Recommendations for a home laser printer with cheap toners?

fredthefish

Hey,

I am fed up of my parents having to buy a brand new (and sometimes not inexpensive) inkjet printer every 18 months purely because their last one has dried out/broken inexplicably. They do print things semi-regularly but can have periods of printing drought which just cause an inkjet to dry out and clog up. When they do need it it's important (boarding passes, train tickets, etc) and they need something which will work straight away.

I really want to recommend that they get a decent home laser printer, purely on the knowledge that the toner is dry and won't dry out through lack of regular usage. I know you can get one for less than £100 (eg. http://www.ebuyer.com/270566-dell-2350dn-mono-laser-printer-foc-3yr-w-210-34536 - £85) but in this case the toner cartridges are about 50 quid, over half of the cost of the printer.

Is there such a thing as a decent home laser printer with well priced toner cartridges?

Also is the premise here correct, in that a laser printer can sit there for years with minimal usage without randomly clogging up/breaking like an inkjet printer can?

Thanks!

skivenov

We have a pair of the most basic lasers HP do. Both are well out of warranty and still working fine. They've been running on recycled toners off ebay their whole life, which cost next to nothing. I just bought a twin pack for my P1102 for £12.99 posted :eek:

giraffe69

My experience is similar to the above. We have an old HP Laser. When the toner showed signs of running out I found that HP wanted £133 for a new toner. I could get that for under £20 elsewhere. The new cartridge has been going for a year with no problem at all. Shopping around is important for replacement toner!

RichardD1970

Interesting, thanks for the info.

I was looking at laser printers the other day but was put off by the cost of the toners, but looking on Ebay is a revelation. :beer:

macman

Cheap Samsung mono laser (around £65) will last them for years based on the usage pattern you describe-they won't need a new toner cart! If they do, they're about £25 for compatibles.
Or can't you just train them to print an inkjet document once a month to stop the print heads from drying out? Maybe print it yourself each time you visit?

fredthefish

Thanks for your replies everyone.

I hadn't considered a) buying cheap compatible toner cartridges from eBay (which I guess are not going to do any major damage as long as they aren't churning through multiple cartridges per week) and b) the fact that the demo toner cartridge included will probably last them for years anyway :P

Cheers.

patman99

I had a cheap Samsung laser printer a while back & it did exactly what it said on the box.
Mind you, basic laser printers are all very reliable these days.

Can I suggest that maybe your parents failed to do their research before buying an inkjet. I have a Canon MP620 and can leave it months in between printing without any issues. Same with the HP PS3210 I had before that.

arrallas

If colour would be useful, I recently bought a Dell 1760NW Colour Laser for £109 after reading lots of very positive reviews. Of course, Dell toner would cost about £170 a set, but generic toner is available everywhere for this model - I bought 2 complete sets for £46 (£23 per set!) and I am really impressed with the quality.

fredthefish

patman99 wrote: »

Can I suggest that maybe your parents failed to do their research before buying an inkjet. I have a Canon MP620 and can leave it months in between printing without any issues. Same with the HP PS3210 I had before that.

To be fair, they've gone through several manufacturers, including trying ones which, to them, are recognisable, reputable brands... HP, Canon (which they've recognised from the world of cameras and photography), Kodak (again from photography) etc... they've had two well-reviewed all-singing all-dancing multifunctional devices over the past 5 years, one of which cost them about £150, and they've all ended up in the rubbish tip after either inexplicably breaking outside of their warranty (mechanically/electronically/who knows?) or the print heads completely drying out, the last one involved buying a complete set of replacement cartridges at a cost of over £50 and still didn't resolve the lack of ink on the page.

The advice in the frugal money saving press is always that extended warranties from high street stores are just a case of blatant upselling and the only place the stores profit, so the implication there is that they're a rip off or not good value for money... especially when they have often been quoted more than the cost of the printer for an extended warranty.

It's probably not helped by a combination of hardware being built to fail, and the race to the bottom in terms of price (and thus build quality) where companies know that they can then make their money purely on the replacement cartridges.

Crazy situation with a lot of junk on the market and bad experiences throwing money down the drain on supposedly decent hardware, so I can understand them being a bit jaded.

Hopefully with a laser they will be a lot better served.

fredthefish

arrallas wrote: »

If colour would be useful, I recently bought a Dell 1760NW Colour Laser for £109 after reading lots of very positive reviews. Of course, Dell toner would cost about £170 a set, but generic toner is available everywhere for this model - I bought 2 complete sets for £46 (£23 per set!) and I am really impressed with the quality.

Cheers, that might be an idea actually - I'd ruled it out for cost purposes but I guess those prices for colour toners are pretty good.

I'll suggest it to them in case they want to get something a bit fancier but generally I think they just need something basic for printing out the odd boarding pass/travel itinerary/e-ticket and the odd letter etc.

skivenov

arrallas wrote: »

If colour would be useful, I recently bought a Dell 1760NW Colour Laser for £109 after reading lots of very positive reviews. Of course, Dell toner would cost about £170 a set, but generic toner is available everywhere for this model - I bought 2 complete sets for £46 (£23 per set!) and I am really impressed with the quality.

The only thing to bear in mind with colour lasers is some use a combined cartridge for black and colour, so if you're mainly printing black, you will be throwing away a lot of coloured toner each time the black runs out. Though I would guess yours takes separate cartridges.