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Looking for a basic compact laser printer

T

tracerit

Senior member
We've had a Brother HL-2140 for yeras and the gears have now started giving us issues causing paper jams. We loved that printer because it was small, compact and the toners were always cheap.

Since it has been years since we purchased one, what is the current no brainer compact laser printer that's quiet? Budget is under $100 preferably.

Looking on slickdeals it seems Dell has some printers that are rated highly (could just be deal wise, not quality wise).
 
Be aware that there are many more laser printers around these days whose toner cartridges have really poor economy yields, so when doing your research that's one of the first things I'd check.
 
I haven't looked into this seriously lately (since my Brother HL-2140 is still chugging along 😎), but Brothers still seem to be an excellent, if not necessarily the exclusively best, option. I certainly haven't seen anything to suggest another/other brand(s) is/are noteworthily superior in this light-to-moderate-duty consumer class and, allowing for a certain amount of inflation, they're still cheap on sale...

ETA: Fwiw, I've known of HP home/SOHO printers that held up quite well, too, though I've never owned one myself. I don't know how the cost of consumables compares to Brothers', but I will say that they cost more, feature-for-feature - ie, the less expensive ones tend not to have "real" paper trays at all (just little fold-out paper guides), don't handle output of more than a dozen or so pages at a time at all well, and rarely if ever have auto-duplexing, which seems to be fairly standard on most newer Brother models ) unlike the HL-2140.)
 
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I also have a Brother HL-2140 and it has lasted so long it's really amazing. Based on this I would look at another Brother, but I agree with mikeymikec that the toner costs and yields are a major factor.
 
regarding paper jams. I had a Brother for over 5 years. It started getting jams. The cause? The rubber rollers that move the paper simply can dry out over time, and in a dry climate, it is worse. Dry rollers are often the cause of paper jams..
 
corkyg said:
regarding paper jams. I had a Brother for over 5 years. It started getting jams. The cause? The rubber rollers that move the paper simply can dry out over time, and in a dry climate, it is worse. Dry rollers are often the cause of paper jams..
Click to expand...
So what do we do to the rollers?

I have a Brother HL5250DN printer. It no longer does double-sided printing. In fact, it hangs the print system when we try. It has been printing multi-page documents unreliably, printing a page on a hunk of sheets of paper -- paper-handling again. Can I fix this? Or get a new printer?
 
ehume said:
So what do we do to the rollers?

I have a Brother HL5250DN printer. It no longer does double-sided printing. In fact, it hangs the print system when we try. It has been printing multi-page documents unreliably, printing a page on a hunk of sheets of paper -- paper-handling again. Can I fix this? Or get a new printer?
Click to expand...


How old is the printer?
 
ehume said:
Thanks for the suggestion. I have not replaced the drum unit yet, so it is the first thing I thought about. But the trouble is the paper feeder, so the trouble starts before the paper reaches the drum, I think.
Click to expand...


How do you know that? It's jamming at the paper grabbing?

Replacing that roller is not that hard I would think. There is also rubber revitalizer spray you can try. Just google printer not picking up paper
 
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sdifox said:
Howndo you know that? It's jamming at the paper grabbing?

Replacing that roller is not that hard I would think
Click to expand...

The printer is bringing up several sheets at a time. It dose not do this consistently. It also brings up a bundle of sheets where the bundle is spread vertically, so that the printer prints the top of the page on the back sheets, and completes a page on the front sheet.

I agree that replacing a roller should be easy, and I would have tackled it a few years ago. These days I don't even know what roller to replace.
 
ehume said:
The printer is bringing up several sheets at a time. It dose not do this consistently. It also brings up a bundle of sheets where the bundle is spread vertically, so that the printer prints the top of the page on the back sheets, and completes a page on the front sheet.

I agree that replacing a roller should be easy, and I would have tackled it a few years ago. These days I don't even know what roller to replace.
Click to expand...


Yeah check youtube videos on roller fixes. You may need to just revitalise the rollers.
 
sdifox said:
Yeah check youtube videos on roller fixes. You may need to just revitalise the rollers.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the tip. One thing about being from the pre-Internet generation -- we don't think about using resources like YouTube.
 
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