New (laser) printer - any recommendations

[John Hallas]

Looking for a new printer, maybe a laser one. Not really for photo printing other than the occasional one. I have a Epson R200 but I am fed up of relacing catridges and it shows an inability to print any sort of colour print in anything other than a scrambled mess.

There was a thread on the subject but it is about 18 months old.

I will spend up to about £150-160 and generally prefer to buy from Amazon whenever I can

I have marked one down as seeming OK - Samsung CLP-315
It must work with Vista and have a USB socket

TIA

John

[Canis Vulpes]

As an update from the thread linked in the above post.

I did not go for the low cost laser as the toners were about £30 each and as I remember four were required. Therefore the cost of the toner was almost as much as the machine. I went for a HP Deskjet 6940 in the end. It was not a cheap at some but looking at the cartridge cost it seemed more affordable for what I wanted.

I have has the printer for over a year and never changed the supplied ink and I have done quite a lot of document printing when working from home.

As a network printer I can print from any machine on the home network without a host computer being on.

[yelvertoft]

I've recently bought a Xerox Phaser 6125N, this has an Ethernet port as well as USB. Toner isn't cheap, and you need four, CMYK for a full set. This isn't a problem for me as I only do a very small amount of printing. It comes with a set of starter cartridges with enough toner for about 500 sheets, or about 2 years of printing at my normal rate. I got mine from ebuyer where it's currently available for £145 and am very pleased with the quality. It does a very passable photo print onto plain paper if the print is held at arms length. It's not what it's designed for I admit, but I was pleasantly surprised.

A full size black cartridge will supposedly last 2,000 pages and the CMY cartridges will do 1,000 pages. I got a free full size black cartridge included as part of a promotion, but I don't know if Xerox are still running this promo. Cartridges are about £27 each for CMY or £34 for black. This is a lot of money for a whole set, but you can pay more than that for inkjet cartidges and get a lot less capacity. It all depends on how much printing you do.

Duncan

[John Hallas]

Thanks for both responses. Both printers look interesting but I am tempted by the Xerox as that is what I am used to at work and I quite fancy a laser for a change.

The odfd thing about the Xerox is that Amazon list it (at £153) supplied by a 3rd party. Yet on the same page there is a link to someone who can provide it for £117 inc of delivery. Bizarre.

I have e-mailed the supplier because whilst there is a free offer on whereby you can claim a free CMK toners, there is no information anywhere about whether it comes with 4 toners already.

Final question, do members leave their printer on or turn it off after each use. Reading another thread it seems that turning them on/off seems to cause excessive use of ink because of the head cleaning systems that are initiated on power up.

[yelvertoft]

Johnny,

I can confirm that the Xerox 6125N comes complete with 4 toner cartridges. They are however, not as full of toner as a replacement set of cartridges, they only contain about 1/2 the full capacity of toner dye.

As for turning on/off, the Xerox has an auto sleep power save mode, with a time delay setting in the "properties" dialogue box. It just goes to sleep after a time of inactivity. Send a job to the printer and it wakes up, does the job, goes back to sleep again. I never turn it on or off as such. I tried measuring the power drain in sleep mode and found it too low to measure reliably, so I wouldn't worry about the electric bill.

Lasers do not use liquid ink in the way that inkjets do, there is no head cleaning as such, there is no toner wastage. For the same reason, they do not clog. This is the main reason I switched to laser. I print very infrequently and with inkjet, I invariably found that the heads had clogged since I last used the printer several weeks earlier. This never happens with laser. Also, the speed of output is massively quicker with laser. Hit the print button, there's a delay of about 10-15 seconds and then the job comes churning out, page after page in rapid sucession.

The down side of lasers is that they really can't produce the photo like quality of an inkjet. I use either a local camera shop for small prints that I want doing, or photobox for a bigger print if needed. I don't miss injet or home photo printing one little bit and would take very much persuading to swap back from laser now. It all depends on what you want from your printer, but for an everyday workhorse, I'm a convert.

Nothing odd about the Amazon deal at all, it's quite usual for one of the "other" sellers to be cheaper than Amazon's own price. I'd check the feedback from any of the marketplace sellers before placing an order.

Duncan

[John Hallas]

Thanks very much Duncan. Order placed.

[andy153]

Hi Johnny, I know you have placed your order, but just a thought from me. I've used an Epson Aculaser C900 for about 5 years. Mainly for Church booklets etc. It's colour capabilities are OK for proof or unimportant prints (DO NOT USE PHOTO PAPER IN A LASER - THE COATING MELTS!!) - but I use a high end A3 inkjet for any serious prints. Therefore I replace the laser cartridges with compatible ones which are a lot cheaper as I only really need a good black from the laser. I now find that with prices falling it is becoming cheaper to junk the laser printer and get a whole new model for less than a set of refills would cost. Just a thought on long term use. Enjoy whatever you get.

[yelvertoft]

As a slight aside, if you have a printer with both USB and Ethernet, even if you're not using it on a network with other computers, it's advantageous to use the Ethernet interface over the USB as the Ethernet will be quicker.

[yelvertoft]

Any feedback John? Happy, displeased, can/can't get it working?

[John Hallas]

I am very pleased with the printer. It was so easy to set up it was untrue. Very quick, very quiet, very biiiiiigggggg. Much bigger than I expected. Not a problem but you cannot call it discrete.

The one point I don't like is the standy light being so large and bright. Still awaiting my free toners.

PS Bought from Oyxx and cannot fault them on price or delivery. Ordered Sunday evening , delivered Tuesday morning and it was free delivery as well.