At what quality level does it have to print "fairly fast". What is your duty cycle (i.e. how many pages per month)? Do you have a preference between inkjet or laser?
Ooops! I'm glad I suggested you check the reviews around the Web before any purchase (both pro and user/buyer reviews). Apparently the K550 has a major paper feeding problem (a traditional bugaboo with HP inkjet printers - IDK about their lasers). OTOH, printing is fast and crisp... So proceed directly to the Canon section - I've never had a feeding or printing problem with the last four Canons I've owned.
--------------------------------------------
Without the info listed above, I would say that the
HP Officejet Pro K550 is probably the fastest standard width inkjet for under $200.00 (I've seen it for under $150.00 on sale and/or after rebate. It does color too, but not on the top photo level - excellent for business documents with spot color though. IDK how it does on half-tone images though. I'm sure you can find plenty of reviews on the Web that will fill you in on the fine points. You will have to run some color that exercises all the nozzles a couple times a week to help keep the color nozzles unclogged. Low cost per page for an HP (even with OEM tanks) and it has large, separate, passive (i.e. unchipped) ink tanks for each color. I'm fairly sure the tanks for the K550 have been cloned for even lower cost per page without going to the effort of refilling the tanks yourself (though it's not hard to do if you want to minimize the cost per page as much as possible). It has one of the strongest duty cycles of any inkjet printer I know of at up to 7000 pages per month - most don't even list a duty cycle.
The Canon iP4200 is good and fast on B/W pages too but it has been superceded by the iP4300 which is a bit slower on BW (trade-off for slightly better photo printing - which is spectacular). Either is about as fast as you can get at under $100.00 (newegg has been selling them for ~$90.00 shipped). Unfortunately Canon went to 'chipped' ink tanks, so for the time being you'll have to swap the chips from OEM tanks (not hard to do - I just did the first one on mine after several months of use). One nice feature is that these two printers have dual paper paths: a cassette on the bottom and the bin on the top. You can load them both with the same type of paper (about 100 sheets of 20# per path) and set it to automatically switch paths when one runs out. But you will have to keep the output catcher unloaded as it is only rated at around 50 sheets - I suppose you could remove the door and let it fall out onto the desk or into a catch basket...
I'm sure others will chime in shortly re. laser printers. They will claim a cost per page advantage - it just isn't so with clone tanks and, as I wrote above, it gets even lower if you're willing to refill your own (of course that's the same with most lasers).
..bh.
Discussion Zen 5 Speculation (EPYC Turin and Strix Point/Granite Ridge - Ryzen 9000)
Discussion Intel current and future Lakes & Rapids thread
