Color Laser printers, which one?

[neomaine]

Our inkjet (lexmark z52) at home has $hit the bed. For some reason its just not printing documents. Looks like its getting the signal, but nothing comes out and the software simply gives up saying there's an error. We've had it now for probably 4-5 years and figure its gone through its cyle.

My oldest one is in high school with my youngest in 7th grade now so they'll be doing plenty of projects for the foreseable future. We've had excellent luck with a mono laser (hp laserjet 5p) that I've had for at least ten years and still going strong. Cartridges are about $50 and last for about 2 years. Even at the initiall outlay of $500 back then, its been very cost effective comapre to the inkjet.

Now I'm thinking with the color lasers down in price I could justify the higher initial cost with the more efficient toner systems that an inkjet provides. At $20 a pop for a color (3-4/yr) and black (1-2/yr) the inkjet while initially cheaper gets more expensive quickly.

So, here's what I'm looking for:

- Color laser, seperate b/w,c,y,m cartridges
(must have starter cartridges)
- at least 1200dpi
- $250-$350
- networking (optional)
- has 50 sheet (min) tray
- handles envelopes, index cards
- takes my wife out once a week
- photo quality, not important

What say you?

[John Whittle]

While there are are lots of "entry level" color laser printers, here are my observatiions on my HP 2550NL

1. Max resolution is 600 dpi
2. A set of replacement toners will probably be twice the cost of the machine!
3. They do NOT print glossy photo paper to the same level as ink jet/dye sub printers

Mine is set up with ethernet and I exapanded (maxed out) the memory, it also has post script as well as PCL so it'll release the host computer faster with post script.

Haven't printed envelopes on it (use a HP 1300N for that). Many use it for color inserts for DVD cases and it does a good job at that. Quality is pretty good but it doesn't match the work done on glossy photo paper by my Epsons or Canon printers.

John

[neomaine]

John,

Thanks for the reply. I wanted to, but forgot, to add that photo quality was unimportant for us.

I realize that a SET of toner cartriges may be >= the cost of the printer, our usage should be such that even the starter cartriges should last quite awhile while allowing more usage. And, since we need only replace the cartrige that is empty, say black more often than the others, it should spread out over time.

From what I've seen so far, color laser printing is around $.10-$.12 per page. Not sure what the average inkjet is.

Question: Now that I think about, I've been assuming that these things use regular stock copier paper. Is that true?

[OmegaSupreme]

Dell small business has a color laser on sale for $324 with free shipping and 1 year on-site service. The printer is a bit of a beast in size, but the print quality is on the high end for color laser and it has built in ethernet. The printer uses standard paper stocks and can use glossy paper that was designed for laser, don't try ink-jet glossy paper, that will just create a mess and may damage the printer. Included toner cartridge will last for 4000 pages.

http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/print_3100cn?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd

[Barnabas]

Konica has some great color laser printers in that price range. Been using the 2400 for 6 months now, still on the original toner cartridges.

[INFRATOM]

The cheapest solution would be an HP inkjet so you can refill easily and get photo quality, now that you say you don't care about that I suggest you go with a wax type of color laser cost wise they all end up the same .. the cheaper initial printer price the more expensive your cartridge (and shorter printer life) will cost you .. or decide on basis of cartridge price and availibility or if there are generic refills

[neomaine]

Ended up with a Samsung CLP510 for $199 after $50 instant rebate and $50 mail-in/online rebate. Its a 1200dpi color and b/w laser printer with seperate C/M/Y/B cartriges. A little bigger than what I was looking for and really didn't need the 2-sided feature but the price was right.

The starter cartridges should last us for quite awhile. A couple of bonus items would have been ability to use envelopes and network hookup. I can live without both and there's a seperate network card available.

Just wanted to finish off the thread. Thanks to all those willing to put in their two cents.

[INFRATOM]

Congradulation, You searched about a month and looks like you got a very good deal for that price. One final thing tell us how is the quality and some technical feed back.

[neomaine]

Quality, hmmm.


First, all in all, I'm very much pleased with the overall cost (US$199) with the features provided. Shopping, and some good timing, paid off. This will replace a dead (5+ yrs?) Lexmark Z52 inkjet and an HP 5P mono laser printer, soon to go into the garage sale.

Setup was pretty straightforward. I'm not a stranger to changing toner cartridges at work and this was definitely on the easy side. They're a 'starter' set (1500 pages) that should last us for quite some time. At <$.02 color and <$.01 b/w I'm looking for and seem to be getting my money's worth.

Well, the basic print seems a little darker than what I'm used to on the old b/w laser printer. Not sure if that's bad or not but have it set to the basic 600dpi for now. No need to waste toner if I don't need to. I printed out a game walkthrough on 2up/2sided sheets so I got 24 pages of a manual on just six pieces of paper. The built-in 2 sided printing is a nice feature that wasn't a prerequisite of the purchase. Think it'll come in handy though.

I printed a couple of past projects that my kids had. Figured I'd test it on what we'll be using it for. In comparison, we had the old Lexmark Z52 that had served us well. Colors of the same project are markedly sharper, clearer and more pronounced using the same kind of multi-purpose copy paper. Where the inject ink kind of saturated or got absorbed (even warped due to moisture) by the paper, the Samsung is dry to the touch and nice clean edges. Graph type printing and big bold letters come out beautifully. Pictures are much much better but not what I’d call photo quality. Though I'll save judgment on this until later, the printer does claim at 1200dpi to be a 'photo-quality' printer I’d say this was true in only the basic sense of the term.

It didn't come with networking, again a nice-to-have, but can be added for $160. Not going there. The USB2 interface will serve just fine. It'll just mean turning on my computer when they need to print. There was the option of getting the CLP510N but it was another $100. It wasn't on sale and I didn't NEED the networking. It also is supposed to have some sort of NOIS feature that minimizes the number of rollers needed and therefore the sound. A little louder than what I was indirectly expecting in that respect but nothing to say its a nuisance.

Printing speed actually seemed a little faster than what I expected in color. My other laser printer (HP 5p) was a 6ppm printer which suited us just fine. So, at 25ppm it’s a screamer. Having a 2up (or more...) printing can double or more the relative page per minute. I expected a little bit of a wait before the first page of a print and it actually came out pretty fast, within just a few seconds. I printed the main page of CNN.com to see what mixed b/w and color would do and it just spit it right out.

On a scale of 1-5, 5 being best, 3 adequate, 1 unacceptable:

b/w speed: 4
color speed: 4
b/w print (char): 4
color print (char): 5
b/w print (grayscale, photo): 3.5
color print (photo): 3
b/w print (broshure): 5
color print (broshure): 5
overall setup: 4.5
connectivity: 3
sound/noise level: 3
size: 2 (a little big for home use, fine for small office)
b/w print per min: 25 (way more than I need)
color print per min: 5 (a page every 12 seconds?, more than I need)
memory (64mg): 4

I've still have yet to test anything at 1200dpi at which I'd assume to increase by a half point most of the above scores in printing.

If anyone is looking for something else, feel free to ask.

[rallynavvie]

I didn't see this the first time around. I'm interested to see how well that machine works in the long run being that it's so much cheaper than a lot of the established brands' offerings.

I upgraded to a Xerox 7700 a while back (now a 7750 after a warranty return) being a Xerox whore even though it's a maintenance pig if you don't take proper care of it. The old Phaser I had was a tank but it laid the toner on really heavy which was great for text-weight gloss papers for DVD covers and liner notes. The 7750 does it quicker but isn't as saturated as the 780, but it still looks good, especially on the right media.

I needed something that could print tabloid for full bleed spreads so I had to go with the bigger desktop. It comes with networking by default, but for the cost I'd hope so. I get a good discount on consumables so those aren't as big an issue as I thought they'd be. It takes up a lot of space though. Having it in a home office setting seems a little silly sometimes.

[CrayonEater]

I had to replace a color laser last year and did some pretty intense research. I now have a Xeros 8550DP which I got to replace a Phaser 860. I costed it out to about $0.12 a page. That's an improvement from the Phaser 860 which was about $0.40/page. These wax machines make good looking pages, but they ain't cheap! The only good thing is I got the printers free for a non-profit I work for. But, any money you save on the printer, you lose in higher consumables cost.

The Minolta Magicolor 3300 is a true laser and came out to about $0.09/page, IIRC. Kinda wish I had gone with that one.

[rallynavvie]

I couldn't bring myself to get one of the wax/solid jobbers. Have you ever tried running those pages through a document feeder on a color copier? They stick to the glass and jam up. Not that you should be making copies of prints, you should be running from the original digital file, but it sucks if you're in a bind and have to hand-place every page of your deck for a copy. At least they're better than the old Phaser wax machines, those things used to smear if you left them in your car in the sun on a hot day. Now it takes an oven, or at least something capable of damaging the paper, to un-bind the wax/solid ink from the page.