BigLar

Absolutely agree with you on the Brother gear. I think I've used 4 or 5 of them and they've all been dead reliable. Toner is not expensive, either, especially the third-party stuff.

Re: HP - as you may know HP used to be the king for laser printers. I have a friend who still has a LJ III and he swears by it. Toner and parts still available. My 8000DN (replaced my 5SI) is an absolute beast and seems to have been built in a tank factory. Also love the fact that the toner carts are good for 12-15,000 copies! A real energizer bunny - it keeps on goin'. Later ones - not so much. If you don't really beat them up they will go on for quite a while, but when they break, they break.

pseudoswede

I have three printers at home: HP color LaserJet and a Brother b/w MFC. I may sell both of them and get a color MFC and simple b/w printer (however, both need to have Google/Apple integration) since my personal demand for color copies has increased.

As for my third printer... if you print photos, I would highly recommend the Canon Selphy series of dye-sublimation printers. They aren't super quick, not as cheap as inkjet (roughly $0.15-0.25 per print), but they do almost photo-lab quality prints--and you don't have to worry about ink drying out. It has been a lifesaver when one of my kids (or wife) says late at night, "I need a photo of <something> for tomorrow morning." After finding it on my computer, I have a photo in about two minutes. If I know I need to print out a lot of photos, then I'll just simply use Costco or Walgreen's.

dlaue

What I learned from owning a color laser printer:

if you don't use it frequently, it gives you grief. The local printer repair person said you must use it at least monthly. We used ours far less frequently and it became erratic and troublesome. Finally just threw it away.

If considering buying a color laser printer, consider how many color prints of many sizes you can order from Costco delivered to your door for the price of the printer and toner.

Loren Pechtel

I've had no such trouble with mine. It sees very light use, it has been completely trouble-free.

DYKWIA

I've seen that said about inkjets (nozzles get clogged if not used regularly), but not lasers.

garykung

I would rephrase that - how much you can tolerate if the end products are B/W only.

Loren Pechtel

Yup. The color laser I have is because inkjets couldn't take the occasional use. A couple of them died, the laser has been there several years and hasn't given me a bit of trouble.

dlaue

Inkjet printers are a nightmare of mechanical issues and clogged sprayers. .

gfunkdave

Hmm, I've had an HP all-in-one that includes a color laserjet printer since about 2008. I print maybe 1-3 pages every 2-6 months on it and it's never had any issues.

Boraxo

I have a Dell Color MFP h625cdw for about 4 years, and I'd say we print an average of 50 pages a week. The performance has been fantastic compared with my old HP inkjets. Printing is sharp, photos come out nicely (esp on photo paper), the feeder works well, and it almost never jams. Linking it to our Apple macbooks, phones and ipads was maybe the easiest setup I've ever done.

My only complaints are (1) the ink cartridges are really expensive (think $70 each x 4 colors) and (2) I have been unable to get the scanner to output back to my laptop via wifi. But the workaround (scan directly to a USB flash drive) is easy enough. Ironically I went with Dell after buying Dell chromebooks for my kids. And then had some difficulty linking the chromebooks to the printer. Had to set up google print accounts (look that one up) to hook up the chromebooks. Ironic, as the Apple devices took no effort to set up

freecia

I use a HP Color LaserJet and don't have any issues printing documents once every few months. The toner, opened and unopened cartridges, store just fine in our climate near SJC/SFO. I don't use it for photos.

I've been looking at the Canon Selphy Cp1300 but they don't have a driver for OSX beyond 10.12 Sierra https://www.usa.canon.com/internet/p...specifications I'm hoping they'll release a new model for the holidays but not expecting it since they released a square version in early 2020 which doesn't support a desktop OS https://www.usa.canon.com/internet/p...y-square-qx10/

Loren Pechtel

Yup. My color laser can go a long time between color prints, I've never had any problems from that.

nkedel

The Selphy works great just printing from SD card.

UA Fan

I'm looking for a color printer that scans well. My last two Cannon (inkjet and B&W laserjet) have had issues with scanning. From not being intuitive to not scanning dark enough to scanning color into individual files. Also trying to use the Dell credit so wondering what people think of this Brother printer:

https://www.dell.com/premier/accesso...etail/aa557809

BigLar

I think I mentioned above that I'm using a Brother DCP-L2540DW all-in-one. Last week I sold my old car and bought another (older) one. Just for my records, I decided to scan the title that came with it.

As you might know, in New York, the title document is 8.5x11 and has all those little curliques (like a stock certificate) and a bit of detail. I wanted to see what the scanner would do.

For software, I use NAPS2, a freeware app. Set up the scan profile for 24-bit color at 600 dpi. I scanned both sides and saved it as a .pdf.

Printed it on one of my color lasers (see above ). Actually, I used the Dell C1760nw and manually printed it on both sides.

The result was essentially indistinguishable from the original.

Brother makes good, reliable scanners.

The AIO is a B/W laser (auto-duplexing) so you might want to look elsewhere if you do a lot of color work - in my case, I have a very good reliable scanner and good color lasers. It's a minor inconvenience to do the intermediate step, but for the amount of color scanning/printing I do it's not a big hassle.