Are laser printers a good investment?

[Philippine Mango]

I have an inkjet printer at home and while it does print well, It's really a pain in the ass to have to replace the ink so often, so I was wondering if a laser jet printer would be a better investment or not. Is it like diesel trucks and gas trucks? Diesel trucks cost more initally but the fuel is cheaper and engines last longer while it's the reverse for gas trucks?

 

[wisdomtooth]

HELL, YES.

Most of the time, all we need to print is in black and white. Laser printers are ideal for this, and FAR quicker than inkjets. Toner for lasers also last longer than inkjet ink.

I have been using an Epson Actionlaser 1500 since 1992. Best damn investment I've ever made.

 

[n7]

Absolutely.

If all you are doing is text & the like in black & white...laser is by far the cheapest way to go.

I would rather buy a $300 laser than a $100 inkjet due to the low cost of toner

 

[bendixG15]

If you are printing mostly text in black,
Then ...Go...Laser....Go.....

 

[xsilver]

short answer = yes
long answer = yes

 

[Philippine Mango]

Well what if you want to print in color? I have a 4K laser printer (It was from the office) and was wondering if I should print more stuff on it or not, how much is toner anyways? Color toner?

 

[jackschmittusa]

Even a $100us laser will print text as well as, or better, than most any inkjet. Lasers print faster than inkjets. Cost of toner per page is far less than ink. Most lasers print quite well on economy paper and inkjets do not. Lasers can print very long text documents readily, while the printheads on inkjets sometimes overheat doing the same thing. Lasers will outlast inkjets, usually by a large margin. Most inexpensive lasers ship with a "starter cartridge" that will be be good for 2-3k pages of text. Replacement cartridges will last much longer. If you print very long documents or use greyscale images it might benefit you to add a stick of memory to the printer (assuming it is upgradable). There are only benefits using a laser for text printing and no drawbacks. The most basic lasers can be found for about $100us, and go up in price from there as you add features and capabilities such as: higher speed, higher print resolution, network ready, more ram installed (even hard drives in some high end models), multiple paper trays, duty cycle in the 10s of thousands per month, color, etc..

 

[JediJeb]

I would go laser all the way for printing text. But I wouldnt get a cheap one. My mother got one of the cheapest one from Lexmark and only gets a few hundred pages on a $50 cartridge, while at work our HP Laserjet 4 gets usually 10,000 pages on a $90 cartridge. The cheap Laser printers are like the inkjet, they make up the difference by selling you the toner. Double the price and you will probably make up for it in your first couple toner purchases.

 

[Philippine Mango]

I'm assuming it's a bad idea to print things that are in color with a laser printer no? I heard about that printers do this marking thing with a blue laser every time you print and was wondering if laser printers do that crap as well.

 

[Wahsapa]

who makes good laser printers?

 

[Tostada]

Originally posted by: JediJeb
I would go laser all the way for printing text. But I wouldnt get a cheap one. My mother got one of the cheapest one from Lexmark and only gets a few hundred pages on a $50 cartridge, while at work our HP Laserjet 4 gets usually 10,000 pages on a $90 cartridge. The cheap Laser printers are like the inkjet, they make up the difference by selling you the toner. Double the price and you will probably make up for it in your first couple toner purchases.

I haven't heard of any laser printers that only get a couple hundred pages. A lot of them come with small amounts of toner, though, so you have to buy your 1st cartridge pretty soon.

 

[Megatomic]

I've had my HP LaserJet 6L since 1999. Since I got it, I've changed the toner cartridge out once (probably due another soon) and I've never had to do any other maintenance other than install the roller mod HP mailed me for free and clean it up. It's the best damn printer I've ever had at home. :beer:

 

[BFG10K]

I've had my Brother HL-1430 laserjet for around a year and I'm still using the original cartridge it came with. It's very fast, holds an entire ream of paper and it's far better than any inkjet I've used.

 

[vegetation]

Definitely. In addition to being cheaper per page with toner, lasers look better for text overall and you can use the cheapest recycled-pulp paper out there yet it still looks sharp. Not the case for an inkjet.

 

[montag451]

just one thing - do you ever print colour, or need to print photos etc?

If not, then laser is gonna be the best.
if yes, then you are gonna need to fork out a lorra dosh to get a good colour laser just for general use [and i don't think that you will be able to print photos]

 

[Tostada]

Even if you need color, color lasers are getting much cheaper. Over Thanksgiving, Newegg had the Samsung color laser for $360 with with free shipping (and it was the nicer model, the one that comes with full toner).

But in general, if you have the desk space, you might as well just have a B&W laser and an ink jet. Speaking of ink which, my old HP ink jet finally died and I got the $90 Epson that prints on CDs/DVDs. It kicks ass.

 

[corkyg]

I'm in Tostada's camp - have both laser (H-P 4000) and inkjet. I rarely use the inkjet - color is not often mandatory. Laser copies are cheaper and faster - especially when you need many.

But - technically, not computer hardware or peripherals are good investments. They all depreciate rather rapidly. Look for good value.

 

[imported_FishTaco]

If you get a laser printer, get one with a paper tray feed, not the top loading kind. In my experience, top loaders always end up jamming after heavy use.

 

[dullard]

Lasers are great for just about everything. Then have a crappy cheap inkjet on hand for the occasional color that happens to be needed. Cost per page saves bigtime in the longrun for the laser.

If you need heavy color printing things change. Color lasers are great for things like Excel graphs, color headings in a Word document, etc. And color lasers are beginning to enter the <$500 price range. However, for printing full color photos, inkjets are far superior to even the most expensive color lasers. Sure the cost per page is far more for the inkjet, but lasers still have a problem with printing grainy looking color photos.

Originally posted by: JediJeb
My mother got one of the cheapest one from Lexmark and only gets a few hundred pages on a $50 cartridge.

That sounds like a sign that your mom doesn't pull out the ribbon covering the toner. You can easilly get ~100-200 pages from the toner dust that leaks beyond this ribbon. But you have to pull the ribbon to get the rest (it should be done while installing the tonor). Sadly, I have experience with this. At the univeristy office, toner wasn't lasting like it should until I discovered whomever was installing the toner wasn't pulling those out.

I just did a very quick search for Lexmark Toner and every result I saw gave 2000 or 3000 page limit toner. I don't think anyone makes toner for less than 2000 pages.

 

[BatmanNate]

All other things aside, the duty cycle alone of any decent laser printer will put to shame the best that inkjets have to offer.

 

[ssanches]

If what you mostly do is print in black & white, then a laser printer really suits your needs...

Advantages of a laser:
-High duty cycle
-High toner capacity
-Economical when printing black and white
-excellent text output even on ordinary paper, unlike inkjets that have minor smudging
-low maintenance
-very quick for text printouts. my samsung ML-1710 prints @16ppm A4 high quality text!!

Disadvantages:
-high power consumption (over 250W when operational!)
-relatively poor monochrome graphics output
-sometimes can't handle certain types of fancy paper; like some fancy greeting cards, etc

All in all, you need decide what you want. I switched from inkjet to laser and couldn't be happier!

 

[Zepper]

On my ink jet (Canon iP3000), a three dollar shipped (compatible) black ink tank should last me about four months (the OEM one did). Perhaps the printer you have is the problem...
.bh.

 

[ProviaFan]

Lasers are the best for B&W printing, but if you want the occasional photo, you'll need a color inkjet also. While I use and would normally recommend Epson, if you don't use them regularly the print heads tend to clog. Thus, you may be better off with an HP that has the print heads integrated into the cartridge, so that they are replaced each time you change the ink.