Are laser printers worth it?

[amnesiac]

The 1440 is awesome. I own three. 🙂

- Fast
- Quiet
- Reliable
- High fuser strength (prints fine on heavier stock without smearing)
- Cheap toner

The perfect SOHO/Personal printer in my opinion

 

[aircooled]

I'm in the market for a new printer also and considering laser myself. I rarely print in color and hate replacing inkjet cartridges all the damn time!

 

[Lager]

I heard Brother HL-1440 goes bad after couple years.

 

[rgwalt]

Staples has a good buy on the Minolta 1250W and 1350W this week. You can get either of them for $100 after coupon (code provided by Staples) and $70 rebate. The nice thing about these units is that they offer both USB and Parallel connections.

R

 

[flot]

If all you need to print is black and white, laser is definitely the way to go.

I have that lexmark (e210?) that everybody bought as a hot deal like two years ago.. I thinkI paid about $100 for it... all I ever print out is things like mapquest driving directions or 5-10 page documents every so often... the nice thing is, I only power it on about once a week, but it just takes ~15 seconds to warm up and then it cranks out pages at 12ppm and I'm done.

Back when I used an inkjet the damn thing would always be clogging up or ink drying out, or it'd need to be cleaned, it would take forever to print, etc, etc, etc. I've never even changed the toner cart in this laser printer, it is fast as hell, and very dependable. Toner *is* expensive, at about $70 (for this model) for a replacement cartridge, but it will easily last 4 times as long as an ink cart, and give consistantly good results.

If you have a choice, and you print less than ~50 pages a week, I'd recommend buying a laser where the paper tray is integrated into the printer and it holds the paper inside, rather than one where you have the paper sticking out the top/back. They usually take up a little less room that way and if you use it infrequently like I do, that will reduce paper curl etc and is just generally a nice feature to have. Also, don't rule out an older used laser - espeically the OLDER HP models, those things last freakin forever. I had a "personal" HP laserjet that had printed something like 50,000 pages, and I have seen more than a few Laserjet 4si printers (those are the big ones) that had more than 700,000 pages on their counters.

 

[Paulson]

I bought a used HP Laserjet 4 plus w/jetdirect for $70 shipped... best damn investment I made. Only had a 3500 page count (barely looked used)

I print off all my business invoices and what not on it.

Laser is the way to go if that's all your printing is in black an white. I have a $277 officejet hp printer for color... but yeah, laser printers are the way to go!

 

[dquan97]

After a year or two, my Brother 1440 started printing a gray shadow on every page. Consulted the Brother website and it advised me to get a new toner cartridge - $50.

 

[Kelvrick]

Originally posted by: dquan97
After a year or two, my Brother 1440 started printing a gray shadow on every page. Consulted the Brother website and it advised me to get a new toner cartridge - $50.

Just get a new printer, they'll cost a little more then the cartridge. Mine did that after a month or two, called up brother and they shipped me the cartridge with double capacity.

 

[0roo0roo]

crisp output on sh*t paper, near silent. cheap per page. inkjet looks shoddy even on premium paper for text.

 

[vegetation]

Do NOT buy the Brother 1440 or any other Brother laser that uses the TN430 and DR400 drum unit. These toner and drum catridges are a major POS. Breaking down far too early in its life cycle; not uncommon for your toner cartridge to start leaking at under 1k pages printed and your drum to cr@p out at 3k (supposedly rated for 20k). Any Brother owner will sooner or later find out their cost per page calculation actually exceeds an inkjet!

 

[virtuamike]

Laser printers are the best. Much cheaper per page than inkjet, faster, plus my cats like keeping themselves warm by sleeping on it.

 

[dighn]

Printing cost is cheaper, and the speed is frigging fast! It just rolls out page after page, so fast it's almost fun to print 😀 Quality wise though I can't tell too much difference between my Samsung ML1710 and my old cheapo Lexmark Z12.

 

[dquan97]

Originally posted by: Kelvrick

Originally posted by: dquan97
After a year or two, my Brother 1440 started printing a gray shadow on every page. Consulted the Brother website and it advised me to get a new toner cartridge - $50.

Just get a new printer, they'll cost a little more then the cartridge. Mine did that after a month or two, called up brother and they shipped me the cartridge with double capacity.

thanks for the tip...I'll give them a call. What did they ask you?

 

[Kelvrick]

Originally posted by: dquan97

Originally posted by: Kelvrick

Originally posted by: dquan97
After a year or two, my Brother 1440 started printing a gray shadow on every page. Consulted the Brother website and it advised me to get a new toner cartridge - $50.

Just get a new printer, they'll cost a little more then the cartridge. Mine did that after a month or two, called up brother and they shipped me the cartridge with double capacity.

thanks for the tip...I'll give them a call. What did they ask you?

Asked me when I bought it, where I bought it from and basically the problem. I forgot all that crap except I got it from Office Depot (which are where all the deals are) and then gave them the serial number.

 

[Lager]

Wow, the Minolta printer was too big and I didn't like it.

I got a Samsung ML-1710 instead. Much smaller and cheap toner.