Color laser printer?
 

Is anyone using a color laser printer? Any recommendations? I'm not opposed to expensive as long as TCO makes it worthwhile.

I have an existing HP color laser printer, but it's starting to show its age. Even after replacing rollers, it's becoming more unreliable. I'm also sure that a newer printer also won't need the ~30 seconds to warm up before printing the first page like this one.

I've got a Laserjet Pro 200 M276nw. It's an all in one and does a superb job. All the HP printers are expensive on the consumables. The old 2600N I also have has a much higher capacity and prints with no issues. It is a tank but it has gone to generic inbuilt drivers on Windows 10.

I'd go with anything by HP or Brother. Slickdeals often has a cheap Brother color laser printer with wifi and Airprint for around $100.

I'd second the Brother suggestion, both for reliability and lower-cost consumables.

Brother. HP *used* to be good but they've gone downhill. It's been some time since I dealt with HP equipment but I haven't heard anyone say they have turned around their quality issues.

HP went down hill long enough ago that it was before color lasers were mainstream.

I'd second the recommendation of Brother. I've had very good luck with Canon B&W units (in particular the multifunction print-fax-scan) but haven't used their color ones except the giant office varieties.

We got a super-clearance Dell one from their outlet like 7 years ago, and it's been very reliable. It's enough years old that I don't know if it is at all representative of the quality of current models.

The problem with Brother Laser Printer is that ... it doesn't break! LOL. I have a 2270dw for about 6 years and it is still running like it was new. I did get a new "generic" drum for it a few years back and it is really cheap. Been using generic ink cartridges since the original one went out 6 years ago. I kept wanting to switch to a Brother Color Laser but just can't throw away a perfectly good BW Brother printer. Have been patiently waiting for it to break, but so far nothing....

Are there any pros/cons of a LED color printer vs a laster color printer in terms of print quality, crispness, ink longevity and operating costs?

I have the same problem, I have a Brother B&W laser from 2004 that still chugs along.

Thank all of you for your responses! Looks like it'll be a Brother color laser (probably the HL-L9310CDW) that will be replacing the HP. I do see some reviews mentioning print quality issues, but we'll see how it holds up. The user who will be getting this (unfortunately not me!) does mostly spreadsheets, charts, and diagrams, so photo accuracy isn't a requirement here. I like that the HL-L9310CDW's cartridges can do up to 9,000 pages between changes and it'll still take the 6,500 page cartridges from their smaller models, so I can use one cartridge for multiple models if we end up standardizing on Brother printers here. I will post a full review once it arrives.

In theory, LED should be the best option -- no scanning mirrors, fewer moving parts, etc. However, in practice, you'll find LED printers only in the low-end offerings while the business-class offerings still are laser-exclusive. Both are actually the same in terms of toner and imaging, the only difference is that LED uses a page-width bar of LEDs to excite the toner/transfer rollers while the laser uses a laser & scanning mirror to do the same. Lasers generally are more focused light sources than LEDs, but technology keeps getting better for LED. For generic home use, either would be fine.

I wasn't referring to their color lasers, I've never even tried one. It was a black and white laser that was the final straw. It was prone to responding to malformed codes (a document destined for another printer) by leaving the driver in a state where you had to reboot the PC to get it working again. (This was a network printer, the files were being sent from elsewhere.) The same thing would happen if it received an incomplete document. It was prone to doing for no apparent reason, also. (It behaved properly with locally generated documents printed from Windows, it was only the stuff coming from DOS or the network that would barf it.)

So? I have a color laser all-in-one and a black and white laser that's considerably older. The black and white costs less to run and I use it unless I need color. I worry that the black and white might die of a lack of drivers. (It took a considerable jumping through hoops to get it working as a networked printer with Win 7. I haven't looked all that hard but I haven't found any means of getting it working networked on Windows 10. Drivers are only available through Microsoft's site--and the standard drivers will not do a network install.)

That's not even that old. I've still got a B&W Lexmark from fall of 1999 or early 2000 that's still trucking. I've had two color lasers (one Tektronix that lasted years, and one HP that died at like a year and a month) die on me in that time. I think my current Dell color one must be around that age.

It's single-sided, not networked, and not very fast. OTOH, it's from one of the earlier generations of really small ones, so there isn't much space lost in keeping it, and it's just new enough to support USB (I think literally the first generation of Lexmark printers that did.)

Yeah, for small-department printers, my complaint was less about software issues as just the shift from "lasts forever" to "you're lucky to get a couple of years out of it" -- somewhere around 2000, their quality went way downhill. I know people who are still running Laserjet 5 series printers and at least one still-alive Laserjet 4000, but I know of a lot of only slightly newer 4100/4150 era printers that died within a few years, and my 2006 or 2007-vintage Color 4600 died of a motherboard failure at like 13 months, right after the warranty expired.

I'm really surprised.

Anything B&W that takes standard PCL3-PCL5 and/o6 Postscript can still be used, as Microsoft has both a generic postscript, PCL3 and PCL6 drivers and when Windows update for printer drives works (it isn't working today) I was able to get an old HP working with the Laserjet Series II (PCL4) driver which should still be there.

Jetdirect protocol and LPD haven't changed since before the millennium, and in a pinch for very old printers you can use a third party print server (USB ones even cheaper and more numerous.)

You won't get all the features of a fancier printer, and old scan features is often a lost cause. Scanner drivers have been a really long running upgrade annoyance; I've pretty much given up on scanning directly to my PC after Windows 8/8.1 broke the drivers for my last USB scanner -- it already had scan-to-USB stick and scan-to-network drive, and it still works ~5 years on, and it's actually proved more convenient to scan to the network drive than local scanning used to be.

Is that a Brother printer? My BW Brother printer on the Network is supporting Windows XP, Win 7, Win 8, Win 10, and quite a few versions of Mac OS. I actually don't remember having to manually install drivers. All of the above OS seems to detect the printer on the network and installed the driver for it. Maybe I had to do it for the Win XP, but can't remember as it was like 6 years ago.

It's not Ethernet, but rather hanging off another machine on the network. I've never had it detected and Add a printer refuses to deal with it. The only way I have been able to do it is through device manager--and that requires the actual driver extracted into a directory and those are hard to get out of Microsoft these days.

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

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

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.

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

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,

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 .

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

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

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

Wow! Any guess how long this will last?

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.

back away, just back away and get out alive.

Wow again! Thanks for the tip.

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.

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. :)

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.

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.

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).

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. :)

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. :cool: