I am looking to purchase a laser printer for under $300. I have checked out many web sites and reviews but it appears that the cheaper ones all have problems like paper curl, poor manual feed, noisy, can't do envelopes, not good for high volume, poor installation software, high power consumption, etc. I would appreciate some input from anyone who has had good experiences and results for a printer at the above price level. If there is no such printer I would like to know that as well. I am using Windows XP Home editon OS.
I have a Brother 1440 that I love. I paid $250 for two years ago. They can still be found for around $125.00 . You can easily add a 32meg ram chip from a 486 machine.
Consumer Reports compared it to the HP1200 that cost around $400. This is the printer I was going to get till I read the article.
If you're happy and you know it......it's your meds.
Someone gave me a new Brother 1440 with-out the imaging unit & toner cartridge. The amount I paid for the higher-volume replacements were almost as much as the entire printer. The cost per page isn't too bad, everything concidered. No probems yet & pretty good quality.
Steve R Jones- Can you tell me more about upgrading the memory? I recently printed some high-res pix & some pages were chopped off. When I lowered print res, all printed. Thanks
I have a couple of hp 1012 (or similar class, can't recall) at the office. Cost less than $200 each. Never has a problem w/ them. Great for small volume, small office situation.
Originally Posted by Brian Sheridan
I have checked out many web sites and reviews but it appears that the cheaper ones all have problems like paper curl, poor manual feed, noisy, can't do envelopes, not good for high volume, poor installation software, high power consumption, etc.
But of course you do get what you pay for ... can't expect them to work like the $1000 ones.
Try this
Brother HL 5040 Printer
The HL-5040 laser printer is the ideal printer for your office at work or your office at home. Succeeding the award-winning HL-1440, it offers fast print speed, PCL 6 emulation, graphics quality print resolution, convenient paper handling, and the option to add memory, a 2nd lower paper tray and network connectivity. Building on a tradition of excellent...Read More
Key Features: B/W - laser - Legal (8.5 in x 14 in), A4 (8.25 in x 11.7 in) - 2400 dpi x 600 dpi - 17 ppm - Parallel, Hi-Speed USB
Manufacturer Part Number: HL5040
Used for client tax prep. Very good. 2nd paper tray great for envelopes
The Samsung 1740 is well under $100 after a $60 rebate (about $70 final cost depending on where you buy it). Probably not as well made as the Brother but you can buy 2 Samsungs for little more than the cost of one Brother.
I've used the previous Samsung model (1710) for about 2 years now with no problems. It has a back door that produces a straight-through paper path for heavy card stock. It also has a toner save mode that uses about one third less toner. The print is lighter but ok for my purposes.
The Brother and Samsung, like most lasers, take about 30 seconds to warm up. HP has instant-on for most (all?) of their printers. For a typical print job (5 or fewer prints) an HP printer will warm up, complete printing and shut down before other brands warm up. That may or may not be important to you. Check out the HP 1320, usually $400 but with a $100 rebate is in your price range. I haven't used it but its probably what I would buy if I was in the market for a small business laser.
Be aware that as a general rule of thumb, the lower the initial purchase cost of a printer, the higher the running costs tend to be. If you are planning on printing lots of pages you should certainly bear the running costs in mind, as you can end up paying a lot more in the long run.
Kyocera Mita printers have particularly low running costs and an excellent reputation, it's probably the brand I will go for when I replace my laser printer.
Paper handling/jamming tends to be worse in printers that rely on gravity to feed (or assist) the paper into the printer. These are easily identified by the fact that the input paper stacks on the top in a not quite vertical postion. Printers that use pullout paper trays use pinch rollers to feed the paper up and in, creating better control. However, in time the pinch rollers will dry out and not grip as well.
Envelope printing in lasers has always been problematic, as the fuser roller heat and moisture in the paper tend to cause the envelopes to seal, and the loose folding of the envelopes can lead to wrinkles. The straighter the paper path, the less likely you are to encounter the wrinkling. Self-sealing, on the other hand, can only be solved through careful storage of the envelopes.
As a very general rule, the cheaper the printer, the smaller the toner cartridge, and therefore the cost per page goes up. Look at expected pages per toner cartridge and the cartridge replacement cost. Availability of replacement cartridges is also important -- you can by HP cartridges almost anywhere that sells office equipment, and that means price competition.
Lastly, some of the low-end printers rely on the computer's processor to create the page data, rather than incorporating a full processor in the printer. These generally must be attached to a computer running Windows, and may affect your usage of the computer (depending on the computer's capabilities and what you're trying to run).
As an addendum to prouton and SuperSparks' posts, when calculating running costs, include drums, fusers, and other consumables. Depending on model, these can add a lot to the per-print cost.