Recommend me a printer

[hong]

I'm looking around for a decent low-end printer. Most of the stuff I print is going to be B&W (Word documents, spreadsheets, some pdfs) so I don't think I really need colour. If I do want something printed in colour, I'll take it to work and print it there.

Basically I'm after good B&W text quality and fast throughput. I was thinking of a laser printer, like the Epson EPL-6200, HP LaserJet 1015, Canon LBP 3200, or Lexmark E230. If possible I'd like to spend less than $350.

Does anyone have experience with the above models, suggestions on which printers to look at, etc? How do brands like Samsung and Brother compare?

ThaADVANCEnks!

 

[Allanon]

I own a brother HL1430 it's a good low budget laserprinter. Quality is good, speed is nice and the toner isn't too expensive.
The HP laserjet 1010 is also good, but the toner is more costly and the drums are a lot more costly. A friend of mine also complains it's sensitive to paperjams.

Hope this helps.

 

[talmar]

Well, I'm a huge HP fan. I swear by their printers.

They have a fair number of home based laser printers. In fact, I'm a network analyst in a hospital and we have more than a handful of thier HP Laserjet 1300 and 1320 laserjets in house. They are a solid printer.

go to http://www.shopping.hp.com/cgi-bin/...BV_EngineID=ccdladddiifhmkmcfngcfkmdflldfjl.0

 

[Hand of Evil]

One of the key factors to look at when printing is pages printed by toner cartridge, if you you do a lot of printing you don't want to have a monthly cost running too high.

Duplex printing, maybe it does not matter but...

 

[dvvega]

I own an old (very) HP Laserjet 4L.

I've had it since I was at university (approximately 14 years old).

In that 14 years I have only had to change the toner cartridge 3 times at a cost of $200 Australian each since I bought a new one everytime. Nowadays you can get a refill for half that. Over 14 years, $600 Australian spent isn't a bad thing at all.

It's not the quickest printer but it does its B&W job perfectly.

You can't go wrong with an HP printer.

Another option you should consider is a bubble jet with a fine printing head (1 picolitre if possible) designed for high-end printing. You use it on draft B&W and you will have ink cartridges that last for an extremely long time.

This is what my wife did for her home printer. Now and then she does some colour printing but overall its B&W draft. Replaces cartridges at $70 Australian every 1.5 - 2 years approximately.

For Christmas I bought her a Cannon iP5000 photo quality printer (and boy is it photo quality). It has seperate ink cartridges for each of the colours and an extra "large volume" black cartridge. This cost me $350 Australian which is dirt cheap. She's gone nuts printing photos at super quality and the ink has barely drained. Buying something like this may save you a lot of money on ink cartridges since you replace the colours as you go.

D

 

[hong]

Hm, seems to be a lot of love for Brother, HP and Canon, but not much for Lexmark so far.

It's my impression that the cost of consumables is generally lower for lasers than for inkjets. Is this correct?

 

[GlassJaw]

Another vote for HP.

 

[Thanee]

It's my impression that the cost of consumables is generally lower for lasers than for inkjets. Is this correct?

Yes, by far.

Bye
Thanee

 

[DaveStebbins]

I got a Konica Minolta PagePro 1350 home laser printer about a half-year ago. With the rebate it was $100. The best part was that the driver software will automatically set up 2-up printing and will also duplex. Duplex is manual, but the driver prints all it out such that the manual part of the duplex is picking up what's in the output tray and putting it directly back into the input tray, then clicking the "OK" button. That's all it takes. It will also combine n-up and duplex so, if you don't mind tiny fonts, you can easily get four pages per sheet of paper. I'm very pleased. So my advice is to check the reviews and specs to make sure whatever laser you pick can perform similar tricks. Maybe even ask to see such demonstrated if you're buying at a store.

Also, to echo Thanee, the per-page cost for laser printer toner is much, much lower than inkjet cartridges.

-Dave