What's a good printer for minimal usage ?

[kaz911]

my favourites are Brother Laser MFC's. Silent when not running and drivers are not full of junk (just a little bit of junk not a massive pile of sh*t like HP)

The trick with HP printers is to scroll down and download the drivers only. Their software is a pile of junk indeed.

yes but with the basic HP driver -  you don't get scanner drivers or SW. With Brother you get it all and it is not full of crap - and it just works.

I have a very cheap Brother MFC in our vacation home - but that is an inkjet. But I solved the issues with inks drying - by keeping it turned off - and turning it on once a week as it goes through a cleaning cycle when turned on. So at least it has worked until now.

[themadhippy]

In my experience an inkjet just doesn't work for incidental printing. Been there, done that. Heads get clogged and/or ink dries out.

Wot he said. A replacement genuine  cartridge works for my printer  out at £0.027 a page,even if a tank inkjet works out cheaper per page for the ink you need to factor in the 20 new printers id also  need to buy to produce the same amount of print outs in the same sort of timescale

[paulca]

At least at the level I bought (£230 Full Colour laser).  The toners are 5,000 pages and the black 10,000.

Unlike inkjets where a FULL cartridge is good for about 200-300 pages if you are lucky.  The 1/4 full "intro" cartridge in the printer when you buy it is good for sod all too.

Lexmark are prime examples, the printer + intro ink is £35.  The full set of cartridges is £135.

The thing is... aim just high enough to be buying "SOHO Office printers".  That market WILL NOT and DO NOT accept that inkjet ink subsription non-sense.  They just won't.  Not when it has to print day in, day out without breaking down, ideally.

[nctnico]

my favourites are Brother Laser MFC's. Silent when not running and drivers are not full of junk (just a little bit of junk not a massive pile of sh*t like HP)

The trick with HP printers is to scroll down and download the drivers only. Their software is a pile of junk indeed.

yes but with the basic HP driver -  you don't get scanner drivers or SW. With Brother you get it all and it is not full of crap - and it just works.

Just get a seperate scanner. Works much better. Having a scanner + printer is nice if you need a copy machine. Scanners are so cheap it just isn't worth bothering with the software. I'm using Linux where scanners & printers work right out of the box anyway.

[tooki]

I doubt that. I always buy the largest B&W toner cartridge that fits the printer and it takes me years before it is empty.

You doubt that laser could be more expensive than inkjet? Don’t be so sure! The toner cartridges for the cheapest black and white lasers are very expensive. For example, for HP’s entry level models, that’s $45 for just 950 pages. There are many cartridge inkjets with ink cheaper than that (not entry level, but not expensive, either), and ink tank printers are orders of magnitude cheaper to run.

With color it gets worse: $50 for 700 pages for HP’s entry level. Per color.

(And just to make sure you can’t call me out: I am NOT saying that entry level lasers cost more to run than ALL inkjet printers. That is not true, some inkjets use crazy expensive ink. But it’s also incorrect to think that ALL laser printers are cheaper to run than inkjets!)

Now look at, say, a $400 color multifunction. With laser (looking at a Xerox for example), high capacity toner is $70 per color, for 2500 pages (3000 for black). For $400, you get a nicely equipped Epson ink tank inkjet that uses ink that costs $10 per bottle, and lasts for 4500 pages black, 7500 pages color.

When I said you could waste HALF the ink on head cleaning and still come out cheaper, I wasn’t exaggerating even a tiny bit. Heck, you could waste 90% of the ink on cleaning and it would still be less than half the price per page than the entry level laser!

But you don’t even need to choose an ink tank to find inkjets that are cheaper to run than the basic lasers. You could also look at, say, a $250 HP cartridge printer, and discover that the high-capacity cartridges are $35 for 1600 pages (color) and $60 for 3000 pages (black).

I’m in the market for a new printer, so I’ve been checking things out, and it’s absolutely shocking how expensive the supplies for cheap lasers are.

But as I said already more than once: for someone who prints very little, and very sporadically, that can still be the right choice, since you won’t waste toner on head cleaning.

[james_s]

I just think it’s important to remind people that the toner for cheap laser printers is very, very, very expensive, frequently more expensive than inkjet ink. So while they’re great for people who truly print next to nothing, with large gaps of time between print jobs, it only takes a few hundred pages of printouts to make it cheaper, long term, to get an ink tank inkjet. Their ink is so cheap that even if you waste fully half of it on head cleaning, you’ve still spent practically nothing on ink.

Maybe you can point to an example but I haven't encountered that. The cartridges are good for hundreds or even thousands of pages and aftermarket cartridges that work just fine are available for every laser printer I've ever had. If you want OEM, they can usually be found on ebay from people/companies that have leftover cartridges from a printer they no longer have for one reason or another. My current printer is still on the original starter cartridges that came in it when I bought it at least 4 years ago, it's been complaining for a couple of years that one is critically low but it keeps printing just fine.

I'm amazed you have had such good luck with inkjets. I lived with them for years and have come to absolutely hate them. The only thing I can think of where an inkjet is marginally superior is color photos and that's only if you use special expensive photo paper. My laser printer does a nice job with photos on ordinary paper, they don't fade or smudge, they don't run if they get damp and they're good enough that in a framed 6x4" you'd never notice it wasn't from a photo lab without picking it up and inspecting it closely. Every inkjet I owned was clogged practically every time I went to use it. I'd buy a set of expensive new cartridges, print a few pages and then next time I went to use it there would be missing lines. Cleaning cycle after cleaning cycle wasting more of my expensive ink than got on the paper, older printouts exposed to humidity would get blurry and fade over time, a droplet of sweat on a page makes a big smear. Junk. I don't want an inkjet even if it's free, I'm totally over them.

[tooki]

At least at the level I bought (£230 Full Colour laser).  The toners are 5,000 pages and the black 10,000.

What model, if I may ask?

And what does that toner cost? As I said in another reply, I’ve been shopping around for a new printer, and color laser supplies have shocked me with how expensive they are.

For example, for a $500 color laser multifunction from HP, the XL toner is $200 per color, for 6000 pages ($160 for 7500pp black). So yeah, the yield is high, but the cost is enormous. For $500 you get an ink tank inkjet with ink that costs literally $15 per color for that yield.

Unlike inkjets where a FULL cartridge is good for about 200-300 pages if you are lucky.  The 1/4 full "intro" cartridge in the printer when you buy it is good for sod all too.

Only on the very cheapest entry level printers. Spend a bit more up front and the cartridge sizes go up (while the cartridge prices don’t).

And lasers are just as bad about including tiny “starter” cartridges. (In fact, they may be worse.)

Lexmark are prime examples, the printer + intro ink is £35.  The full set of cartridges is £135.

Lexmark exited the inkjet market a full decade ago. Completely irrelevant.

And even if it weren’t: how’s that any better than a $500 laser printer where the full set of toner costs $850? (I’d argue it’s even worse, since at least with the $50 inkjet you’ve spent practically nothing up front.)

The thing is... aim just high enough to be buying "SOHO Office printers".  That market WILL NOT and DO NOT accept that inkjet ink subsription non-sense.  They just won't.  Not when it has to print day in, day out without breaking down, ideally.

The ink and toner subscriptions apparently make the economic sense in some situations, especially photo printing. Not that subscriptions and robustness have anything whatsoever to do with each other.

But regardless, you can’t expect robustness from a $50 inkjet or a $100 laser. You can, however, expect it from a $500 inkjet, and those printers deliver it, while giving you print costs that even the most expensive laser printers (which the very cheapest page costs) can’t even dream of.

[james_s]

You doubt that laser could be more expensive than inkjet? Don’t be so sure! The toner cartridges for the cheapest black and white lasers are very expensive. For example, for HP’s entry level models, that’s $45 for just 950 pages. There are many cartridge inkjets with ink cheaper than that (not entry level, but not expensive, either), and ink tank printers are orders of magnitude cheaper to run.

With color it gets worse: $50 for 700 pages for HP’s entry level. Per color.

Wait, $45 for almost 1,000 pages is your example of "very expensive"?  That's dirt cheap, 1,000 pages is *years* of printing for me so $50 is absolutely negligible, I was spending that much on inkjet cartridges that I was lucky to get 30 pages out of before they dried up. Even the color cost is not that bad, you only use it when you print in color and you can replace them individually, my black cartridge has been saying it's empty for a couple years now and my color cartridges are 50, 50 and 40% currently. I just checked and the total on this printer is 780 pages since I bought it 4-5 years ago. Maybe if you print color photosin high volume a tank inkjet could be cheaper, but I only know one person that prints a lot due to his and his wife's home business and he went through multiple big inkjets and went back to laser once he was no longer printing DVD jackets for a friend's company. I remember he used to have to tear it all apart to get to the waste ink sponge to replace that because it would get saturated and start dripping ink on the shelf.

[nctnico]

I doubt that. I always buy the largest B&W toner cartridge that fits the printer and it takes me years before it is empty.

You doubt that laser could be more expensive than inkjet? Don’t be so sure! The toner cartridges for the cheapest black and white lasers are very expensive. For example, for HP’s entry level models, that’s $45 for just 950 pages. There are many cartridge inkjets with ink cheaper than that (not entry level, but not expensive, either), and ink tank printers are orders of magnitude cheaper to run.

I think you forgot to add a 0 in there. I recently paid 121 euro for an original cartridge for my HP printer. HP says it is good for 6300 pages but from experience I know it is more like 7000 pages or more. That is way cheaper than your 4.5 cents per page. The aftermarket cartridges with even higher printing capacity cost half of the original HP cartridge.

[tooki]

Maybe you can point to an example but I haven't encountered that. The cartridges are good for hundreds or even thousands of pages

Go look at the printer manufacturers right now and look. I’m not making it up, I’m not exaggerating.

In the reply above, the $500 HP I’m referring to is the M479dw, whose set of toner is nearly $800.

The basic black and white is whatever the entry level HP is. Low 100-series.

and aftermarket cartridges that work just fine are available for every laser printer I've ever had.

I’ve not been impressed by the aftermarket toner various workplaces have used. Output was never as good as original.

If you want OEM, they can usually be found on ebay from people/companies that have leftover cartridges from a printer they no longer have for one reason or another.

That applies equally to inkjets. That’s how I have been running my current 15-year-old Canon inkjet for peanuts: people literally give away their old spare ink. (Canon inks don’t have expiration dates.)

I'm amazed you have had such good luck with inkjets.

1. Avoiding Epson.
2. Buying high end.

Most people’s experience with inkjets is with $50-100 junk. You get a much, much better experience with a $300 printer.

(Salesmen nowadays tell me Epsons don’t suffer from the severe clogging older models did. Not sure if I’m convinced.)

[themadhippy]

And lasers are just as bad about including tiny “starter” cartridges. (In fact, they may be worse.)

wouldn't call 1000 pages tiny ,yea its 40% of a new  cartridge,but 7 years on  the black tonner is still at 6 bars out of 10   cyan yellow and magenta at 8 out of 10.

[james_s]

The inkjet printers I had were HP and Epson, they were decent midrange stuff at the time.

Then I had a used Xerox 6100 color laser that I paid $40 for, I used that nearly 15 years before it was having too many issues. Replaced it with the HP M254dw I have now which I absolutely love. It was under $300, prints amazing quality, text superior to inkjet and photos nearly as good, and they're waterproof and stable so that wins for me every time. If I need *really* top notch photos I can send out for them.

It does duplex printing which no inkjet I ever owned could do, I use that feature frequently. The toner is waterproof so I use it to print waterslide decals for models, I use it for toner transfer PCB etching albeit not very often anymore due to the extremely low cost of sending out for PCBs. It will print on the nice thin laser paper rather than needing the thick inkjet stuff which is nice when printing a lot of pages. I'm still on the original cartridges that came in it and it has performed flawlessly so I couldn't be happier. Just the peace of mind of knowing I can let it sit for 6 months and when I fire off a page to print I know it will wake up and print without issues is well worth it to me.

[tooki]

I doubt that. I always buy the largest B&W toner cartridge that fits the printer and it takes me years before it is empty.

You doubt that laser could be more expensive than inkjet? Don’t be so sure! The toner cartridges for the cheapest black and white lasers are very expensive. For example, for HP’s entry level models, that’s $45 for just 950 pages. There are many cartridge inkjets with ink cheaper than that (not entry level, but not expensive, either), and ink tank printers are orders of magnitude cheaper to run.

I think you forgot to add a 0 in there. I recently paid 121 euro for an original cartridge for my HP printer. HP says it is good for 6300 pages but from experience I know it is more like 7000 pages or more. That is way cheaper than your 4.5 cents per page. The aftermarket cartridges with even higher printing capacity cost half of the original HP cartridge.

Nope, 950 pages. For real. Cheap lasers are super expensive to run.

[james_s]

Nope, 950 pages. For real. Cheap lasers are super expensive to run.

You have a strange definition of "super expensive".

950 pages is more than I have printed in ~4 years. You mentioned a cost of $50, that's ~$12 per year, $1 a month, that's not "very expensive", that's nothing.

Maybe we are just looking at totally different use cases here, but I think my use is typical of someone with a printer at home using it for personal use. There may be a sweet spot in the middle of the road where inkjet is cheaper for someone that needs color and doesn't need moisture resistance or long term archiving, but for the typical home user that prints maybe a couple hundred pages a year laser is a winner, and for a business that prints thousands of pages a year laser is a clear winner there too.

[nctnico]

Still a laserjet is way more likely to just work compared to an inkjet. However I strongly suggest not to go for the cheapest laserprinter but buy one for business/office use. I have owned a laserprinter for nearly 30 years now. My current one is the second printer I got. I have tried inkjet because it would be nice to have schematics printed in color but I found out inkjet is just too cumbersome.

[james_s]

Still a laserjet is way more likely to just work compared to an inkjet. However I strongly suggest not to go for the cheapest laserprinter but buy one for business/office use. I have owned a laserprinter for nearly 30 years now. My current one is the second printer I got. I have tried inkjet because it would be nice to have schematics printed in color but I found out inkjet is just too cumbersome.

You don't need an inkjet for color anymore. As I mentioned, my M254dw laserjet prints beautifully in color, even nice glossy color photos on plain paper. It's a bit bulkier than most consumer printers but it's more compact than the old business laser printers and it has a duplex mechanism for double sided printing built in. It has been a fantastic printer, best I've owned, cost less than $300 with free shipping when I bought it.

[tooki]

Nope, 950 pages. For real. Cheap lasers are super expensive to run.

You have a strange definition of "super expensive".

No, a standard definition called “page cost”.

[tooki]

Maybe we are just looking at totally different use cases here, but I think my use is typical of someone with a printer at home using it for personal use.

I have explicitly and repeatedly stated in this thread that despite the enormous page costs, low end laser printers can make sense for people who print very little. How many more times do I need to repeat this?!?

[tooki]

And lasers are just as bad about including tiny “starter” cartridges. (In fact, they may be worse.)

wouldn't call 1000 pages tiny ,yea its 40% of a new  cartridge,but 7 years on  the black tonner is still at 6 bars out of 10   cyan yellow and magenta at 8 out of 10.

Entry level models often come with <500 page starter cartridges.

[paulca]

Like a lot of things they went up in price.  £350+ now.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Brother-HL-L3230CDW-Wireless-Connected-Printing/dp/B07FY1MNC3/

I think these are the OEM toners: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Brother-TN-243CMYK-Original-Yellow-Magenta/dp/B07FXXKFSC/

3rd party sets are around £70.  I note they do say "1000" pages.  Still my originals are at 100% .... though I bet they sit at 100% for ages then suddenly drop to 50%.

[Monkeh]

And lasers are just as bad about including tiny “starter” cartridges. (In fact, they may be worse.)

wouldn't call 1000 pages tiny ,yea its 40% of a new  cartridge,but 7 years on  the black tonner is still at 6 bars out of 10   cyan yellow and magenta at 8 out of 10.

Entry level models often come with <500 page starter cartridges.

Mine came with a 1500 page.. and made it to 600 or so before a firmware update rejected the starter cartridge.

Lexmark were very helpful in shipping me a full 5000 page cartridge next-day for free when I complained. They're probably not so helpful about their defective pick tyres, but those weren't too expensive to buy. Once I found some.

[MarkS]

The Brother HL-L2300D ($120) that I linked to on page one has a $60 toner cartridge that prints up to 2600 pages. That's $0.02 per page. 

[pcprogrammer]

I bought my HP MFP M182n for 199,99 euro. No idea if the cartridges are startup ones, but I will be happy if they do 500 pages. With maybe 30 or even 50 pages a year it will last quite some time.

But yes getting new HP toner for it is expensive and works out to ~17 cents a page if they indeed last 1350 pages and you print full color all the time. I did see a four pack (Black and all the colors) for <60 euros but that page does not list MFP M182n as compatible with so most likely a google fluke. Cheep toner

It would drop the page price 

Edit: A bit of a peeve is all the different models of cartridges these manufacturers develop. Makes finding the matching one a bit of a job.

[nctnico]

Edit: A bit of a peeve is all the different models of cartridges these manufacturers develop. Makes finding the matching one a bit of a job.

How about reading the manual?    And some websites make it simple by allowing to select the printer for which you want to buy a cartridge.

[paulca]

Laser photo printing isn't exactly great compared to an inkjet though.

I have photos printed by InkJet in frames on my wall and holding a similar print from the laser up beside ... there is no comparison.  I tweaked every setting I could, even ran it through various optimizers.

"Good", yes, the same quality as an Inkjet in photo mode on photo quality paper, no comparison.

The photo paper for the laser has to be feed in the alternative feeder as it's thick and shiny and quite often jams the printer or slips and output has stripes/streaks.

The trouble is... one of those A4 photo prints on the HP Inkjet took over an hour and used 10% of a cartridge.

EDIT.  Obviously this does not apply to "all" laser printers.  The local print shop has a laser printer which will layout ink that's so thick you can catch your nail on the edge of it.  Basic colour office printers.... nope.