Laser printer recommendations

[deema]

What ever you decide upon, I would first ensure you have googled and found how to reset the page counter of the selected laser printer. They count pages and often there is loads of toner left when it grinds to a halt with the toner out warning. I usually reset my brother laser printer about 3 times before the black is out……if there isn’t an easy reset I’d buy something else.

 

[whatknot]

That is certainly a factor I have come across, although the Samsung never had the problem

Wouldn't it be nice if there was an easier way to select a printer that suits without endless research in the hope they haven't tripped you up ?

Forlorn hope I guess

What ever you decide upon, I would first ensure you have googled and found how to reset the page counter of the selected laser printer. They count pages and often there is loads of toner left when it grinds to a halt with the toner out warning. I usually reset my brother laser printer about 3 times before the black is out……if there isn’t an easy reset I’d buy something else.

 

[eribaMotters]

We used Brother laser printers at school and they were bombproof. I went though a couple of HP and Epsom inkjet at home before realising my mistake. I also bought a Samsung laser about 8 years ago and the only annoying habit it possesses is loosing wi-fi contact with my laptop about once a year.
It is a B&W 3 way, prints, photocopies and scans, but the later it manages in colour, which it did not advertise. Ink consumption and costs are minimal as I can safely use non original ink without the dreaded drying up issues you encounter with inkjet. I have not really missed the ability to print in colour, how often do you need it.
I'd buy another Samsung.

Colin

 

[whatknot]

After 12 years of trouble free use, I would buy another Samsung but it appears they have stopped producing printers and HP now cover Samsung, I presume some money changed hands, but looking at HP offerings I will be looking elsewhere, Brother most likely

We used Brother laser printers at school and they were bombproof. I went though a couple of HP and Epsom inkjet at home before realising my mistake. I also bought a Samsung laser about 8 years ago and the only annoying habit it possesses is loosing wi-fi contact with my laptop about once a year.
It is a B&W 3 way, prints, photocopies and scans, but the later it manages in colour, which it did not advertise. Ink consumption and costs are minimal as I can safely use non original ink without the dreaded drying up issues you encounter with inkjet. I have not really missed the ability to print in colour, how often do you need it.
I'd buy another Samsung.

Colin

 

[flying haggis]

We have a brother printer/scanner/fax and it is brilliant. Network connected to the house and computers and we also can print from the chromebooks whilst sitting downstairs (printer is upstairs)
the scan facility is handy to have

 

[Woodwoodpecka]

Another vote for Brother printers from me having gotten equally frustrated with various inkjet printers. Working from home permanently nowadays they were driving me up the wall so bit the bullet and got the MFC-L3770CDW which is wireless and not had any printing problems since…

 

[whatknot]

Thanks for that but have had all in one units in the past and always had problems with one or the other not working, I prefer to leave it as simple as possible

We have a brother printer/scanner/fax and it is brilliant. Network connected to the house and computers and we also can print from the chromebooks whilst sitting downstairs (printer is upstairs)
the scan facility is handy to have

 

[Garno]

I guess it depends upon what you want to use it for.



Having retired, the last one finally died and I bought an Epson ET-3750 ink tank model. It isn't as fast as the HP but we don't print as much and the time between refilling the tanks has been ages and the refills aren't that expensive.

The Garno household got rid of the HP rubbish we had and switched over to an ET - 2711 tank model.
Fantastic bit of kit and even supports "Air print" (no idea what that is but's it's there just in case)

 

[whatknot]

That ones a bit above my budget unfortunately, its only for personal printing, no business these days

Another vote for Brother printers from me having gotten equally frustrated with various inkjet printers. Working from home permanently nowadays they were driving me up the wall so bit the bullet and got the MFC-L3770CDW which is wireless and not had any printing problems since…

 

[whatknot]

Yes not enamoured with HP equipment myself

But don't want an ink jet of any variety no matter how good ;-)

The Garno household got rid of the HP rubbish we had and switched over to an ET - 2711 tank model.
Fantastic bit of kit and even supports "Air print" (no idea what that is but's it's there just in case)

 

[selectortone]

Re: a common problem running through this thread (and nothing to do with laser printers, sorry...) I used to get annoyed by my Epson inkjet printer not printing properly if left idle for more than a week or two. Since I only need it rarely any printing job was accompanied by much swearing. The exorbitant cost of genuine Epson cartridges didn't help either. Sell the printer cheap, make the cartridges gum up quickly and hold the owner to ransom on consumables...

More by luck than judgement I seem to have solved the problem by:

a) Changing to compatible cartridges I bought on Amazon which got many good reviews and are a fraction of the price

b) Using the head cleaning function before I print. All done over WiFi.

The printer grumbles at me about non-Epson cartridges but gives up and prints (very well, colour and b&w) in the end.

Small victories are surprisingly satisfying.

 

[J-G]

At one time I had a note on all my Invoices that I only suppied & supported Epson Printers and only removed it when Epson made it difficult for small IT companies to buy at sensible prices by selling direct. I still recommend Epson Ink-Jet if the end user wants/needs Photo printing - no other manufacturer comes anywhere near the quality of the finished product - but for general printing any Laser will be cheaper to run, either B&W or Colour.
I don't recommend any product that offers to 'phone home' for supplies! and activly discourage HP product.

 

[dickm]

One other laser which a sample of one (daughter's business) says seems reasonably priced and reliable is Oki,

 

[okeydokey]

+1 for Brother
I have a small portable black and white one that I used for site visits and a quick print. Brilliant for text/data prints

 

[rwillett]

I’ve had HP’s lasers both colour and black and white, the older ones were built like tanks, weighed much the same and were brilliant. The newer ones as many people have already said, try to tie you in with consumables. The printer model is to sell consumables. I designed an Arabic printer for high volume packaging printing. We’d sell it for for £16k but we would go down to £0 as the money was the consumer market.

Had Samsung black and white lasers which lasted 12 years, eventually died. Now got a brother double sided black and white which is great and a quite expensive Xerox colour laser printer (6155?). Does scanning to email which is great. Laser cartridges not cheap but it just works and as a small business, I pay for reliability.

Can’t really go wrong with a small Brother laser printer IMHO

Rob

 

[HamsterJam]

Seems inkjets ain’t what they used to be.
I have an HP C410b all in one. Must be over 10 years old now and has been fed on non-OE ‘compatible’ cartridges all that time. Occasional paper pick up issues but never any clogged print heads. We feed it new cartridges about once a year.
I have noticed photo quality deteriorates as the ink ages, possibly because the non-OE ink pigments aren’t as good however it has spent its life mostly printing documents and kids homework.
All in all it’s worked out an economical machine to run.

 

[Donald Sinclair]

My Samsung ML-3710ND mono printer is still going strong 11 years on.
The fact that you can still buy a new one must say something.
I chose it at the time because of the relatively low running cost.

 

[bryan267]

I have used a few printers over the years, and also abandoned ink for over a decade. I now have both and the inkjet is now the cheaper and faster of the two to print, and while I now prefer ink I dont think its right for you. If one toner cartridge lasts you for years your clearly a very low user then your inks might dry out in the long time between prints.

My laser is a ricoh purchased in 2009, while it can do colour i only ever use it for b/w. The first year I printed some grainy colour pie charts in 40 client reports but carried on printing b/w documents in colour on the driver setting and found my colour toners depleted the following year, at £435 to replace them i never did. B/w toner is £60 to £95 depending on deals at the time, but mostly £85 each, and does about 5,000 pages of text. I tried cheaper non genuine toners, basically they were so crap they were unusable. Not for client documents, they turned white pages grey and used 3 times more toner per page for the privaledge. However I'm not sure i can advocate ricoh for their smaller cheaper b/w toners, bought one myself about 5 years ago, it had a very slow start up time and didnt get the same yield of pages per £ spent on the toners so i sold it. If you buy a printer for less than £50 the manufacturer is going to want you to pay more in consumables during the machines life. So i cant recommend a model, medium to high end ricohs last well and are cheapish to run.

Epson have great inkjets now, most of their new printers are based on their new ecotank technology, though my epson workforce wf5690 is newer its much faster than my laser jet and in colour it’s substantially cheaper to run. High capacity ink cartridges are about £150 a set including the colour and black. I use 2 or 3 blacks before i need any replacement colour, at £40 each and probably yields just less than the ricoh £85 toner cartridges 5,000 pages at about 3,800 pages. I never use cheap ink, tried it, was awful and far more expensive after the repeated head cleaning wasted the ink and sub standard documents thrown in the bin, the new epson inks work on their machines, others dont. Cheap photo paper is also not worth it, prints are awful. But cost per page of print these new epson machines are great.

Back to laser, I’m not a fan of HP, but Oki have a good name, kyocera are also very well respected quality make. Ricoh are great but dont buy the cheaper end. If you get colour, be sure the printer driver says b/w if your not printing a colour document or it may mix colours to make black.

One more thing to consider, it was possible and may still be, to buy a new printer every time the toner ran out machines with expensive toners were shipped at such a discout it was cheaper to replace the machine than buy new toners, though I’m no fan of such waste.

 

[Wood&StuffLtd]

I got thoroughly fed up with ink jet printers and having to replace cartridges seemingly every time I wanted to use it, so bought a Samsung ML 1665 mono laser printer back in 2010, it has worked faultlessly each and every time I needed to print something, during that time I have replaced one toner cartridge and had another spare just in case

But yesterday I went to switch it on and get a very quick flash of light from the switches but it will not turn on, I found no obvious fix for the problem after a google session

I rarely need colour but the facility would be useful, it all comes down to cost

Can anyone recommend either a reasonably priced mono or colour laser printer, I do not want one that forces the user to only buy OE toner etc, I gather some also require the drum changing when you change the toner which I would like to avoid

Any thoughts please?

I bought an HP Smart Tank 555. They now cost £200 from Currys. You fill the tanks with the ink provided and there are no cartridges. Good colour printing even on normal printer paper. Easy to set up and so far after a year no problems so far.

 

[Limey Lurker]

I have a Samsung C 430W laser printer. I am very pleased with it. I refill the toner cartridges with toner from TonerTopUp. Their service is good; I have had no problems. I have learned that the refilled carts. will operate for a number of prints without the chip being replaced, but eventually the prints will emerge with a "grey wash" all over the page: fitting the new chip immediately rectifies this. The print drum has a limiter which stops the printer until a new drum is fitted (even when there is nothing wrong with the original). This is bypassed by a chip, available on e-Bay (about 10 quid IIRC), and very easy to fit. Dirty streaks from top to bottom of the print are generally thought mean that the transfer belt needs cleaning: on mine I found that the print drum has a waste collecting reservoir which has no means of emptying, and the build-up of waste toner was coming back out on the roller and causing the streaks, so I have made a hole with a plug, and I will empty the reservoir again when streaks again appear. I can see no reason that the drum should not last 3 or 4 times its planned life. I know that not everyone is prepared to go to these extremes to save money, but I enjoy it because it is fairly simple to do. HTH.