SubJeff on 8/10/2008 at 22:23
Feels like an odd place for me to ask this but I trust TTLG Kru for hardware recs...
I want to (finally) get a printer for home use. I won't use it a lot, certainly not everyday and probably not every week, but when I do I want high quality prints.
I've pondered getting a mono laser printer but there seem to be many affordable colour lasers out there. For the most part I'll be printing in black and white, but it'd be nice to have the option to print in colour. The choices out there are more bewildering than for any other piece of hardware I've bought and so I have to ask - what is the TTLG recommendation?
jay pettitt on 8/10/2008 at 22:48
Be wary budget lasers: they usually come with special mini 'introductory' consumables that run out faster than you can say 'Jeebus, how much!?!' which is unfortunate because that's kind of relevant when it comes to replacing them with proper inks and toner and whatnot. It's probably worth doing some math and working out if you might not be better getting something a bit more midrange at the outset. The other duff thing about lasers is how much space they take up. The other duff thing is that they always seem to have an electricity dependency problem and you have to send them to electricityolics anonymous and stuff and you can't really trust them to be switched on even if they promise to be good. They're still better than inkjets though, inkjets are the devil's printer. I have a mono brother in the house. Colour would be nice.
addink on 9/10/2008 at 08:23
Got myself a (
http://welcome.solutions.brother.com/BSC/public/us/us_ot/en/model_top/monolaserpri/hl2030_all.html?reg=us&c=us_ot&lang=en&prod=hl2030_all) brother mono laser printer a couple of years ago. Cheap as chips, I assumed I'd have to replace the cartridge it came shipped with pretty soon, but not so. Still running strong. Indeed I don't print much. Still.. very happy with it.
According to their own specifications the starter cartridge should do something like 1500 pages, the standard cartridge lasts about 2500 pages.
Also really like the fact that it doesn't have a whole lot of flappy plastic bits sticking out. In fact it only has one, and that one is optional.
SubJeff on 9/10/2008 at 09:51
User reviews of that Brother are off putting, sadly. Lots of people talking about paper jams and curl and marks and so on.
Shame, the ones that like it report good economy and quality and in here in the UK it's inexpensive.
addink on 9/10/2008 at 10:31
Hmm, odd. Two people in my direct vicinity have the exact same model and also have no issues with it. Maybe we're the lucky ones.
Given the price I assume a lot them have sold, and given most people only post bad reviews/experiences (and don't bother posting when everything is hunky dory) it's basically down to dodgy risk calculation. I'd buy the same one again if I had a need for two printers.. but the risk of getting a bad one, remains with any cheap printer.
Also, what might reduce my risk of getting paper jams, is that I purposely don't feed envelopes and overly thick paper into the thing.. I'm still amazed that the technique used to pickup a sheet of paper actually works (it's all down to relative friction) and forcing something 2 to 3 times the size of a normal sheet through its mechanical innards can't be a good thing.
SubJeff on 9/10/2008 at 10:35
Actually it has a lot of very good reviews, but they seem to be from people who have had it for a year or under. It's about a 50/50 split good/bad on the sites I've looked at.
Matthew on 9/10/2008 at 10:41
Does it definitely have to be a laser, SubjEf?
jay pettitt on 9/10/2008 at 13:37
I don't think I've ever had a paper jam or any other printer problem with the brother. It's not the same model though, it's the bottom of their small office range rather than the home office/personal printer stuff - it does duplexing and photocopying and stuff too. It gets used a lot, maybe 2500 - 5000 pages a year. The introductory inks and toner lasted a couple of months before they had to be replaced, the proper stuff lasts and lasts. I'd guess you'd get maybe a year or so out of introductory consumables in moderate use and then you're looking at well over £100 to replace them with full size stuff. It's still works out buckets cheaper than an inkjet though.
SubJeff on 9/10/2008 at 23:33
Quote Posted by Matthew
Does it definitely have to be a laser, SubjEf?
Nope.
I need a home office printer and all I'm really interested in is good quality. The last printer I owned was a Citizen 120D dot matrix back in the early 90s, so I'm 10+yrs out of the loop.
What I'd like is for it to 1. print good quality B&W, good enough to print "official" documents, 2. print reasonable colour (for the occasional letterhead, graph, colour diagram and so on - certainly not for photos), 3. have separate colour and black ink cartridges as I'll be using black mostly and 4. not cost the Earth.
I just figured that lasers would give the best quality. I've no real idea about printers though.
