Color Printer Recommendation Needed

[Kuo]

Hey,

I just did a quick search of the forums, and while one or two other people have asked the question, the answer doesn't really seem to match what I'm looking for.

Many times, you can find an inkjet printer for 40 bucks, but the color cartridges cost like 80 bucks for not too many pages.

I'm looking for a quality printer - one that is reliable and won't break - and am willing to spend ~500 bucks for.

However, aside from reliability, I'm also looking for a printer with affordable ink replacements (eg cartridge or toner). Instead of spending nothing on the printer and huge bucks on ink, I would perfer to be able to spend more on a printer, and less on the ink.

I asked this question 3-4 years ago about black and white printers, and back then, people told me that an initial higher investment in a laser printer (over inkjet) was wise, because toners could give far more pages per toner than one cartridge, so in the long run, the laser printer was a better decision.

I'm looking for the same type of input now, only for color printers. So please, any input. Thank you in advance.

 

[Kuo]

BTW, when I say budget is ~500, it doesn't have to be that high, heh.

If something is ~200, that's good too

 

[coffee33]

Biz printer for printing about 100 to 150 pages a week go with the hp 6110 all in one.
I suggest going with a toner based Brother all in one if you plan to print more then this.
check out epinions.com before deciding.
A cheap home printer for photos and normal print epson R200 $99.00 and ink is cheap as sh!t.
Ink jets rock toner printers for price vs quality.
Toner based rock ink jet on a large scale print jobs.

 

[zandor]

Which one you should get really depends on your usage patterns. If you print a lot the lasers have lower costs per page. If you're like me and have a habit of letting the printer sit for a month without using it you might want to consider a laser just because toner cartridges don't dry out and gum up like ink cartridges do. I used to have a Cannon Bubblejet. I was lucky to get 100 pages of text out of a cartridge. I never actually ran one out. I'd just let it sit for a month or two because I didn't need to print anything, and when I fired it up it'd streak all over. Cleaning the printhead helped, but rarely enough that I was happy w/ the results until I replaced the ink cartridge. Of course, if you need to do high res photo printing you're pretty much stuck w/ an inkjet. Lasers in this price range are usually 600 dpi, 1200 if you're lucky. Some much cheaper Inkjets can do 4800x1200.

Color lasers start around $400 for a basic Windows compatible color laser w/ USB and parallel connections.
If you spend a bit more you can get a fancier one. I just ordered a Samsung CLP-550N for $700 shipped. It's got 10/100 ether, postscript (so it's compatible w/ basically any OS), 128MB ram, and a duplexer for automatic 2-sided printing. 21ppm black, 5ppm color. That's the expensive model of this printer. They've got cheaper ones that ditch the postscript and/or network connection & come w/ 64MB ram.

Here's the approx consumables cost breakdown:
$110 Black Toner cartridge, 7000 pages at 5% coverage.
$110 Color toner (each color, separately replaceable) 5000 pages at 5%
$250 (or so) New imaging drum and transfer belt every 50,000 images. (ie- b&w = 1, color = 4)

I also looked at the HP 2550 series. Almost went with one, then got greedy and ordered the Samsung w/ more ram, bigger paper capacity, and that nifty duplexer unit. I also saw a Minolta 2300W for a bit under $500, but they only support Windows (no PCL or Postscript) so I didn't read up on it much.

I'm no expert on print quality and reliability of particular models of lasers, so don't call either of these an endorsement of a particular model. If you can wait a few days I'll tell you what I think of my Samsung once I get my hands on the actual hardware.

 

[Party2go9820]

To take it a bit farther it depends on what type of color printing you are doing. Photo printing is always better on an inkjet but color prints with large solid colored areas look great on a color laser. (Think like pie charts and stuff).

The cost per page is gotta be pretty close because color lasers go through drum kits and such so much faster than b/w lasers. I'd look for a decent inkjet in the $200-$250 price range and then check to see not only how expensive the ink cartridges are, but also how much ink is contained within. A cheap cartridge doesn't do any good if you need to replace it every 4th print.

 

[zandor]

Of course if you really want to do color picture printing it's hard to beat a dye sublimation printer. You know, one of those funky gizmos that go through 4 sheets of (expensive) ink covered film (or maybe paper... the only one I've seen up close used a semi-transparent film).

Of course, another thing worth considering is that my printer cost me $600 + $50 S&H + $50 tax. It comes w/ full toner cartridges and the transfer belt & drum. A-la-carte that's $440 for toner + $250 for the parts. $690 + S&H. So the printer's free. It just costs more up front.

Just taking a random HP printer using (I think this is right...) cartridges from newegg:
$32 649 pages HP C1823D Tri-color cartridge
$25 833 pages HP 51645A Black cartridge
$ .05/page for color ink, $.03/page for black, so $.08 for color.
Of course that number is a bit deceptive, since you end up wasting ink if you don't use all the colors evenly since it's a tri-color cartridge.

Then for my Samsung... Toner is $110/cartridge, black is good for 7000 and color 5000. Drum & transfer belt is about $250 per 50000 images, so add $ .005 for black and $ .02 for a color print. Black toner is $ .016/page, all four comes out to $ .082.
So per page we've got $ .021/page for black and $.102 for color.

So apparently the laser could be more expensive to run. Of course if you're using colors unevenly the laser might catch up.

 

[zandor]

Ok, I got the printer. So far I'm pretty pleased. Linux and Windows installation was a snap aside from the annoying default to lpt1 (I'm using the ethernet connection) and a test page accident involving sending raw postscript to the LaserJet 1100.
Pictures of course look dithered if you look closely, but the text and graphics are as good as any other laser I've used.
It's also quite quiet. It's definately quieter while printing than my 40x CD-Rom is at full speed. It's a bit louder than the HP LaserJet 1100 it's replacing, but it's also al lot faster when printing b&w so I guess that's to be expected.