Do economical colour laser printers exist?

[Aus_Snow]

Because, if they do, I'm in the market for one at the moment. As long as it's under (approx.) $600-$700 (USD), initial cost (i.e., retail price) is not a major concern. Running costs, for both B&W and colour, is the most important thing of all. But quality (and, to a lesser extent, speed) would be nice, as well.

Anyone have good experiences with colour lasers? If so, which model(s)?

Are there are any recent reviews out there, where they really go into detail, regarding cost per page, etc.?

Any help or advice would be appreciated. Thanks.

 

[Scotley]

I don't have much personal experience with such things, but this link might help:

MFPs - Archive

 

[Steel_Wind]

Yes. The Samsung CLP-310 can be had for $180-220 or so, depending on the retailer. Look around - you might find it cheaper than that. Some places had this model on for $149 prior to Xmas.

(I would highly recommend hitting a local Circuit City for liquidation sales this week.)

A full load out of replacement carts for this unit, black + three color, is about $150-$170 for FOUR (Black and CMY) Note: the $150-170 price is all-in for all four - not each! Each - they are in the $40 range.

At 1,000 pages from a full set of carts, that's getting to be very decent consumable cost for 2400 dpi color laser .

 

[Thanee]

Most of the real low cost laser printer have a pretty high cost per page, though, so if you are printing a lot, it is worth it to look higher up the ladder.

The Kyocera FS-C5100DN has been reviewed as a very good midrange color laser with low cost per page. On a big german review site it sits on the first place of the midrange chart.

If you are paranoid, though, Kyocera is one of the companies that hides information on the printer encoded, but invisible to the human eye, on every page (actually most of the big printer manufacturers do this... Printers | Electronic Frontier Foundation).

Bye
Thanee

 

[Arnwyn]

I bought my parents the Samsung CLP-310N color laser printer for Christmas (on sale for $149 at the time).

So far, my parents love it. It's reasonably fast, and does decent pictures. My parents' biggest problem was simply not printing enough and the ink in their old inkjet drying out so they'd have to buy yet another ink cartridge. They were getting only a couple of pages per cartridge!

With 1,000 pages per toner cart (and you only have to replace one of the colors when it runs out, not an entire color inkjet cart when just one color goes) this is very economical for my parents and their particular printing habits.

No idea if it'll work for you, but my parents sure like theirs. I'll likely be getting the same kind when I upgrade sometime in the relatively near future.

 

[Aus_Snow]

Thanks guys, that's helped a bit. Still not exactly sure what I'll go with, but well, more information is better than less.

And re: Kyocera, I don't think I'm quite that paranoid. Looks like a decent printer, as well.

I forgot to mention duplexing. That's important too. Sorry, completely forgot at that time. I know it ups the price a bit. Still, not as much as getting an add-on, when that's even an option for a given laser. Or so it seemed when I looked some stuff up.

 

[Thanee]

Yep, duplex is very nice. If I'm gonna buy a new laser printer eventually (only got a really old brother monochrome one, which I bought used on ebay for cheap, but it still works well enough and even has a network connector already, so I'm not super-enthusiastic about getting a new one yet...), I definitely want a decent color laser with network and duplex. That Kyocera would be a candidate then (DN is the duplex and network variant).

Bye
Thanee

 

[Calico_Jack73]

I bought my parents the Samsung CLP-310N color laser printer for Christmas (on sale for $149 at the time).

So far, my parents love it. It's reasonably fast, and does decent pictures. My parents' biggest problem was simply not printing enough and the ink in their old inkjet drying out so they'd have to buy yet another ink cartridge. They were getting only a couple of pages per cartridge!

With 1,000 pages per toner cart (and you only have to replace one of the colors when it runs out, not an entire color inkjet cart when just one color goes) this is very economical for my parents and their particular printing habits.

No idea if it'll work for you, but my parents sure like theirs. I'll likely be getting the same kind when I upgrade sometime in the relatively near future.

Exactlly the same reason I got my CLP-315W. The ink cartridges in my old printer would dry up long before I used them up. 1000 pages will last me a good long time... until I start printing out maps using Dunjinni.

 

[XCorvis]

I bought a Xerox 6120PS networked color laser for about $250 a few years ago. My usage is light but it's been a great printer. I imagine that there should be a similar but updated model available now.