Our fax/combo/laser printer device finally canned out. Since my wife is doing a part-time teaching gig, we needed to have a reliable printer so she can print out her class materials. Looking at laser printers, I found that color laser has come down to a price point that is very affordable. So after a little research online, I'm giving the Brother HL4040CN Color Laser Printer a shot. The c|net review alone sold me on it.
So in my research of Color Laser Printers, I've determined the following factors to be things to consider if you're thinking about getting one.
Cost- Toner Replacement Cost
- Speed
- Duty Cycle
- Features
- Quality
There are HP color laser printers in the $200 - $300 dollar range. Sounds tempting, but look into the toner replacement and feature set, and you'll quickly read horror stories of $500 toner replacement costs, crummy quality, long print times, and lame features.
I think the Brother printer we've purchased does a good job in all arenas. The printer itself is normally priced at $400, I recently saw it with a $100 mail in rebate, and decided the barrier to entry was low enough to take a shot. After playing with it in the store, looking at the demo pages it printed, I brought the 65lb. beast home.
It actually looks better aesthetically than the previous printer, takes up about the same amount of space, but is realllllly heavy! I opted to purchase a spare black toner cartridge because the sales person said the toner cartridges it came with are only 1/3 full, I'm not sure I buy that, because I can't find that documented anywhere, so part of me feels an upsell to pad someone's commission.
Cost - for a standalone laser printer, it's not the cheapest, but throw in color and the features that it has, I think it's a great price. Throw on the $100 rebate, and now you're at $300. According to c|net you can probably find it online even cheaper, just make sure the rebate will work! We needed it right away, so I couldn't shop around too much.
Toner Replacement Cost - Black Brother Toner was $52 for a cartridge that will do roughly 3000 black/white pages. The color toner cartridges, a bit more at roughly $70 per color, Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow. Compared to other manufacturers, this was one of the cheaper toner replacements.
Speed - I was shocked when I printed some of the first pages on this thing. While I have not timed it, pages come out WAY faster than I would have expected. Black and white only come out almost instantly. I printed a full 8 x 10 photo, and it took less than 20 seconds? Compared to some of the HP printers I saw in the store, this thing is blazing fast.
Duty Cycle - The duty cycle for this printer is something crazy like 35,000 pages per month, not something I probably need to worry about on any printer I would have considered.
Features - The printer has some nice features that others in this price range don't have. My favorite is Network printing capabilities. Just plug a network cable into it, and connect to the built in web server to configure it for network printing. Sweet. The model above this one has wireless capabilities and duplex printing, this one has 'manual' duplex printing, meaning you flip the page and press a button. Another nice feature is an LCD screen that has the toner levels displayed so you can always see where you're at. The last thing that's kind of cool, but a tad gimicky, is a USB port allowing you to plug a flash drive/memory key and print PDF or photo files off the device, with no computer interaction. It will even print a file manifest of what is on the key/drive, kind of cool. 64MB of onboard RAM, wow, my last multifunction printer had like 4MB? It also has a nice flat paper tray that accommodates up to 250 sheets of paper, no lame standing paper slot.
Quality - Black and white text is sharp, clear, and easy to read. I have not seen any random artifacts around the page anywhere. Not much more to say. Color printing is great too, I printed a "Webkinz Adoption Certificate" for my daughter from her Webkinz site, and it looked exactly like it did online. The colors are pretty close to what you see on the monitor, and are solid, I have not seen any patches that are lighter/darker. Printing an 8 x 10 photo on copy paper looks a bit more 'yellow' than the original image, and you see some banding effects, but this thing is not designed to print photos.
So far I'm completely happy with the purchase. We'll see what happens as the supplied toner starts to run low.