Laser Printers That Don't Suck

[Ah Pook]

My all-in-one HP met with an unfortunate demise today (piece of shiat!).

Title says it. Looking for an all-in-one laser printer. 90% b/w that will still print when the other colors are "out of ink". Ink carts that are refillable or affordable.

Been through Brothers and HP. Don't want to go back.

Ideas?

[Great-Kazoo]

I couldn't tell a laser from inkjet, Outside of 1 replacement printer ,3yrs. Our Lexmark pinnacle series keeps going. competitively priced consumables, with a better up front price point. YMMV

[kwando]

Got my cheapo brothers laser for $40 and it still does the job. When I need to print color I go to kinkos

[MrPrena]

I use samsung laser printer, and it usually last about 5+ years. I usually print 5-10 pages per day.

[brutal]

After many years working from home, best advice I can give is to just buy both a decent HP B/W laser printer and whatever all in one inkjet/scanner floats your boat. I'm partial to Epson for inkjet.

I always try to keep a spare laser cartridge on hand, but when they start to fade, a couple shakes and back in they go. I've gone weeks or months after the first indication of low toner.

Not so much for inkjets or color laser. When one color goes, they stop working. I think there's a Brother model that will print black only but never been a fan.

[clark]

You can get the brother laser for the price of toner cartridges, I have 3 of them over 3 years now and all going strong.

[gnihcraes]

Buy a single B/W laser printer, no fancy other sh*t. I'm partial to HP Lasers, being in the biz for 30yrs.

Brother s*cks most of the time, just don't use them very much or they fall apart. (not good for large business environment)
Lexmark is ok if you buy the business models and not the home user models.
Xerox is decent too, but in business models class only.

I've got an HP 2035n for home, prints cold to first page in 30 seconds or less I think. I gave up on having scanner/fax years ago.

Had a Dell MFC (multifunction fax copier) that lasted a long time, it was produced by samsung.

Ford/Chevy debate. I'd just suggest buying anything up into the business models, not the home/office cheaper stuff if you want it to last.

I've been using CamScanner App for my phone, works awesome for scanning documents. (Photo to Document) We used this app probably a 100 times during a re-fi on the house. Sign, Picture, Send as PDF.

[mrghost]

I couldn't tell a laser from inkjet, Outside of 1 replacement printer ,3yrs. Our Lexmark pinnacle series keeps going. competitively priced consumables, with a better up front price point. YMMV

Have a Lexmark Pinnacle as well which I bought to take advantage of the $5 black replacement cartridges. It's had some annoying quirks, but firmware updates have resolved the issues. Agree with others though that business-grade printers are the way to go for any type, as most consumer-grade printers are just awful these days. Printers used to just work but now they tend to all come with a "feature" that results in user rage.

[MarkCO]

The best kept secret in Color printers are the Xerox Phaser line. The go from about $200 up to $5K but they all have the same solid ink print technology. By far the cheapest cost per page at just a few cents depending on the setting. If you really need scan/print/fax/email/LAN, they are in the $1300 and up range. If you are willing to have a printer and then a scanner/fax separate, you can get into the game for maybe $500 total, probably print all you want for 10 years and be happy, happy, happy.

[Ah Pook]

Thanks for the feedback! [Beer]

All I really need is a b/w printer/copier. The scanner/fax/etc seem to be unessicary extras.

Consumer printers have become a joke. I have an old HP 4170 that is a tank. Never even changed the toner cart. The down side is it has the old style pin plug.

[CobaltSkink]

What do you mean "it has the old style pin plug"?
It has a 9, 25, or 36 pin connector?
Well, if you like your printer, you can keep your printer.
Newegg sells USB-to-parallel adapters (Sabrent SBT-UPPC; Newegg# N82E16812156005) and USB-to-serial adapters (Sabrent CB-RS232; Newegg# N82E16812203018).

[Holger Danske]

I bought a b/w Canon on Amazon for 169. It is multi function that does both 2 sided printing and copying. it does good. The only thing is it comes with a starter toner so didnt get a ton of pages out of it. Amazon also has some generic toner cartridges for a good price. Its wireless too

[Ah Pook]

The old HP has a 36 pin plug. One thing I forgot to put on the wish list was wireless capabilities.

HD, which Canon did you get?

[buckshotbarlow]

brother 5340D monochrome laser...rock solid

[Holger Danske]

Here is the printer: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008YD1V76/ref=oh_details_o05_s01_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

For extra toner just search for canon 128 toner. Caonon is 50, other brands are less

[ben4372]

I like the kodak printers. I bought an early one, then another last year. My AIO is wireless/cloud. I can print a pic right from mt Droid. Lots of printers can, but Kodak ink is almost free. If you get the B/W in twin packs for 30-40 bucks.

[Zundfolge]

I'm pretty spoiled since I have access to a Canon ImageRunner Advance 9065 PRO at work (we're talking basically a bottom rung digital printing press ... actually we us it to self publish and on-demand print our map books and some of our map products (http://macvanmaps.com/icws307w2/shop25/index.cfm?id=51FCB307-B903-6884-82A05AFE56422E1A)).

That said, an older HP B&W laser is a good choice for at home. At home my wife has an HP 4MP that we've had since Clinton was president that still runs like a champ.

Color laser that is worth a damn is expensive (our Canon cost as much as a new car), but the advantage to color laser over color inkjet is that the laser can sit for 6 months without printing anything and still work fine, inkjet has a tendency to dry up and clog. That's why if you don't do a lot of color printing it's best to just have a B&W laser that you can use sparingly and if you need to print something in color, throw it on a thumb drive and take it to Kinkos (or if you work someplace with a good color laser take it to work).

[sabot_round]

I have a B/W HP Laser Jet 1200 that I purchased new in 2002 and it still going strong. I've printed thousands of pages before I had to fork out the dough for a new cartridge, and that was in 2010 IIRC. As stated before, good laser color printers are quite expensive, and unless you are going to use it a lot it just isn't worth it. Just my $0.02.