Laser printer question!

manveruppd · 4 Oct 2010 at 00:48

Looking to buy one of these, and I noticed that the colour ones can be had for only £40-50 more than the black and white ones these days. My question is, are they worth it? I'll only rarely need to print in colour, so if there's some catch like the colour and black toners being all in the same expensive cartridge, forcing me to change the colour toner as often as the black one even though I barely use it, then it'll be a lot of extra cost for nothing!

Browsing through back threads it seems most people recommend HP printers, is this still the case?

manveruppd · 5 Oct 2010 at 15:36

No recommendations on this?

macfanuk · 5 Oct 2010 at 15:49

All laser printers to my knowledge have seperate toners for each colour so no need to worry about that. However, in most colour laser printers there are more parts to change (like imaging drums, fusers, etc) every x amount of pages, whereas with a good black and white printer, you won't have to worry about that.

We have one of each, we have a Dell colour laser printer which is about to be replaced and we have a HP black and white laser (well we have 2 but only 1 being used).

The reason we opted for the HP b&w is that it's a 'workgroup' printer so the replacement toners have a much higher page yield (about 12k pages) and can be bought off the bay for about £25. The printer was 2nd hand and only cost us £80 instead of the £400 it would've been new.

The Dell Colour Printer, we've had from new and we paid approx £300 for it and the toners print about 4,000 pages each but are much more expensive (the black alone is £40) and we've just had to replace the imaging drum which cost £120, so much more expensive to run.

Maybe worth getting a b&w laser and a colour inkjet?

Hope this helps.

Ravenger · 5 Oct 2010 at 17:04

I've had a Samsung CLP-300 colour laser for a couple of years. No complaints. Much better than an ink-jet in that it doesn't dry out, and the toner lasts for ages. It isn't anywhere near photo quality, which is no real problem as it's better and cheaper to get them printed professionally.

This is in fact my second one, the first developing a paper jamming fault in the last week of its warranty. It was swapped for a brand new one, so I got a full set of toner!

The biggest issue is the cost of toner, which amounts to more than the cost of a new printer, so it may be cheaper to buy a new one when it runs out. However there are compatible toner companies out there who do it much cheaper.

R088ieS86 · 5 Oct 2010 at 17:09

I have a Dell 1320c which i got because i wanted a laser printer and it was about £30 more expensive than a mono.
on setup.
Mine has 4 separate toner cartridges. (1xBlack 3xColor) and you have the ability to restrict colour usage.
Mine is set to password, so everyone in the house can only print in black unless they ask

, making the colour last longer.
I can't give you page stats though. But I haven't got a compliant about mine.

sswats · 5 Oct 2010 at 17:21

If you buy a colour printer, look at lexmark as they can give you a full cartridge set with about 2000 yield unlike the 500 yield toners samsung and HP give you with a new printer. plus they're generally cheaper

We just bought the C543dn which has an RRP of 300 or so but we got it for £140 new with a bit of searching.

Warning its big and quite heavy duty. more small office than home.

Tealc · 5 Oct 2010 at 20:31

I toyed with the idea of a colour laser as we had an oki one before but in the decided on a b&w samsung and a colour hp inkjet/scanner for the occasional colour print and scan. I avoided printers that have those anti-refill chips.

manveruppd · 7 Oct 2010 at 13:55

I think you guys have convinced me to go mono. I need colour printouts rarely enough that a decent colour printer isn't worth it, and I didn't really want to spend over £80 anyway tbh.