Color laser printer recommendations?

[Desslock]

Anyone recommend one?

I have a Samsung CLP-500 - price was great, quality is solid, has auto-duplex which I like, but it's also a technically flawed model that's been abandoned by Samsung despite being only a few years old -- there's glitchy sensors that require you to physically muck with the machine in order to avoid a "waster toner full" error that prevents you from printing. It doesn't print in black if any of the color toner cartridges are low, and because it's an abandoned model from a smaller manufacturer, the ink cartridges are also hard to conveniently find. So rather than replace them for essentially the cost of the printer, I'm thinking of getting a replacement and wondering if anyone had better experiences.

Criteria:
- looking for a more dominant brand so that parts are more convenient, like HP or Canon, I guess. See Brother around a lot too, but I don't know about them.
- want to stick with color laser, even though I know there are advantages to ink color and black/laser separately.
- don't really want an all-in-one since I don't need a fax or copier and don't want to unnecessarily add to price/complexity.
- would greatly prefer one that has auto-duplex (2-sided printing), since I use the printer a ton, routinely printing out 100-200 pages/day of legal documents.

Help!

[Destarius]

I'm looking for one with a wireless colour laser with network capability too. I'm stuck with this totally obnoxious HP Laserjet 3030 which seems to hate every wireless connector I throw at it, and my wife and I are about done with it.

[Lorini]

I use the HP 2600n, but it has had very mixed reviews. It also is nearly cheaper to just buy a new 2600n than it is to replace the toner, although Amazon carries a third party toner that works pretty well. I have not however used it to print 200 copies a day. You may have to look at HP's business class printers to accommodate that much printing.

[ARogan]

Another HP 2600n (http://blog.arogan.com/2008/01/hp-color-laserjet-2600n.html) user here. I can't really comment on how well it holds up under heavy use since we strictly use it only when we need color. I have a samsung ML-1740 laser for all my BW printing.

[Skipper]

I have a Dell 3100 which Dell has now replaced on their site with two models, one for home (1320) and one for small workgroup printing (3110). I'm sitting at a year and 4 months now on the same original 4 toner cartridges (black plus 3 for color.) It has been a phenomenal printer, came network capable and has very good quality print. It has a duplexer option (as does the newer larger model the 5110) but I did not purchase that particular piece. the duplexer for the 3110 series runs $199 and can be added later if you want.

If you are around 20 people or less (or have this at the house like me) it's a very nice printer, Dell keeps parts and toner right on the website and ordering is a cinch either through that, or through the included app that notifies you when you are low. The driver has a full option (with management and toner monitoring) as well as a lightweight option depending on your needs.

The upgrades I did purchase and can comment on are the 500 sheet extra bin (works great) and a full memory upgrade using memory from Newegg (also worked fine and was recognized without issue.) There is now a wireless network upgrade which I did not have the option of when I purchased, which might be needed if you want the printer far from the network switch or switch-router.

The only drawback to the exact model I have (now nearly a year and 6 months old) is that it weighs quite a bit. This is true of several of the color laser brands though once you add extra trays or duplexer, etc.

[mkozlows]

HP 2605dn, which is not at all the same as the 2600n -- the 2600n is a GDI printer and needs the typical heavy Windows drivers, but the 2605dn is a real Postscript/PCL printer and will work with MACOSX or UBUNTU or whatever.

[Desslock]

So all HP fans here? Maybe that's the way to go - I'm probably overstating my page usage; I don't think I need a more commercial printer.

[Vesper]

HP 2605dn, which is not at all the same as the 2600n -- the 2600n is a GDI printer and needs the typical heavy Windows drivers, but the 2605dn is a real Postscript/PCL printer and will work with MACOSX or UBUNTU or whatever.
My 2600N works quite well with OSX. But yes, you are right about the lack of native Postscript.

[Lorini]

So all HP fans here? Maybe that's the way to go - I'm probably overstating my page usage; I don't think I need a more commercial printer.

Well Amazon doesn't even carry a Canon single function color laser printer, so it probably doesn't exist. I personally don't know anything about reliability with Brother printers. The 2600n is less than $400, so they are popular. The toner doesn't last that long though, which is why I changed over to the third party toner. I've had to change toner more than once a year and I'm printing maybe an average of 5 pages a day. Now those pages are heavy color but still, it eats toner.

[Hans Lauring]

Canon makes fine laserprinters and as with their inkjets they have the best image quality around. The Canon i-sensys LBP5100 is cheap, lightweight (for a laser), has very nice colours as well as auto duplex.

The winnier in our most recent test however was the HP Color LaserJet CP3505n which is twice the price. It's really fast and while it seems expensive the toners that comes with it each has toner for 6000 prints, which is more than twice what most other brands do. But manual duplex, though.

[Lorini]

Canon makes fine laserprinters and as with their inkjets they have the best image quality around. The Canon i-sensys LBP5100 is cheap, lightweight (for a laser), has very nice colours as well as auto duplex.


Canon is not listing that printer on their U.S. website, which is probably why Amazon doesn't carry it.

[EvilIdler]

Canon [...] has toner for 6000 prints

Winning words right there. Listen to the man. Canon hasn't disappointed me much (only a scanner which took
its own sweet time before a driver was available for non-Windows use).

[Hans Lauring]

Winning words right there. Listen to the man. Canon hasn't disappointed me much (only a scanner which took
its own sweet time before a driver was available for non-Windows use).

Except that the 6000 print cartridges (four of them and at 5% coverage) was a HP.
I don't have that much experience in lasers, which is why I quoted a test from a guy I trust (enough to pay money to test these things), but apart from that I agree with your love for Canon.
I have yet to experience a truly bad Canon product.

[Skipper]

I'm sitting at 4500 prints on my original Dell toners and still show a decent percentage left on the supply page.

I would think 6000 is doable on multiple brands for laser toner. Note though, that printing isn't even on toners. Black might only last 6000 pages while cyan might last much longer due to low use.

[Hans Lauring]

Sure, but when you look at the number of prints stated by producers using the same ISO-standards then most say around 2500, which is why I pointed out the HP stating 6000.
Obviously I haven't looked at every printer under the sun and perhaps the HP will last even longer in real use.

Ah bugger, I looked it up.
The Dell 3110 comes with a black toner good for 5000 at 5% and three colour toners good for 4000.

At half the price the Dell 3110 is clearly the better buy... unless Dells lasers are as bad as their inkjets, which are just rebranded Lexmarks (I don't know about their lasers).

I can tell you that we recently did a test on the real price per page on laserprinting (after a similar project by me on inkjets), which showed that for colourprinting lasers are actually more expensive than inkjets (and that's not even counting the higher price for the printer itself).
Laser printing is for speed and cheap black/white printing - not economy on colour.

[EvilIdler]

Except that the 6000 print cartridges (four of them and at 5% coverage) was a HP.


Oh, I misread. But Canon printers: Always solid, always work.

[Desslock]

Yeah, inkjets have a few advantages over laser for colour printing - they do a better job with photo printing, for instance. But I need laser for the speed/convenience of constantly printing out large legal documents, and I just want the option for occasionally printing in colour for game manuals, etc., without having to keep another machine around.

O.k., I'm going to check out HP/Canon/Dell and try to make a decision. Anyone have any knowledge/exerience with the new HP CP1518 series?
http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/product_detail.do?storeName=storefronts&landing=printer&category=LaserJet&orderflow=1&a1=Color+printing&v1=Color&product_code=CC378A%23ABA&catLevel=2&tab=reviews&#defaultAnchor

No duplex, but this new design seems less cumbersome than the 2600 series and it has some nice photo/publication printing features and cheaper (but smaller) ink cartridges that conveniently just drop in instead of being pushed into slots. Looked pretty streamlined, and the compact model is an advantage for the limited space in my home office.

[EvilIdler]

If inkjets are really the way to go for photos, yeah, ignore lasers. Just make sure it has individual (CMYK?) colour cartridges.

[Qenan]

HP 2605dn, which is not at all the same as the 2600n -- the 2600n is a GDI printer and needs the typical heavy Windows drivers, but the 2605dn is a real Postscript/PCL printer and will work with MACOSX or UBUNTU or whatever.

Mediocre reviews at CNet: http://reviews.cnet.com/laser-printers/hp-color-laserjet-2605dn/4505-3159_7-31827234.html

[Desslock]

So I ended up going with the new HP CP1518 (which I think is a more compact replacement for the 2600 series) and am reasonably happy with it.

If anything, it feels a little "cheaper" than the Samsung CLP-500, in terms of how the trays move and it snaps together, etc., and it's a bit slower, but it's so much better designed in terms of use of space (very compact for a color laser), more useful LED display, very nice "drop in" ink cartridges instead of sliding them into slots so no need to replace various components that wear out like the, um, sheet that collects the ink from the cartridges in most printers and wears out after 20,000 or so pages. Better image quality than I expected when printing on glossy HQ pictures.

[Qenan]

Does it support duplex?

[Desslock]

Not automatically, no. I compromised on that feature because of the rest of the package.