OT: Colour Printer Recommendations

[robotgreg]

Hi

I'm looking to get a colour printer and just wanted to check on here if anyone's used the one I'm thinking of getting or can recommend a different one. Don't want to spend more than £200 though. Also MUST be a laser and had inkjet before and lose half the cartridgges when it calibrates itself each time you print when not using for a while!

I did buy a HP Colour LaserJet Pro M252dw but had to take back as printed too dark and couldn't get it to print out colours accurately. Thinking of now getting a Samsung SL-C430W Wi-Fi Colour Laser.

Anyone got one of those or got one they're very happy with they can recommend please?

Thanks for any for advice

Greg

 

[Deleted member 2463]

its a standard Samsung scam printer. I nearly bought a similar one but luckily spoke to someone who had it.

Check out the price of the toner! also this model has a limited imaging capacity that even when the printer is fine the software locks out the printer and you have to chuck it and buy a new one! I'm also done with HP with the ridiculous long cycle time and stupid money cartridges. Epson or Brother seems to be the way to go but I've not bitten the bullet yet.

 

[Deleted member 2463]

to get inkjet quality colour print on a laser for the same money I think you will find very challenging also btw.

Neil.

 

[Monkeyboypaul]

Got the EPSON WF8010.


Inkjet, but does everything we need it to and has a decent duty cycle. 1 minor paper jam in just over a year now. Used daily.

 

[Moonraker]

Loving our HP laserjet MFP M477fdw. Not cheap but we took advantage of HP £100 cash back offer they had on this time last year...

 

[Paul]

Loving our HP laserjet MFP M477fdw. Not cheap but we took advantage of HP £100 cash back offer they had on this time last year...

Yes i have that one - Same offer. Not impressed... prints very dull and bland. No life in them at all. Currently have been on with HP support... who try their best, however cant seem to be able to improve it.

Will be back to a colour Lazer for me next time (which wont be far off)...

 

[Moonraker]

Yes i have that one - Same offer. Not impressed... prints very dull and bland. No life in them at all. Currently have been on with HP support... who try their best, however cant seem to be able to improve it.

Will be back to a colour Lazer for me next time (which wont be far off)...

Hmm, sounds very similar to the problem Greg had with his...

 

[robotgreg]

Many thanks for responses.

Think will steer clear of HP given recent experience. Had an Epsom inkjet years ago but binned in end as just ate up cartridges when starting up. So again very hesitant to go down the inkjet route again although appreciate quality may not be quite as good with laser.

Have looked a lot on net for expert reviews which is what prompted me to go for HP, thought Samsung should be OK, (someone did recommend on here a couple of years ago) so still unsure after Neil's comments! HP sounded very good but when I searched for my problem, was not alone but difficult to anticipate such a problem before buying!

Cheers
Greg

 

[ChrisH]

In all honestly £200 is pretty low for a colour laser - if you get something from that end of the market you'll be expecting high running costs and I wouldn't expect amazing results, they'll be 'OK for the money'
For a good colour laser, with more reasonable running costs you'd be looking north of £400 range and it would be a pretty large beast.
(The rule of thumb with printers is you have 2 options, cheap device high running costs, or expensive device and lower running costs - the manufactures make their money either way, it depends on how you like to pay!)

I'd avoid Ricoh, Oki, and Kyocera personally

HP, Lexmark and Xerox tend to be OK, but you're still going to get what you pay for

Have a look at www.printerland.co.uk if you haven't - they have pretty much everything and they're generally pretty much the cheapest around.

But the main question is what are you aiming to do with it? Would a cheap draft printer and a visit to the local copy shop for final production work better than producing your own or do you need to do whatever it is in-house?​

I don't deal with printers directly at work (my interest is in how easy the drivers are to rollout and if they play nice with our platforms) but the above is based on a chat with the guys that actually support the machines

 

[robotgreg]

Understood and thanks for all the info and advice

Nothing too professional, just to print some bits for pinballs eg instruction cards and general use by children. But not using that often as would keep my B&W one for day to day use, hence concerned re inkjet as last one used up half each cartridge just resetting itself ready for printing after being idle for a while!

 

[ChrisH]

Yep they do that - blast ink through the heads to clear themselves.

https://www.printerland.co.uk/A4-Colour-Laser-Printers-C22225.aspx - all of the A4 colours they do ordered by popularity

That Phaser 6600N seems well liked, £220+VAT - they offer a 14 day trial - not sure how that works though.
(I'm not making specific recommendations of either machine or company though - so if you get one and IronMan comes out looking like BananaMan don't blame me!!!)

Also worth noting - the better the printer the less stuff if comes with - you're less likely to have features like AirPrint or Wireless generally on the better ones as they would be heading into environments where features like that wouldn't be wanted, and there will be more features to do with management (SNMP and the like)

The common suffixes for your reference:

D - Duplexer
N - Network Adapter (Wired)
W - Wireless Network Adapter

 

[Wayne J]

Would a cheap draft printer and a visit to the local copy shop for final production work better than producing your own or do you need to do whatever it is in-house?

That would definitely be my recommendation if you are only going to use it infrequently.