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LBCarpentry

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My god laser printers are cheap these days! And the my look so nice and compact too! Who can recommend me a good quality laser printer?

Wireless (MacBook)
Scanner/copier
Colour
Good quality

many recommendations?
 
why laser? I bought an Epson 3750 something or other a couple of years ago and it's the best printer I've ever owned. it uses inktanks which seem to last forever and is stupidly cheap to run. the cost of 4 toner cartridges as well as replacement fusers etc. are far more than 4 bottles of ink to just fill the tanks.
 
That's a good point. A few months ago I asked in the local electronics emporium what sort of printer would be required to produce really classy, more or less book quality documents with graphics e.g. statistical presentations which looked the part. The bloke went straight to a printer which was fuelled with little ink tanks. Come to think of it, that's how photo quality printers work, isn't it?
 
I use a HP : Screenshot 2020-10-26 at 07.31.41.png

This is in my home office and I bought one for my business partner as well. Connects seamlessly to Mac through wireless. we've used all kind of stuff over the years, including Canon ink jets for photos and large office printers. This is as good as any of them. There are a number of variants on this model.

The HP is very reliable, fast enough, cartridges last well, it copies and scans faultlessly.
 
Lasers are great for intermittent printing you can leave them for months and they will print without any problems. Inkjet printers suffer from blocked nozzles if not used regularly and need cleaning cycles running to get them working.
Most lasers are fine for home use.
HP are good we use them at work in sizes from desktop to big multifunction printers.

Pete
 
Depends how much you're planning to print. Cheaper printers are usually sold as loss leaders for the consumables.
I have a Brother MFC-L3750CDW which is great for me as I don't print much - cheap, colour, dbl-sided printing, scanner, fast, reliable, reasonably compact. BUT, the drum has a relatively short life and consumables are low capacity and expensive, and I'd be better off spending twice the amount on the printer if I was planning to print a lot. This still holds true, even if using third party consumables.

My advice, buy the printer for the job; a couple of hundred quid extra is neither here not there if you're going to keep it for a few years.
Duncan
 
Check out: the Kyocera Ecosys P5021cdn
My last Kyocera last 12 years , this new one is even better. They merged with Minolta a few years ago.
 
Mine (B+W, not colour) is one of these: HP LaserJet 5000GN*

right_facing.png

The bottom tray takes a ream of paper, up to A3 size, and the lump on the back is a duplexer (instant double-sided printing). It's networked and happily prints from iPads, etc. with one of my Linux boxes acting as the Airprint server (iOs is too dumb to use CUPS, etc. otherwise the Airprint thing wouldn't be needed). It's old, built like a tank, and very precise.

When I made my shooting board a while back, I printed a right-angled triangle to A3 (with 45deg to a line along one edge of the sheet). Stuck the paper to the board, and used that to adjust to - worked a treat.

Lasers don't suffer from fencepost errors, etc, meaning they are good for scaling plans, etc. This will do 1200 DPI if pushed to it, but the 1st-page-out time is measured in months under those circumstances. 300 DPI is sufficient for most uses, and then it's fairly fast. I've used it for magazines and even a small book (A5-ish sized paper). It has a "Mopier" function, meaning it will do imposition (automatically printing pages double sided and in the correct order to assemble into a book), and prints well on a variety of papers, thin card, etc.

And you can buy spares for it still, such as the rollers and cork pads used in the paper pick-up system. I use recycled toner cartridges, and sometimes refill my own (although that is messy!). Despite what HP might say, it's not very fussy about toner.

FWIW, the mechanics were a joint venture between HP and Canon (cameras, etc.) The firmware was (old) HP.

Oldie, but a real goodie.

E.

*It's a bit like Lego - you add bits to make it what you want. In my case, it's got a network card (with a web server for admin), extra memory (64GB-ish), which makes it a lot faster, the big paper tray on the bottom (even bigger ones were available, but I've never had need), and the duplexer. The middle "tray" is actually the front of the duplexer. If you want to feed not-bendy stuff through, you fold down the front and a door behind, above the duplexer lump.
 
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I'm continually annoyed at the cost every time I have to get consumables for my HP inkjet.

Every time I promise myself that I will upgrade to a better printer with less expensive refills.

Then I go out to buy one - and £80 seems good value compared with £250++. I clearly need a little more resolve!
 
I have had a series of B&W HP laser printers since 1985, with little experience of other brands apart from 1 Cannon. The HPs have been solid work horses and cheap to run. When I eventually have to replace my current example I will probably buy a colour HP laser.

The only bad thing I have noticed about HP over the years is that their software has become bloated and "arrogant". HP Seem to think it is OK to hog large areas of my screen with petty message boxes. It can get annoying. Years ago I wrote my own device driver for HP LaserJets on another OS. The newer HP software is almost bad enough for me to consider doing the same again for Windows.
 
excellent advice as usual. HP seems to be preferred and looks like i'll get a nice big one when the time comes.

Just printed 2 months worth of invoices on my inkjet. Took forever and used the entire cartridge
 
I am self employed HR consultant/freelancer. A few years back I asked customers how they wanted invoices, all but one said pdf by email please, saves us having to scan them in to our accounting package and shred the original. Depends on your market of course, but lots of people, including our house oil boiler servicer, just email a pdf.
 
I have a colour Lexmark laser. The toner is expensive, but the printer itself was buttons. No complaints, it does 20 ppm, has a built in duplexer (very very useful) and is on the WiFi so you can print from laptops and phones easily.
Software is pretty unobtrusive too.
The drum lasts something like 100,000 pages as well so it's only the toner that stings.
 
I am self employed HR consultant/freelancer. A few years back I asked customers how they wanted invoices, all but one said pdf by email please, saves us having to scan them in to our accounting package and shred the original. Depends on your market of course, but lots of people, including our house oil boiler servicer, just email a pdf.
yes I stopped posting invoices quite a few years back

It seems funny now when I started in 2000 I had to write out a bunch for cheques every month with addressed envelopes for all the trade suppliers. Email and internet banking has made that all in the past
 
We have an HP Laserjet 1200 that is probably well over ten years old and still going strong. Sadly it will probably have to be pensioned off when Apple decide to switch off support for unsigned drivers etc,.

Then we got a Konica MInolta magicolor 2300 series printer for work and had no end of problems. As did many other people. Never again.

We now also have an HP Colour printer that is the dogs danglies. Only just realised the other day that it's got built-in forms such as tick lists, todo lists etc. I'd get another HP without a moments hesitation. I can also print on it from anywhere in the world. Not that I'm like to want to !
 
I have had a series of B&W HP laser printers since 1985, with little experience of other brands apart from 1 Cannon. The HPs have been solid work horses and cheap to run. When I eventually have to replace my current example I will probably buy a colour HP laser.

The only bad thing I have noticed about HP over the years is that their software has become bloated and "arrogant". HP Seem to think it is OK to hog large areas of my screen with petty message boxes. It can get annoying. Years ago I wrote my own device driver for HP LaserJets on another OS. The newer HP software is almost bad enough for me to consider doing the same again for Windows.
I like the HP universal print driver it allows me to print to my networked printer from my laptop and the setup easy just put the IP address in.
Pete
 
I always buy HP printers, never had one let me down yet. They might not be the best but if they're not then better the devil you know.
 
been using a HP deskjet 930 for about 20 years and it's still printing well. I used to buy commercially available refilled cartridges to keep costs down as HP original ones cost an arm and a leg, but then I found out how to do it myself. I refill the ink cartridges with a cheapo device that lets me squirt ink back through the print head on them thus cleaning the head at the same time. A .5l bottle of ink does a lot of refills and is a fraction of the cost of an HP cart.
 

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