Colour Laser Printer and Compatible Toners

alesupper

Hi All

I wonder if anyone could recommend a decent colour laser printer for home use? Ideally I would like to hear from someone who has been using the cheaper compatible laser toners who has hopefully not had any issues.

I am aware that compatible toners invalidate your warranty but considering I could buy a new printer with the savings I make on compatibles compared to originals then I am not too worried about that.

Cheers.

sax11

colour lasers are dirt cheap nowadays the saving on compats will be negligable

what is your budget

alesupper

I'm confused by your comment? I agree that colour laser printers are very cheap these days but when it comes to replacing the toners aren't compatibles much cheaper than originals?

I was thinking anything up to ~£250.

sax11

They can be really cheap - if you want bad ones. Same with refils, avoid like the plague

should be about 50% saving of original price - more than that and i would question it.

Now from experience...

Brother machines - compats fail quite a lot on them
hp machines , cheap to buy and the compats work
samsung - not great range and compats aren't that easy to get
oki - if you can pick up an old machine you can get some good compats
lexmark - avoid - it's lexmark

There are others but the compats market, for range at least & therefore saving it's better to go for a brother/hp/oki machine

Personally i would recommend a HP machine.

sax11

Oh and compats do NOT invalidate warranties.

alesupper

Thanks sax11. We use large workhorse HP printers at work and they have always been very reliable so I would be happy to go HP. It's company policy not to use compatibles so that is why I have no experience with them.

A.Penny.Saved

I have an old Epson colour laser printer and the Epson toners are very expensive. I purchased a load of cartridges on eBay for a fraction of the price. I did look up refills also but no one had any at the time but I did later get an email saying they had a suitable refill toner. I did read that some manufacturers had started putting chips into the toner cartridges to prevent them from being refilled and reused. It was more complicated getting them working than earlier lasers.

Mines pretty good, duplex, postscript 3 colour laser with high speed colour printing and networking. It's a pity the interface is a crap usb 1.1. If I could upgrade that it would be excellent.

neilwoods

sax11 wrote: »

Oh and compats do NOT invalidate warranties.

Not according to some of the warranties issued by the companies

Handsome90

Even if it invalidates your warranty, the store that you bought from cannot take away your consumer rights just because you used a remanufactured or compatible toner.

On a separate note, are the colour laser toner very expensive? In my uni they charge 5p/page for B&W but 35p/page for colour :mad:

Mr_Toad

From personal experience.

First off, compatibles.

If the printer is a new model compatibles can be hard to find as they are often made by recycling empty original toner cartridges and as the model is new there aren't many about. If they do manufacture the whole cartridge then the savings can be less than you'd like. As the printer becomes more widely used so do the compatibles.

Ten years ago I bought a Samsung CLX-2160 and my first replacements had to be Samsung as no compatibles were available. A few years later and I was able to buy a full set of excellent compatibles for £13ish.

Have a look at the following page on eBay, the top hit is under £14.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_trksid=p2050601.m570.l1313.TR2.TRC1.A0.Xsamsung+clx-2160+toner&_nkw=samsung+clx-2160+toner&_sacat=0&_from=R40

I have just replaced that printer with another Samsung, the CX460, as it had become mechanically unreliable.

As yet there are no compatibles. Even bottles of refill toner with stick on replacement chips are £90+ and the toner that looks cheaper are the starter cartridges that have less toner in them.

I know that the first replacements will probably have to be Samsung, like I did last time, but I also know that it won't be long before compatibles become available and that they will get really cheap as time passes. You have to look at the long term picture when it comes to cost of ownership.


Rather than my approach you could start looking at compatible toner replacement and then look for a printer that uses them.

Apart from Samsung the only other laser I have had dealings with outside of the work environment is a Dell, also excellent and compatible toners are available for most models but I would imagine my comments about the Samsung would also be true for the newer Dell models.

Before buying the new Samsung I did look on eBay for a second hand CLX-2160 but those available were either broken or looked in terrible shape and I needed one fairly quickly so ended up getting the new one. If it gives me half the service life of the old one I'll have had a great deal out if it and the overall running costs will be really cheap.

neilwoods

Handsome90 wrote: »

Even if it invalidates your warranty, the store that you bought from cannot take away your consumer rights just because you used a remanufactured or compatible toner.

On a separate note, are the colour laser toner very expensive? In my uni they charge 5p/page for B&W but 35p/page for colour :mad:

Trouble is if you use compatible cartridges and it does knacker your printer, then you still won't be covered as the damaged will be deemed as user damage. Not saying it is right, just saying what the store will say. That is assuming you tell them you used one of course. Trick is to keep the original cartridge it came with to put back in should anything go wrong.