Quiet laser printers: Advice wanted

HalleluiahMan

I'm "interested" in a new laser printer for the office. (One of the inkjets died today.) A3 would be nice, but not at THOSE prices.


Prime concerns are:

1. Noise
Another of our offices has had an HP colour laser for the last few months, and for me it's just unbearably loud. Can I believe some manufacturer's claims of "whisper-quiet" machines?

2. Output quality
It'll mainly be used for coloured CAD drawings, with lots of solid colour, as well as fine lines. Seldom used for photos. Print quality MUST be very good.

3. Speed of output
It won't be used for particularly large print runs, but the shorter the "chug-chugging" time, the better.

4. Duplex output
Never had a printer that had this facility before. I can imagine that it'd be handy, but at what price?


I'd really appreciate comments (good or bad) from anyone using one of these things regularly.

It may be that it's not a laser that I'm looking for after all, and a replacement inkjet is all that is needed.

Little_John

All laser printers have the noise, colour suffer more as they have more drums or toner carts than mono lasers. they make the warming up noises etc you cant get away from them. even £15000 colour printers make the noises.

if you want a quiet life return to inkjet, you will get the A3 for a reasonable price but printing solid colour will be expensive.

Print quality is high on mst printers now unless you scrimp and spend £50 whihc I would hope your not going to do.

Duplex is an option on pretty much all HP printers, HP have been in the large format printing world for ages with the old designjets, it doesnt sould like you need somthing that big but I doubt you can do CAD drawings on A4?

Let us know the budget and I will have a look at what is available.

HalleluiahMan

Many thanks for your response.

Little_John wrote:

All laser printers have the noise, colour suffer more as they have more drums or toner carts than mono lasers. they make the warming up noises etc you cant get away from them. even £15000 colour printers make the noises.

So is "whisper-quiet" just a marketing myth?

Little_John wrote:

if you want a quiet life return to inkjet, you will get the A3 for a reasonable price but printing solid colour will be expensive.

We currently also have an HP500 large-format printer, for up to A1-size copies, and the ink for that is only costing about £40 a month. But yes, the ink for that is cheaper than the ones for the dead inkjet. (Which, yes, was HP too.)

Little_John wrote:

Print quality is high on mst printers now ...

For resolution, yes, but "banding", particularly at "standard" settings and speeds, is still a common problem which concerns me.

Little_John wrote:

unless you scrimp and spend £50 whihc I would hope your not going to do.

Nope. For an A3+ inkjet, I'd expect it to be in the region of £250-£300. (Just had a look at the HP site, and can barely tell one from the other)

Little_John wrote:

Duplex is an option on pretty much all HP printers...

And is your experience that it's handy, or just something else to go wrong?