Laser Printer Recommendation

[JohnD.]

Hi Folks,

So I am looking for a recommendation on a laser printer to replace the Lexmark Optra R+ that I purchased in 1994. I have probably printed about 8K pages between 1994 and when it started to give me issues somewhere a few years ago. I bought as refurbished and paid around $940 for it. It weighs a ton and it is built solid.

Listed is the criteria that I am looking for in a laser printer:

B&W Printing
Duplex
The ability to print on envelopes
Network Connected (LAN)
Support of PCL 5 & 6 language


These are nice things to have:

Color
Scanning of Documents (saving to a PC or USB drive or Cloud (like DropBox))
Wireless (WiFi and/or Apple Air Print and Android printing)

I have read the reviews of HP, Brother, Xerox and Lexmark on Amazon, each company has its issues. I have thought about an AIO (All-In-One) printer which might fit the bill but I would like something to last. For example a few HP AIOs have a touch panel, I am concerned if the light behind the panel goes out or the touch ability goes south, I am done for.

Also, if I go with a color laser printer and I run out of black toner, I would like that the printer does not stop working. It's no biggie since I can go to my local FedEx/Kinkos and print what I need.

I can spend up towards $700 to around $900 (US). The machine can be new or refurbished.

Anyway, any thoughts is greatly appreciated.

Thank you for your time and help,
John

[Hans Gruber]

For black and white I have had good luck with Brother and NEC. HP's are always very good but expensive on ink. I have a color Brother laser but the toner leaks and pages come out like a color rainbow. Years ago I bought my parents a Samsung color Laser and it has run flawlessly to date with no toner leaks and high quality printing.

My opinion in lasers is more reliability than price and the cost of toner. I would suggest going with a full duplex B/W ($400-$500) and get a middle of the road color laser in the $300-$400 price range.

I can't stress enough the importance of wireless printing capabilities. I think wifi printing is even more important than a lan based connection. It gives you far more flexibility on where you can put your printer. Most do not see printers as stand alone solutions.

[JohnD.]

Hi Hans,

Thank you for getting back to me.

I did not know that NEC made printers as well. I will look into them.

Years ago I had heard that the print engine in an HP printer was made by Cannon. If memory serves me right, it was the HP LaserJet 4 that looked very similar to a Cannon printer. I wonder if that is true today.

I have not looked into a Samsung color laser but will now.

I wonder if Lexmark still makes a quality laser (either color or B&W) printer today. I did not think of getting one B&W and one color laser printer.

True with a wireless printer you can put the printer anywhere one wishes. I would put it in the computer room for me.

I do have a lot of paper that I would love to scan and create PDFs instead of holding onto the paper copy. I do have a quality HP scanner that I bought years ago. I would have to check to see if there are drivers for it. It is quite large so one of those AIO printer might be of benefit to me.

Thanks for getting back to me Hans.

John

[Hans Gruber]

I compare the color lasers to aircraft carriers. They are huge compared to the monochrome lasers. I think NEC got out of the printer business years ago but they were known as a quality manufacturer. I got a T43p simply so I could still use my old NEC SuperScript 1400. It only has driver support up to XP. I have a full toner cartridge and another 3,000 page toner cartridge new in the box. I have a brother monochrome laser as well and a Brother HL-4040CN. The 4040CN is notorious for leaky toner cartridges. For those who do not know how laser printers work, toner is a fine powder. The laser printer superheats the powder and it melts onto the paper. When I open the printer you can see several of the colors in powder form on the wheel/spool. I use canned air to clean it off.

When you look at laser printers. Check the cost of the consumables. There is not much of a difference between monochrome laser printer quality these days. I think the paper you print on is more important than the laser printer. 24lb paper weight or more is a sign of quality because the ink print on lasers are so close these days.

Here is my recommendation for a monochrome laser. Brother HL-6180DWT. You can get it for less than $400 and it does duplexing and 40+ pages per minute. I would spend the rest of the money on toner and $400 color laser.

[RealBlackStuff]

Why waste all that money?
I have had my Brother HL-5240 (B&W) laser printer since 2007. (bought new, $138.29 incl. shipping)
http://www.brother-usa.com/Printer/Mode ... aqugSdtLGg
I've probably printed close to 18'000 pages on it.
I'm only on my 3rd toner cartridge. There's no need to replace the drum before 25'000 pages.
It's hooked up to my wifi-Router via USB, so any computer in my house with the right printer-driver can print, both wired and wireless.
You can also print envelopes or other stuff.
It fulfills my every printing need.

A newer version which does double-sided and wifi is this: HL-5240DN
http://www.brother-usa.com/Printer/Mode ... aqsLydtLGg
Costs only about $150-200, depending where you buy it.
Why not buy that and replace every 10 years or so, plus save a lot of money.

I used to have HP and Canon printers, but HP is a no-no due to outrageous prices for consumables, and Canon is just not popular anymore.
Only other alternative worth considering (IMHO) would be Kyocera, but YMMV.

[rkawakami]

This might be slightly out of your search parameters but here's what I'm using:

Recently bought an HP LaserJet Pro 200 color MFP M276nw on sale for $300 from OfficeDepot. As the "nw" denotes, it's network and wireless capable; no duplex. Went with a color laser as opposed to an inkjet simply because although I want color output in some cases I don't print that much color and my previous HP color inkjet (HP Business Inkjet 1100d) kept gumming up the printheads. Since installation on 3/1 I've printed 472 pages using black and 296 pages using color. Black cartridge is at 30% while the colors are at 70%. I'm not sure if full-sized cartridges were installed at the factory but my supplies status page says approximately a total of 700 pages using black are possible and 950 using color. Quality of the output is pretty good in my opinion. It's certainly no photo printer (have an Epson for that) but for color documents it does a fine job.

The cartridges are pretty expensive: $85 each for the three colors and $67 for the black. I've read reviews that say cost-per-page is around 12 cents. That must just be for black output. Given my usage described above, and assuming full-sized cartridges were initially installed, it looks like I'm running about 10 cents/page for B&W and 25 cents for color. First page out is a little slow - about 15 to 20 seconds - but pages after that are pretty quick. The overall spec is supposed to be 14ppm but in my use it seems to be more like 7.

Since it's an MFP, the unit is fairly big (tall). The footprint is 18" wide by 19" deep. The height is 17" but the freely-swinging document feeder needs another 8" to lift up. That's one minus for this printer; you have to be careful when lowering the document feeder as there's no resistance coming back down. As mentioned before there is no duplexing. I think the 400 series offers it but it wasn't a selling point for me. The rare times when I need duplex printing, I'm okay with doing it manually. What could be another minus is that it's on the noisy side. It's definitely louder than my (now jammed) HP5L with the sounds of gears turning. The document feeder isn't too bad as one would expect it to make some noise. This model does have the touch screen front panel so that's a minus for you. There's been one time where the control panel locked up on me but a power reset fixed that.

My printer is connected via ethernet since it's in the same room as my router. If I ever need to move it somewhere else it has the wireless option. Scans can be directed to a USB drive (there's a port on the front), network attached computer or email. I don't think there's a direct cloud destination offered from the operator panel but you could probably set the folder destination of the scan to your computer's Dropbox folder and it would sync that way. Scan output can either be .JPEG or .PDF. There's also a bunch of other settings for DPI, color/BW, etc. It can copy as well as fax but I don't have it connected to a phone line yet - might do it some day. There's also a whole bunch of apps you can access but I don't use any of them - games, productivity apps, forms, news. I just wanted a multi-function printer and not another tablet device. Now that I think of it, there may be an app to print to Dropbox.

ref: https://h30495.www3.hp.com/apps

I've set up my iPad so that it can print to the HP; don't know if it's possible to do the same with my Samsung tablet. I also have enabled remote printing using HP ePrint and limited it to my family's email addresses. Paper tray holds up to 150 sheets (16 lb) so if you print a lot, you'll be constantly reloading. I'm currently using 26 lb premium paper as I like the extra thickness. I've not tried any transparencies or envelopes so far.

ref: http://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c03315988 (Specs for M276n and nw)

[JohnD.]

RBS:

Thank you for the feedback on the Brother LP that you have and the new model that has replaced it. It's great that you have had it for 8 years and only used 3 toner cartridges. Thank you again for responding to my post.

rkawakami:

Ray, thank you for responding to my post. Also, thank you for the feedback on your HP AIO LP. I did look at the HP M476dw unit. I had read (in the reviews on Amazon) that with the M476dw it comes with starter toner cartridges. Can I ask what Epson printer that you use for your photo printing? Thank you for giving me estimates on the cost of printing a B&W page and for color. I am fine with low PPM number.

On the feeder not having resistance, you would think that HP would put a spring, so it does not come crashing down if you let go. For me it's not an issue with holding it to bring it down. The 476 does have duplexing and while I don't see myself printing duplex a lot, I would use it from time to time. I am fine with a LP being noisy since the Lexmark was noisy as well. It was good actually, I could hear it downstairs, so to me it just confirmed that it was printing.

I did not know that the printer could take apps (thank you for the link). What would they think of next? I thought I read that the 476 can scan and send the file (I am guessing a PDF) to your DropBox. I might be wrong.

I have a Samsung Note 8 that it would be nice to send something to the printer but not a requirement. That is great that you can print from your iPad. How does that work, referring to the HP ePrint with a limited email addresses? Also, thank you for the link for the M276n and nw.

Thank you,
John

[rkawakami]

The Epson printer is old; a Stylus Photo R200. It's a six color inkjet that does nice photos (on the rare times I need to print one) and also has a tray to print on CD/DVDs. It's attached to an old Gateway tower and has been set to be shared over my home network. That's the one drawback; the PC has to be on before I can print there.

The M276nw printer supports direct wireless printing via AirPrint. Here's an explanation on how to set it up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj9awLeh5qs

However, it's not how I'm doing it on my network. None of my printer's wireless settings are enabled. It's connected directly to my router via ethernet so the printer has a static IP address. I don't think I had to do anything special but my iPad 1, 4th gen Touch, and 5th gen Touch all see the printer.

The remote printing works by signing up with HP's ePrint service: http://www.hpconnected.com You select your own email address for the printer: myprinter@hpeprint.com. You can set the printer so that anyone can print to it (if they know the email address) or do what I'm doing, specify a list of allowed senders. To use remote printing, just attach the document to an email and send it to the printers address. I've tested it with both .JPG and .PDF files and it works quite well. Haven't tried anything complicated like an Excel spreadsheet (I'm assuming that it would work). Of course the printer must be on a network that's connected to the internet. There's also an ePrint app that you can install on most any iOS or Android device. That's probably the thing that would get my Samsung Galaxy Note 8 printing but I don't see the need for it at the moment.

re: lack of spring on M276nw document feeder

I think that the 400 series has such a spring. I remember seeing an HP printer that looked like mine at the passport office a couple of months ago. I asked if it was the same model as mine and I think the agent said it was a model 4xx. I'm pretty sure that when they were using it to copy documents that some effort was used to lower the feeder. Note that this is my impression; I've not personally touched a 400 series model.

[precip9]

I still use a Laserjet IV. The 3rd party cartridges are dirt cheap,and hold more toner than newer HP models. A usb--> parallel converter is necessary with modern computers.

It always works!!!

[GomJabbar]

I currently have a Brother HL-2270DW monochrome laser printer and have had it several years (there's probably an updated model out by now). All my experience with Brother printers has been positive, both at work and at home.

Check your connectivity options with whatever printers you are considering and consider the future. Think WiFi, Apple iPhone/iPad, Bluetooth, USB, etc.

FWIW, I use a Canon MG8220 multifunction color ink jet printer for my other needs. Considering previously owned printers, I don't think the Canon is as reliable as the Brother, but I'm happy with it. I don't really care for HP's much due to my experience with them at work. Lift the scanner lid and the whole platen comes up.

[mpcook]

I have been using an HP LaserJet 5P since about 2001 or so. Still works well so I recommend it for reliability and the quality is excellent. I have it connected to my network via a Powerline adapter + Netgear print server, parallel to USB cable to the server.

[jronald]

We have a Xerox Workcenter at work, and surprisingly they are pretty reasonable costwise. Incredibly slow to start printing overnight, think 2 minutes. After that though and for the rest of the day its a zippy machine.

Ron

[Hierax_ca]

I've been using a Brother HL-6050D as my main printer for about a decade now and it's been absolutely rock solid throughout!

I got it specifically to do Duplex/Double-sided printing and it hasn't let me down. Reliable and low cost per print. There was a network option (the DN model) but I couldn't afford that when it came out so I've just been using it USB.