Posted on 12/07/2018 12:13:12 PM PST by Alberta's Child
I'm shopping for a new printer for my business; I'm hoping to buy it early next year. Any advice from tech-savvy Freepers who are business owners? Key features I need are:
1. I'm looking for a color laser printer
2. It has to last a long time (my HP 2100 black & white printer lasted more than ten years before I replaced it a few years ago).
3. Despite the long life, I don't use it a lot. I typically print less than 200 sheets in a month.
4. Printing sheets as large as 11"x17" would be a nice feature, but is not essential. Most of what I do is standard letter size and an occasional 8.5"x14" sheet.
5. The cartridges need to last a long time, especially if they're expensive. A single set of cartridges for my old inkjet printer cost almost as much as the printer did when I bought it!
6. I would prefer to buy a well-known name brand (HP, Canon, Xerox, etc.).
7. Size isn't the most important thing, but it would be nice if I could fit it on a standard 15-inch wide letter-sized file cabinet with only an inch or so of overhang on each side. That will dictate where I put it in my office.
Look into leasing a color copier from you local office equipment dealer.
Name brands and multi-functions..............
Brother for the 11x17. I use an old HP 1600 for basic color printing
DON’T buy an HP!
They will absolutely take you to the cleaners on ink cost. They have rigged their machines electronically so that they will shut down if you try and use an aftermarket or refilled cartridge. And they give the cartridge an arbitrary expiration date where it will shut your printer down totally until you replace it.
I still maintain this is why Carly Fiorina can’t win an election. HP has p*ssed off 75% of the American public.
Don’t buy an Epson either. I have a friend that has one, and she is always asking me to troubleshoot it. More weird firmware issues than you can shake a stick at.
I am happy with my Canon. Durable, and the ink cost is manageable.
I recently got an Epson ET-3750. It holds the ink in internal tanks, so you refill from a bottle. No more expensive cartridges. It is an all in one, scanning, copying, printing. Good color. Very fast, and wireless.
Got it from Costco, and it came with extra ink, supposedly enough for 12,000 prints.
Extremely happy so far.
PS It’s an inkjet, but IMO will hold it’s own against color lasers all except the really pricey ones.
I’ve had good luck with HP lasers. The inkjet with color cartridges are a total rip-off, but I believe they are moving away from those.
Focus on the cost of the ink, not the printer.
Buy a Brother!
Specifically an MFC-J870DW
I had an HP for years and fought and fought and fought every time I went to print something over the cartridges, etc, it always ripped me off to the core!
I have had the Brother since about 2012 and had zero problems. I literally mean zero problems.
I threw away a perfectly good HP color printer this past summer. I only had it 3 years and HP no longer provides driver support. I hated having to fire up an older computer just so that I could print from it.
My replacement is a Brother.
I’ve had a Canon Color ImageCLASS LBP612Cdw for almost a year now, and I like it a lot. Supports AirPrint too, which is a plus if you have iDevices.
Fast, quiet, and relatively inexpensive. Still on the original toners. Toner refills aren’t cheap, but they last a heck of a lot longer than ink.
Okidata LED printers....real work horses
Easy to change cartridges
For your extra large paper, go to the copy store. There is no way to breakeven on that feature.
Avoid the multi-purpose scanner/printers buy two separate devices.
Human beings answer the phone at Okidata.
I have a HP Office Jet 3830 which does everything: Prints, copies, scans and exports. I don’t use it often but its never failed me
Dimensions on the Canon: 16.5W x 16.25D x 9.5H.
You specified “color laser printer”, right? You couldn’t pay me to waste time with any inkjet.
Interested too as my workhorse HP-5000 is becoming a problem. I don’t really need color but definitely can justify 11 by 17 for technical drawings and schematics.
They have them that just do black and white but they also have color.
We have had ours for about eight years now and no problems. The cartridges are less expensive and ours has never jammed.
I bought HP Officejet 4630 about 3 or 4 years ago-does same as yours*laser and it was very cheap, around 80.00 from Best Buy. Wireless,etc. I like the scan to PDF feature. I don’t do a lot of printing, so ink price is not a huge issue.
I have one sitting here b/c I refuse to buy another color cartridge & it WONT let me print in B&W. I went to Brother.
The Brother MFC-L3750CDW is on my short list. I currently have a DCP-7040 that’s upwards of 10k pages and 8 years old. It squeaks a bit but otherwise works great!
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