Best Color Laser below $1500 - What do you recommend?

[drwoo123]

I need to buy a nice color laser that can put out about 10,000 pages per month.

I don't need an AIO mostly just strictly a good color printer.

The main issues for me are:

1. Reliability
2. Cost of consumables - ideally low cost OEM - or high quality 3rd party
3. Speed - minimum of say 20 pages per minute

What do you guys recommend? I've searched amazon, cnet, newegg etc. and most of the printers end up having some sort of issue or just not enough reviews.

Any help / experience is highly appreciated.

Thanks in advance

 

[gsaldivar]

10,000 pages per month would be very high volume for any color laser printer at that price point. For that much output, you might consider leasing a color copier and printing all your color directly to the copier. While the cost per page will be high (around $0.10 per page + monthly lease) you have to consider that this cost usually includes all consumables and maintenance.

If you want to stay within that budget, avoid a lease, and keep everything on-site, rather than breaking your budget with a single high end printer, I would suggest dividing your monthly load between at least two "cheap" color laser printers. Your costs would look something like this:

Two Xerox Phaser 6280dn (26/31 ppm) printers:
Initial investment: ($400 x 2 printers) + ($400 x 2 optional 550-sheet paper trays) = $1600
Monthly cost: $200 x 4-5 sets of generic cartridges = $800-1000 or ~$0.08-0.10/page (at 10,000 pages/month)

Either scenario means you really need to look closely at consumables and maintenance costs, as those will be your primary expense - not the initial purchase price of the printer...

Good luck.

 

[Arcanedeath]

I've got an hp 4700DN that is 31 pages per minute and it should meet your requirments you can get one off lease on ebay or similar for cheap and they are bulletproof. My volume isn't as high as yours but I've gotten it to flawlessly print 30k pages in 2 months at one point for a project and while I don't print that much on a monthly basis it will easily handle that kind of volume. toner is around $40 per cartridge from 3rd parties and I've yet to have an issue.

 

[drwoo123]

Which brand of toner are you using as replacements for the 4700DN?

 

[Arcanedeath]

Which brand of toner are you using as replacements for the 4700DN?

Geniune HP suplies that were refilled from an Ebay seller, works like a charm 30k+ prints.

 

[mindless1]

10,000 pages per month would be very high volume for any color laser printer at that price point.

Hardly. Even many $200 color lasers are spec'd for 30K pages/month. Around $400 you can get something spec'd for 50K pages/month or around $800, 100K pages a month. The problem is, if you don't buy a huge/expensive printer you'll end up changing cartridges too often as the cheaper models tend to have sub-5K carts.

No need at all to spend $1500 to merely have 10K page capability and 20 PPM, and in that price range you have to start thinking about where you're going to put it as that class of printer typically can't be carried by one person, arrives on a pallet and needs its own cart (or comes with one).

 

[gsaldivar]

No need at all to spend $1500 to merely have 10K page capability and 20 PPM.

Each Phaser 6280 printer I recommended is only $400. The paper trays are optional. As I mentioned above, the main cost is in the consumables not the equipment itself.

While some printers are "rated" for a high monthly volume, the "recommended" monthly volume is usually a much lower number. While some people may be successful in sustaining output at that level, there is a higher risk of equipment failure in doing that.

In the OP's case, both options are good ones: Either invest in a single nice printer, or two basic printers. In recent years, consumables prices have risen considerably, and overall build quality has decreased.

In light of this, I would lean towards the second option of purchasing two basic printers instead of one nice one. In this scenario, the OP would be able to get all the advantages of the "nice" printer (high PPM speed, high reliability/redundancy) as well as a very low cost of consumables...

 

[Soundmanred]

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[mindless1]

 

[Compman55]

HP 4650DN - Older but bullet proof. Supplies are cheap and its the canon chassis HP was known for. I own this and can tell you it is very reliable. New HP's are play toys..... designed to milk your money on consumables.

Ricoh CP430dn - 1200x1200 dpi, seems like it is specd for massive printing, and frankly the only new printer worth owning. Consumables last for a very long time and cost per page is the lowest in the industry.

Try the folks at printershowcase for some advice. Very good company to deal with in my opinion.