Laser printers? Educate me please

rolls1392

Need a new printer
Fancy a laser one with a scanner
Don't want to spend too much say £80ish
Any recommendations
Any howlers to avoid?
Thanks R

mikeyrob73

Colour or Mono ? 

rolls1392

Will go for colour I think

boogieman

Doubt you'll get colour for that budget tbh. We've got a Brother mono and it's been very good, you might just get a mono all in one version for £80. 

Sporky

This was the cheapest a quick Google revealed - £120 on special offer. Otherwise you're looking at at least £200.

http://www.printerland.co.uk/Lexmark-CX310dn-P130654.aspx?source=Addwords28C0563&gclid=CMapzorS-NACFSuT7QodPOAAbQ

mikeyrob73

thing with the cheaper on offer printers is you will get screwed  on the consumables 

Sporky

£210 for a full pack (1000 pages typical) of toners isn't horrific.

goldtop

Be very very careful with colour lasers. Have had 2 before reverting back to mono.

The problem with colour lasers is that they can consume the CYM toner even when not printing in colour (it just gets wasted as part of the process). Worse still, if you want to print B+W pages, if any of CYM is empty, it will refuse to print at all. Some have cartridges that have 'smart-tech' built in that detect and disallow refilling.

Reverted to Samsung 2835 mono with wifi network and duplex and am very happy. £50-something after cash rebate.

rolls1392

Mono it is then!!!

axisus

I'd never get a Laser for home use, way to expensive on toners

Sporky

axisus said:

I'd never get a Laser for home use, way to expensive on toners

Cheaper per page than inkjet though.

exocet

Sporky said:

axisus said:

I'd never get a Laser for home use, way to expensive on toners

Cheaper per page than inkjet though.

Not necessarily.

There are plenty of HP models that are ink but aimed at business market so they have "high capacity ink" cartridges. These are cartridges "more expensive" to buy but have much lower running costs compared to standard home user ink. In fact thet pretty much match toner on a cost per page basis. Years ago, the models were called "Business Inkjet" no idea what current equivalent range is called.

DiscoStu

My colour laser has been great. Just replaced the black toner cartridge after well over a year (the first one I've had to change) and the colour cartridges are still half full.
Lasers have a significant advantage over inkjets for me - the inks don't run so I can print my own labels for my homebrew beer, plus I've made my own waterslide decals for guitars too.

Sporky

I had a quick look and some of them seem to be less per page than my colour laser (assuming it's measured the same way), but the printers themselves are about the same price as mine was, so you're spending the same amount to get inferior print quality.

However, looks like you're right about running costs. Have a wiz.

Wazmeister

Ive owned many... my fave is and has been the Brother 3140 or equivalent...

Amazon sell them too.

scrumhalf

I have a Dell colour laser. It's such a joy to be able to turn the printer on and not have to thnk if it's been too long since I last used it and need to buy even more replacement cartridges to print out the odd page as the last lot of cartridges have dried up.

boogieman

axisus said:

I'd never get a Laser for home use, way to expensive on toners

We don't use our printer a lot. When we had an inkjet, the cartridges were forever drying out through lack of use. That works out to be long term expensive. A laser just works first time every time. And expensive? Err, nope. I just bought a couple of compatible toner cartridges from Amazon for ours. £18 for two. 

FelineGuitars

I have been through a whole load of printers . Hated all the inkjet ones (usually Epson) . spent more time and money getting the nozzles unclogged and used up ink like crazy in the process. Probably my fault as often I might go 4 days without doing a print.

Colour laser are way too expensive for reasons stated above
We got an HP laser printer years ago and it has ben v good and Cartridge world do good compatible toner cartridges.
Made the mistake of getting a cheaper toner off ebay  - damn thing leaked and left smudges onevery print 
So I stick with CW for the replacements at half the price of HP

Emp_Fab

As an officially "Brother Trained" engineer who spends half his time replacing fuser units, can I stress the dangers of using 'compatible' or refilled toner cartridges.  They are almost always filled with the cheapest shit possible that, when heated, breaks down and slowly destroys the fuser unit.  I've seen cheap toner completely knacker a brand new fuser inside a month.

They are a false economy.  The cartridge you get will have been refilled an unknown number of times already, the bushes could be knackered, it's far more likely to leak all over the place etc.  By all means try cheap drum units if you want - they'll either work fine or conk out prematurely, but they won't destroy your printer.

uncledick

The HP8620 we use at work is terrific.  Cheap as chips to run and never any issues.  My Canon at home, on the other hand, is crap.  Says there's no paper on 2 out of 3 jobs and comes with a load of bloatware which just clogs up your PC.

Myranda

Sporky said:

£210 for a full pack (1000 pages typical) of toners isn't horrific.

21p per page without the paper taken into account?! That seems crazy.