Please Post Reviews Of The Laser Printer You Own!!!

[Nifty]

Friends,

There are some site visitors who who want to supplement their color inkjets with a monochrome laser printer. I'd like to request that if you use a laser printer that you please post the following:

Model:
Pro's:
Con's:
Other:

Please comment on the printer and the cartridges including cost of both.


I'll go first!

Model: HP LaserJet 4 Plus (4+)
Pro's: Workhorse with 20,000 monthly duty cycle. Very reliable, easy to maintain and pretty easy to take apart and repair. Large paper capacity for main feeder and manual feeder. Cartridges are large and lots of remanufactured on the market. Great control panel with LCD.
Con's: Very noisy (compared to newer models) and takes a while to warm up. Very large footprint printer. Always running, even during "power saving mode".
Other:I got this beast from a California State University surplus sale for almost nothing, probably around $20. It was in okay shape, but the rollers needed replacing. I could have done it myself (with a roller assembly kit that was about $40) but opted to have a friend in the repair business do it.

Model: HP Laserjet 6p
Pro's: Smaller footprint than my other HP. Very quiet and quick warmup. When in power saving mode you can't even tell it is on.
Con's: Smaller paper tray and smaller capacity cartridge, not as many options / controls. No LCD display.
Other: I just happened to drive buy a Boy Scout parking lot sale and saw this beauty. They wanted $10 for it I think. I figured it was broken, but couldn't pass up the chance. Glad I didn't because it works perfectly!

Regarding cartridges and refilling, see here: http://www.nifty-stuff.com/laser-toner-cartridge-refill.php

I look forward to reading some of your reviews and comments!

 

[drc023]

I've owned too many HP laser printers to list the model numbers and a Lexmark Optra S 1650 and my current Optra E312. Of the HP's I still have a fourteen year old IIIP which will probably never break. It's completely reliable, has good text quality and is slow as molasses. My overall favorite laser was an HP5000. It was a large format 1200 dpi printer with outstanding grayscale, beautiful text and very fast. Consumable costs on the HP's are low if you get refilled or third party supplies and not horrible even for OEM supplies. The Lexmarks have high consumable costs, but third party refills are a little bit better. The Optra E312 does produce a nice image in both graphics and text and is reasonably fast. OTOH, the printer falls flat on its face in the paper feed area. It's nearly impossible to print more than a few sheets without it picking up 5 or 6 sheets at a time. It requires constant babysitting during most print runs. Granted, it's a top feed printer and those types are supposed to be prone to that problem, but I've never had a multiple feed happen with any of my inexpensive Canon inkjets which are all top feed.

 

[fotofreek]

I've had an hpIIp, hpIIIp and now am using an hp5p that is about 8 - 9 years old and still going strong. Slow, but sure. I use between one and two carts a year and never bothered to go third party as the savings wasn't that great. I especially like the straight paper path for envelope and heavy stock printing. (a rear hatch opens for the paper to come out after printing as opposed to the top deck where the paper, after printing, has to make a 180 degree turn when coming out of the printer.) My old IIIP is in the office of the person who took over my business and it is still functioning after about 14 years of use. I would buy another HP if/when my 5P dies and can't be repaired at a reasonable price. Since I use it for business it isn't a budget problem to step up to the latest HP that would be in the same catagory as the 5P. I don't need it networked and I don't need the second paper cassette, so I would be getting the least expensive printer at this level. I also don't need the more expensive "industrial strength" models that are used in legal offices, etc. I would actually welcome buying a new one as I would like the greater speed.

 

[cliffordwagner]

I have two laser printers:

Brother HL-1240 Monochrome. Got this printer from a customer who was traveling to India for a year or two and I bought it from him for about $30. Retail at the time he purchased it was around $100 (replaced by the 1400 series when I bought it from him).

Pros: Small size. I have been using the same high-capacity toner cartridge for over a year with daily printing of MS-Word documents, invoices, PDF manuals, shipping labels (barcodes come out crisp), etc. It accepts card stock and labels without problem, even half-sheet mailing labels where one side has been used doesn't bother it (as long as you insert the correct end). Great for true black & white printing.

Cons: 98/ME era printer, drivers provided by BROTHER do not work properly, but Microsoft provided drivers (built into XP) work fine. The Brother drivers should enable 400 DPI printing, while the Microsoft provided drivers only allow up to 200 dpi printing. The 1400+ series were designed for XP and work fine. Text info is crisp while Google Maps and other raster-based images come out fuzzy and unreadable. Gradients and bright colors sometimes don't print.

Other: Duplex is not built into driver provided by Microsoft. Printing odd then even trick works fine as long as you get the orientation correct on the second pass (head toward front of tray, and face up). Overall a great basic small-office printer. Cost is low (even new 1400 and beyond printers are in the $100-200 range). Would suggest a newer model to resolve driver issues.



OKI C5150n Color printer. Purchased this one new from PCConnection.com for $400 with free shipping and a $100 mail in rebate (had to remind them to send the check, but I did get it).

Pros: Fast 15-22 PPM with 9 sec to first page (you should see this thing spit out one page after another, printed 1,000 post cards in an afternoon). Great price. Network ready. Easy to set up. Rated 50,000 pages per month (haven't tested this out ... yet). LED technology provides low-cost and high-quality printing. Image quality is comparible to Kinko's prints with about 10% of the cost per copy. The Fuser and Image Drums use a cheap fuse that can be purchased from DigiKey to reset the counter. Toner can be replaced without any tools. Toner is available.

Cons: A bit on the high side per print for monochrome, but great price per page for color. Big, plan to have a space to put this thing. Duplexer and second paper tray each cost as much as the printer. Model has been discontinued at most retailers in favor of the C5200n (now the same price I paid for this one at $399). Option of Hard Drive and Memory upgrade, but I have not found these available at retailers, haven't tried to install either of these with standard PC hardware, but I might (I'll let you know if I do). Initial cartridges do not have a chip to reset page count, and therefore cannot be refilled, one set of new "High-capacity" cartridges must be purchased (you can get a few more copies out of it by opening and closing the top when it says "replace X" as an error).

Other: I know the list of cons is bigger than the pros, but most of those are petty. In all this is a great printer for a small office with a budget. We have printed thousands of pages on the initial "starter" cartridges and I have not yet had to refill them. I would suggest this or a C5200 (slightly better specs than this one). The next printer I would purchase is probably in the thousands of dollars range (tabloid sized paper, duplex, high-speed, etc.) until you get into that price range this is your best bet for a basic color laser. Next closeset HP option in price range is 4 pages per minute color and still more than this one.



I hope that info was helpful to those looking for laser printers.

Clifford Wagner

 

[Nifty]

Thanks Cliff for such great reviews!

 

[irneb]

On the small scale (A4/Letter) the company I work for has the following printers:
HP LaserJet 1160
- pros:
- In use by more than 20 people at once - although you need a server (not Windows Based - otherwise you can share to only 10 people)
- Prints reasonably fast 15-20 ppm, ~15sec warmup.
- Good text quality & halftoning
- Reliability isnt bad, it's been un constant use for the last 3 years, just some jamming (see below)
- 2 trays of 200 pages each
- cons:
- Running Cost!!! We average about 3000 pages / month and have to replace the cartrage fortnightly
- Paper jams are not rare, but also not common, maybe once a day - i.e say ever 150 pages

HP LaserJet 1100
- pros:
- It works, never stops (well it needs to see speed con below)
- Running cost / page cheaper than the 1160 (also per month - but that's a different reason)
- cons:
- Slow, molasses will beat it silly. Recomended quantity will never be reached (15000ppm max quoted) prints about 2 pages a minute (if your'e lucky), no warmup before job - this may be because each page requires warmup / calculation. You may have to come back tomorrow to collect your prints.
- Not such good quality as the 1160

Xerox WorkCentre M15i multifunction
Used mainly as fax, some copying if the others (see below) are in use. This is connected directly to my pc with USB 1.1 - kindof slow. I use it mainly for quick text prints - don't recomend for bulk and / or quality work.
- pros:
- Easy to use
- Comes with document feeder, so you don't have to place each page to be faxed / copied
- Colour Scanner interface (max 600dpi) - not good quality though, but good enough for OCR
- cons:
- Slow ... well it will still beat the HP 1100 in a race, I've found about 5 to 8 ppm (30sec warmup)
- Scanning - VERY SLOW, and can't use document feeder while scanning
- Can't print-to-fax

See next post for larger printers.

 

[irneb]

The larger scale printers are our PhotoCopiers, of which 2 are used as printers as well, and one as a scaner. We're looking around to see if we can get a set of replacement Photo-Copiers / Scanner / Fax / Print machines as the service contracts on the Xerox's expire, and we're only renting the Nasua's. Been looking at the Kyoceras, does anyone know about these?

Xerox WorkCentre Pro 423
- pros:
- Feeder, stacker, stapler
- Up to A3 / 17x11" copy / feeder
- We don't have the print / fax / scan interface, but can be added
- Fast, 20-30 ppm, 8sec warmup
- 4 paper trays, 500, 500, 1000, 1000 (each can hold any of supported paper sizes, and automatically selects closest size)
- cons:
- Very expensive to buy, about average on toner
- Only B/W

Nasua Africio 2022 B/W
- pros:
- Duplexing
- Up to A3 / 17x11" print / copy / scan / feeder
- Fast, 20-30 ppm, warmup ~5sec
- Good quality, crisp text - smooth halftoning
- Connected on LAN - you don't need server & connection speed VERY FAST
- 2 paper trays 1000ea (each can hold any of supported paper sizes, and automatically selects closest size)
- cons:
- Very expensive to buy, about average on toner
- Only B/W

Nasua AF 1224C
- pros:
- Up to A3 / 17x11" print / copy / scan / feeder; A4 / Letter faxing
- Prints colour reasonably
- with copies gives preview on LCD - for cropping & scaling
- Colour Scan to email or folder (on server or your pc), several pages with feeder to TIFF / PDF @ max 1200dpi, 300dpi scans @ 15 A4's / min
- Fast print / copy, 20-30 ppm, warmup ~5sec
- Connected on LAN - you don't need server & connection speed VERY FAST
- Good quality, crisp text - smooth halftoning, colours slightly washed out - prefer using InkJets
- 2 paper trays 500ea (each can hold any of supported paper sizes, and automatically selects closest size)
- Can even fax in colour (if other party has capable machine)
- cons:
- EXTREMELY expensive to buy, about average on black toner, colour isn't used very much

For VERY LARGE scale printing (up to A0 / 42" wide) we use Oc plan plotters. Not many would be using these - they're kindof out of reach for the average Joe-Soap. These are laser based B/W - when doing large format colour we use InkJet - just because we don't have a small country's GDP as pocket money.

The old: Oce 9400 station - in the process of being mothballed (~12 years old)
- pros:
- Not to expensive (considering its size and class) it cost about $9000 then. Don't know the price know as it's not made anymore.
- Has roller scanner (also for 42" wide) - can scan to copy / ftp / folder in TIFF, only B/W though - no gray
- Was in dayly use - printing about 20 A0's per day
- Reasonable speed A0 in about 1min. If using raster driver, takes 20sec to 2 min to calculate on PC - see below for vector
- Never had a paper jam, or other prob - untill a year ago when we needed a replacement part (which doesn't exist)
- When printing to vector - turns page automatically to save paper from roll.
- Has 4 roll holders (~100m / 330 feet long) can select automatically depending on width - to save paper
- cons:
- You need to feed each page seperately into the scanner
- Grainy appearance to prints - not very crisp
- Halftoning does not exist on this printer - it's eighter black or not - unless you make a pattern of dots.
- When using its vector based drivers (i.e. HPGL lines - not HPRTL pixels) it can take up to 30min to calculate on the printer, converting the
lines to "pixels", your pc is free after 5 sec - see raster driver above.
- If printing in vector, and complex set of lines, some lines may not be printed (32MB mem could be upgraded to 128),
otherwise just print to raster.
- When printing raster you need to set which orientation to print, otherwise if you print an A1 you may find a 850x850mm piece with some
blank space on the side.
- You can't find any parts for it, and it's starting to wear out.

The not-so old: Oc TDS600 (~5 years)
- pros:
- Has roller scanner (also for 42" wide) - can scan to copy / ftp / folder in TIFF or PDF and can combine several pages into 1 file, no colour
- Is in dayly use - printing about 25xA0's per day, sometimes as much as 300 if there's a deadline
- Very ... no UNreasonably fast speed: A0 in 20sec (i.e 48xA4s / min), calculates on RIP server upto to 1min (for HPGL, PDF & PS),
you have to see it to believe: it looks like a sossage machine pumping out paper.
- Prints various formats directly: HPGL, HPGL2 (smaller file faster calc), HPRTL, TIFF, PDF, PS
- Has 4 roll holders (~100m / 330 feet long) can select automatically depending on width - to save paper, we use 3xA0 rolls (for A0 & A1) &
1xA2 roll (for A2 & A3) - we don't print A4's on this monster
- Automatically rotates page to save paper, no matter what format you sent it in
- Quality reasonably crisp & even halftoning
- Service from Oc good - they come in a day at most for on site servise - this costs though.
- cons:
- Very expensive - Cost us $28000 (yes that's 3 zeros), we were quoted on an upgrade rip server for $4300.
Oc does not allow you to use 3rd party rip servers, we've tried - it doesn't work - they've got some wierd interface.
- You need to feed each page seperately into the scanner
- Jams sometimes, about once or twice a month, but considering the volume this isn't bad.
- Toner pickup is not perfect, as toner holder has to be more than 1/4 full, otherwise it won't print. Also be carefull when filling toner, you may
find yourself in a cloud of black-dust if you're hasty.
- Have had probs printing from PDF & TIFF - prints come out only halfway then gets cut off, or some lines / images gets lost. Oc says we need
an upgrade to the RIP which is a WinNT 4.0 server & their new software only runs on XP - see cost above. Workaround was to import and
convert to HPRTL before printing.

 

[Nifty]

irneb, great reviews and great diversity! Thanks for putting so much time / effort into this.

 

[Glenn]

Model: Konica Minolta magicolor 2530DL
http://printer.konicaminolta.com/products/color/mc2530DL/index.asp

Pro's: Price was good. Color prints were unbelievable for the price. Photos rival those printed on my old Epson CX6600, and fine for my use but I'm not a pro.

Con's: Documentation provided with the printer is terrible to nonexistent. The setup process had me pretty aggravated but the first photo printed got me in a better state of mind.

Other: I've used inkjets for years, mainly Epson, but had continuous problems with printhead clogging because of my infrequent use of the printers. After reading some reviews of some of the newer color lasers I realized that this may be an option, and I found this one at Sam's Club for $249. Back home to search for reviews on the web and couldn't find a thing... then discovered that this model was introduced in September 06. Bought it anyway, because the price was WAY below anything I could find on-line for a change. Replacement warranty is one year; an additional year warranty at Sam's Club was about $14, which I bought because of my Epson dying just beyond warranty expiration. At present I'm very satisfied, but if problems develop I'll post back. This will be a great option for many home users who experience print head problems with the inkjets due to infrequent use.

Replacement toner cartridge kit high capacity, is $349 approx 4500 prints @ 5% coverage. Individual cartridges are available.
http://printer.konicaminolta.com/products/color/mc2530DL/supplies.asp