolled his eyes. Sigh.

KRSW

For what it's worth, I did ultimately buy the Brother HL-L9310CDW. Other than requiring multiple calibration cycles when I initially set it up, it's been a good machine over the past year or so it's been in service. ~12,000 pages printed on it so far. No real complaints about it. Print quality isn't quite as good as the HP, but close enough for what we use it for. I don't think any of the users have noticed the quality difference. BUT, it's infinitely faster than the HP color printer it replaced. Of note, it waits until a print job is finished before forcing a lengthy 3 minute calibration cycle (hey HP, take notes!). It's also much quieter than the HP.

I also picked up a Brother HL-L6400DWT B&W printer to replace an HP4250. Not been as pleased with this machine, but it's not exactly the printer's fault. The toner cartridge it shipped with was stale and was making a dog's dinner out of print jobs. Brother sent a replacement, the ultra extended life cartridge...which ran fine for about 3 months and then started doing the same thing. I bought the toner cartridge below the fullest capacity to replace the newly-defective one and so far, so good. It is fast.

I'm about to replace some of the existing HP CM2320 printers we have with these due to how expensive cartridges for those have become. For what it costs to feed those, I can buy 1.5 Brother printers.

Overall, I'm happy with the purchase. Toner savings alone was worth it. Getting faster/quieter machines was a nice bonus.