Printer recommendations?

[PrinceofWands]

My nephew needs a black only (as in no color printing) printer with a feed scanner. It's for business use, so needs to do fairly high quality stuff, though cost (including ink/cartridge) is also a factor. Any recommendations?

 

[Lemon law]

Yes, in a word, your nephew would be a fool to buy an inkjet, when he is a poster child for a all in one MFC laser. Both Brother and HP offer many fine models that would allow print, copy, scan, with a automatic document feeder for little more than a C note shipped to his door. For a extra 20-$40.00, he can buy models with a 4000+ standard page yield cartridges, instead of the 2000 to 2500 page yield cartridges like in my brother 7820N.

But since I seldom print and more use its fax, page yield is not a big factor for me. So your nephew needs to factor in his yearly print volume into his decision. A good place to comparison shop is outfits like Newegg, but big box stores like staples often have cash and carry specials.

And then two other things to say, Lasers have resolutions far better than inkjets, and print about 10 times faster than inkjets.

Oh well, end of my rant, lets see what others say. But I should also confess, my wife demands color and uses a inkjet I refill to cut down on costs. So I network our printers together, so both of us can use either a laser or inkjet.

 

[PrinceofWands]

Well he's doing ~1500 pages a month right now and business is looking to increase up to ten-fold over the next year, so he's definitely looking at some volume. He'd never be faxing and never be doing color. Just printing black & white, and scanning frequently. I know nothing about printer quality, does anyone have a specific model recommendation?

 

[Lemon law]

OK, lets look a your nephews printer volume. As a rule of thumb, the paper alone costs about a half cent a page. By in large the rules of thumb also says your normal prosumer class laser will cost about a penny and a half in B/W laser printer toner consumables using OEM toner cartridges. Or based on 1500 pages a month, about $30.00/mo.

On the other hand, the cheapest inkjet that I know of on the planet will come in at at least 3 cents per page in OEM ink costs and the paper cost is fixed. So that translates into the same volume printing cost of $52.50/mo.

But that is based on only 1500 pages a month, multiply by 10, a prosumer laser in the $150.00 class, will consume twice its initial purchase price each and every month. Which tells me your nephew needs to think in terms of a a business class laser that has larger duty cycles and uses far less toner costs where the toner costs are far less than the price of the paper. Something like some of the longer produced but still available on the used market HP series 4000 N series of business class lasers.

And for that matter, your nephew needs to think about one or more lasers, because no printer on the planet stays out of the repair shop forever. Without some printer redundancy, your nephew can't afford to be without one or more working printers 24/7/365.

But other anand tech users know far more than I do about business class lasers.

 

[Lemon law]

Somewhat a matter of bump bump bump, its not a matter than I am not trying to help our OP as best I can, its a matter that we need more posters who better understand high volume laser printing 0ptions, because I am clearly on the wrong end of the Peter Principle in exceeding my level of competency.

 

[Six]

Look to spend at least $500-1000 on an entry level business class printer. Look for one that can scan double-sided and print double-sided. Most people hardly use the duplex feature (on the printer AND scanner), but when you need it....you'll be glad. If you don't need it, it's a saving.

The cheaper multifunctional printers can cause more paper curling, have blurry scan quality, and will scan slowly. Plus the software that goes along with it sucks! ie. the PDF size can be much larger than it should be.

Since usage will be high, do get the extended warranty plan. Printers will require maintenance just like cars. ie. worn out pick rolls, worn out scanner pick assembly, toner leakage, fuser replacement after x number of pages.

My all-time favorite is the Lexmark x646 with the duplex option. It's a few grand, but the way I see it...cheaper = more labor involved. Not sure if that's being sold anymore? There's a newer iteration, Lexmark x656 which is faster, but I kind of like to stay with proven technologies.

 

[Rottie]

time to call Xerox Corp. to make a new black and white laser printer with built in scanner.