Best Printer for home use.

[DigitalN00b]

Hey folks,

Once again I find myself in the process of coming to you all for opinions and advice. Now I am looking for a solid Black or color laser or normal printer for home use. My criterias are: Under $200, cost effective printer toner/ink (don't want to pay $100+ for the printer and find out the replacement ink/toner is as expensive as the printer itself or more), extream relaiability (uber important), and simple and to the point. The printer itself doesn't need to be an all-in-one. It's use will be minimal, but I don't want to buy a printer and 65 printers later I am throwing it down the toilet (know what I mean?).

Please be as objective and unbiased as possible. I know many tend to be loyal to certain brands. I care little for brand name. I am looking for cost effectiveness and reliability.

As always, all your opinions and data are greatly appreciated.

[paulWTAMU]

if you don't need color, a lower end Brother laser printer is good. Their HL-2240 Laser Printer is like 90 bucks at officemax's online store. Probably not great for graphics or photo work (I mean like pie charts and stuff would be fine but you're not doing a gray scale Mona Lisa with it). It'll take a highish capacity toner cartridge that *should* be good for a couple-3 thousand pages and cost like 45 bucks at the egg (TN 450).

At your price range you're looking at trade offs of course, and the trade off here is weak graphics and non existent photo capability. My experience with Brother lasers is pretty good (their inkjets OTOH....)

If you need color or photos you're probably going to be looking at an inkjet, at least for your price range, but unless a lots changes in the last 2-3 years, the ink cost on those is pretty crappy.

[bthylafh]

Yeah, another vote for Brother's mono lasers in that price range. Don't bother trying to find a decent color laser for that price.

If you end up getting a color inkjet, make doubly sure to get one with each ink in a separate cartridge; that will save you quite a bit in the long run. If you plan to print a lot, investigate printers that can be modified to use a continuous-ink system.

[JustAnEngineer]

Color laser is the most convenient all-around choice. Inkjets will eat you out of house and home if you do much printing.

[ALIAS]

i got a HP color laser printer for $120 from office depot a few months ago thanks to the help of those coupons they keep sending me and it was on sale. Laserjet CP1025nw. its not the fastest to print something in color but i dont print much so it works for me. it works over the network and can be used completely wireless. overall i think its cheaper to spend $55 per toner (there is 4 of them in this printer) then keep having to spend $20-$30 for 2-3 different ink cartridges everytime that keep drying out and dont have anywhere near the same print output quantity. the biggest problem with inkjet printers is if you dont use them for a while, the ink dries up in the nozzle and eventually becomes so clogged, the printer becomes a paperweight.

[ludi]

Once again I find myself in the process of coming to you all for opinions and advice. Now I am looking for a solid Black or color laser or normal printer for home use. My criterias are: Under $200, cost effective printer toner/ink (don't want to pay $100+ for the printer and find out the replacement ink/toner is as expensive as the printer itself or more), extream relaiability (uber important), and simple and to the point.

No printer is going to meet all of these criteria. But the one that will come closest is a black-and-white laser. Brother has been getting a lot of good press lately, and used HP business-class lasers can be picked up fairly cheap on eBay provided you pay attention to which parts and accessories are included with the sale.

Replacement toner cartridges are pricey, but that's not the correct metric to judge a printer -- what you should be looking at is total cost of operation, and for lasers, this tends to be very low. $90 for a toner cartrdige is chump change if you just got 5,000 sheets of mixed text and graphics out of the last one. But you do need to budget the cost of a replacement toner cartridge all at once, obviously.

[DigitalN00b]

So Brother seems to fit the bill.

I don't care for HP too much, having worked for their tech support department a while back ... learned my lesson HP - nada.

Thank you all for your valued input

[danny e.]

I have had very excellent experience with the Xerox Phaser 6280N

http://www.amazon.com/Xerox-Phaser-6280 ... r-mr-title

Not under $200.
Splurge a little. You know you want to.

[DigitalN00b]

That Xerox is interestng, but way out of my budget range for both the printer and toner replacements. Thank you for the suggestion though.

[hp9000]

I got a Brother HL-2270dw Laser Printer, which is similar to the 2240 but with duplex plus wireless and wired network capabilities. We can print from any PC in the house that way. Plus, the cost for toner refills (if you want to do it yourself) is ridiculous. By the way, one good place to buy refills for any kind of printer is http://www.inkowl.com/ although I'm sure there are several sites like that one.

[FuturePastNow]

For what it's worth, my friend, who owns several small tax offices (lots of printing), found Brother laser printers to be shoddy and unreliable. He replaced them with Lexmarks, but those are starting to fail, too.

[Trellot]

Please be as objective and unbiased as possible. I know many tend to be loyal to certain brands. I care little for brand name. I am looking for cost effectiveness and reliability.

Then ...

I don't care for HP too much, having worked for their tech support department a while back ... learned my lesson HP - nada.

What happened to remaining objective and unbiased?

Trellot

[LoneWolf15]

I buy used medium-duty HP Laserjets cheap on Craigslist, or find worn ones and refurbish them. Usually takes some new paper rollers, but they last forever with a little bit of love, and toner cartridges are cheap from places like databazaar.com.

You don't want the newest ones; slightly earlier ones usually have less expensive toner. I'd look at the Laserjet 2100, 2200, or 2300, which will all take a JetDirect card so they can be used on your network (some models come with one already). I'm running a 2100TN right now, and am happy with it. Regardless of HP's technical support, their business-class lasers are built on solid engineering, plus (if you're a techie), the service manuals are out there in PDF format, and not difficult to find should you need them. Plus, changing out rollers is cheap, and parts are readily available on Ebay.

[FireGryphon]

Brother seems popular, but my experience is not good. The school I work in purchased about 40 Brother 3000 series laser printers last year. With a month six of them had busted network cards. Since then we are now left with maybe ten that still function as printers, even after warranty replacements. These printers were not abused by students, but were teacher printers.

After this experience I cannot personally recommend Brother printers, though I know many people do. I would follow another recommendation.