Heavy duty printer for very small office

[Vageetasjn]

We got a Brother Mfc-8710 about 6-7 months ago and after probably 15 to 20,000 sheets printed, the text is starting to come out all grainy. Instead of hiring someone to service this $300 printer, I'm looking for suggestions on replacements in the $1,000 range. We only need B&W. We would also need some solution for scanning/copying since the good printers in that price range don't seem to be multi-function.

What do you think? Thanks.

 

[Vageetasjn]

I see this garnering lots of views, but no replies. Let me ask: What business printers do you have experience with? Do you recommend them?

 

[alkemyst]

I have a lot of experience with HP printers going back into the 90's with the HP 3 and 4si esp.

They are solid printers, they have maintenance kits available that allow the end user to service them easily and the consumables are reasonable esp in the aftermarket.

The problem is many printers today at that price point automatically offer color.

For MFP, The HP LaserJet M3035 is in that price range. It's monochrome/B&W only.

 

[heymrdj]

On a printer with that few prints you really shouldn't need to replace anything. I think the maintenance is rollers and image transfer roller at 50K pages, and fuser plus previous at 100K. Still I definitely think of HP more when it comes to good stats. I'll recommend the Laserjet Pro M521dn for a multifunction B&W. It is designed for 2k-6K per month, though I'd definitely stay closer to the 2K. The maintenance kits aren't that bad of a price.

 

[Charlie98]

I really like my Canon MF B&W laser printer (my current one is a MF6550, I don't know what the new incarnation of it is....) although I will admit cartridges are expensive (Canon) or hit-or-miss availability on off-brand (Newegg.) I like it so much, when it came time for a color laser, we got another Canon.

 

[vailr]

Although you don't say where you're located, I'll assume you're talking about buying from somewhere in the U.S.
So: I'd recommend either a Canon or Brother B&W laser printer with wired ethernet connectivity and auto-duplex. One of these can be found on sale for about $50 to $100, either new or refurbished. Toner refills for these from 3rd-party vendors are also inexpensive.
Might even buy a spare printer of the same model, so that if (at some future point in time) a toner cartridge replacement wasn't improving the print quality sufficiently, you could then simply replace the entire printer. Not really cost-effective to support further cost of product maintenance on printers such as these.
Epson V37 or V370 for a decent quality low-cost flatbed scanner.

 

[Insomniator]

HP might be good hardware wise, but driver wise they are miserable. I have a few years of experience with managing HP laserjets on windows print servers... the universal drivers are just terrible to work with.

Might not matter for a small office though.

 

[mfenn]

We got a Brother Mfc-8710 about 6-7 months ago and after probably 15 to 20,000 sheets printed, the text is starting to come out all grainy. Instead of hiring someone to service this $300 printer, I'm looking for suggestions on replacements in the $1,000 range. We only need B&W. We would also need some solution for scanning/copying since the good printers in that price range don't seem to be multi-function.

What do you think? Thanks.

Have you done any sort of maintenance on the printer, changed toner, roller etc? All printers are mechanical products that need maintenance at some point. Buying an expensive one doesn't negate that need.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

We got a Brother Mfc-8710 about 6-7 months ago and after probably 15 to 20,000 sheets printed, the text is starting to come out all grainy. Instead of hiring someone to service this $300 printer, I'm looking for suggestions on replacements in the $1,000 range. We only need B&W. We would also need some solution for scanning/copying since the good printers in that price range don't seem to be multi-function.

What do you think? Thanks.

I think you need to figure out why your printer isn't working - throwing money at a new printer may very well mean killing a more expensive machine later.

The basic print engine in the MFC-8xxx is the same as their HL-5xxx series printers. We used those at my old job and would typically get about 200,000 pages out of them before replacement became necessary.

Grainy text could be a result of a lot of things - somebody might have clicked the "print as image" button in Acrobat. You might have a shot drum (likely after 20k pages). You might have a defective remanufactured/refilled toner cartridge. You could have a stock of damp paper.

Crack open a fresh ream, and print out the internal test and demo pages to verify that it's the printer and not the client, then check your supplies status page. You probably need to replace the drum.

HP printers use a combination drum/toner cartridge. It's more expensive, but you're getting a fresh drum every 5-10k pages, depending on the toner size.

 

[KeithP]

That printer has 1 year warranty, are you going to try and get it repaired? Even the best products will sometimes fail unexpectedly. I wouldn't consider giving up on so quickly.

Also, even if the print quality is no longer acceptable, the scanner and fax functions would still work fine. You might consider getting a second laser printer that uses the same print cartridges to lighten the load on the 8710. Just some thoughts.

-KeithP