Look into leasing a color copier from you local office equipment dealer.
Name brands and multi-functions..............
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.
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.
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!
No advice on a color laser printer; but, a monochrome laser printer for printing ordinary business letters and memos etc; is IMO a smart investment. They are under $100, sometimes $60-$70 on sale and would save W & T on your color printer. I have a Brother mono HL-5170 printer I have had for a dozen years, it has worked flawlessly, the carts are $22 on ebay, and I’ve beaten the crap out of it. It’s also been in a construction zone and probably sucked a fair amount of dust. Indestructible.
I bought a Xerox Phaser 6125 color laser on CyberMonday 2008. I got tired of inkjets that would dry out and last only a short time.
My Xerox still prints great. I print very little. I did finally change out the black cartridge a few months ago.
I paid $149 for the printer.
If I were to purchase a new one, I would go for auto-duplex but possibly a different brand. They are in the price range of $150 to $300 depending on the brand and seller.
Read reviews. They will give you a good idea whether a printer is any good.
Brother has never let me down.
Background: Part of a colorful past. I know what I’m talking about.
Problem: You state that you print only 200 pages/month, don’t need 11x17 yet don’t state a need for color.
A question I always asked my clients: Is it value-added color or cost-added color?
Tip: I’ve NEVER owned either an inkjet or color printer of any type.
It’s a good question to ask why someone having been “in” the industry would do that...
Advice: Find yourself a good, independent local dealer of printers & one which remarkets refilled toner cartridges. Find out what they have to say about your options (HP may or may not be a good choice this time around) but in the absence of a stated need for color, I recommend against it: I’ve plotted the added costs of color over the (short) life of a printer and if most business people knew the hard numbers, they would never let their employees/managers ever have access to a color printer/MFP unless it was driving sales.
It’s not the cost of the machine you need to worry about...
And did you notice I didn’t write anything about “inkjets” (other than never having owned one)???
Btw, with drivers being the “driving” force behind obsolescence, expect your next printer to last <5 years and let that guide your purchase as well.
Also, there are all-in-one (MFP aka multifunctional products) which are well worth the added couple/few hundred bucks for the added features (scan/copy/etc., including color scan) and use the same cartridges. I would recommend that vs. color any day of the week.