Help me buy a color printer !

[Amamba]

I am upgrading our desktop, setting up the old one as kids' game / homework machine.

 

Currently, we have a monochrome laser printer - great for documents but kids do need a color printer for school.

 

The Epson inkjet I had before was finicky (clogging the nozzles even with OEM ink cartridges) and ink was expensive & didn't last long. The main reason for moving to the laser printer.

 

What I am looking for is a color printer that is not too expensive, reliable, with reasonable cost of refills (i.e. they last long and aren't super expensive), and preferably wifi capable (but not necessarily).

 

Any suggestions ?

[Scott Hellewell]

I bought my wife a Xerox WorkCentre 6505. She loves it. 

 

Looks to currently run around $550. We purchase the toner cartridges for about $18 each by not buying OEM.

 

We have had it for about 2 years now and it has done a great job.  My wife has probably printed at least 3 cases of paper through it (somewhere around 15000 pages).  The toner is inexpensive enough that I just buy 3 of each color (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black).  That will set you back about $200.  So for around $750, or $800 with a case of paper, your children can print all they want or need.

 

This is probably my fourth color laser printer and it has definitely been the best one we have had. Previously we have had Konica-Minolta, HP, and Brother. Their toner cartridges were much more expensive and it seemed like we had to get imaging units and such quite often (usually after just purchasing a new set of toner).
 

It also has scanning and faxing capabilities.  We have never used the fax as we don't have a phone line, but you can setup the scanning to just email you the document you scan or plug in a USB drive and store it there.  It has built in duplexing as well as Ethernet.  Drivers are built in to windows and install was a cinch. It also worked flawlessly with Windows RT tablets we own (Surface RT Gen 1 and Nokia Lumia 2520)

http://www.office.xerox.com/multifunction-printer/color-multifunction/workcentre-6505/enus.html

 

http://www.ldproducts.com/Xerox/Compatible/Laser-Toner/Cyan/106R01594/10561-Product.html

Good luck.
 

[COKid]

What's your budget?

[Amamba]

What's your budget?

 

I was thinking of $300 tops.

[Brian M. Veteran]

A Dell C1765NF/C1765NFW (w = wifi) would be in range.

I've just got one of them here - it's a fantastic little printer. Not the fastest thing in the world, but it has both flatbed and feed scanners, scan to email/smb/usb straight from the device/network scanning, and I think it has a fax machine built in too. It's really useful being able to feed scan straight to a network share.

Compatible toners are cheap too (I never use Dell ones!)

Edit - just to make you aware, Dell printers are just rebrands. The Dell is a rebranded Xerox WorkCentre 6015

[Amamba]

A Dell C1765NF/C1765NFW (w = wifi) would be in range.

I've just got one of them here - it's a fantastic little printer. Not the fastest thing in the world, but it has both flatbed and feed scanners, scan to email/smb/usb straight from the device/network scanning, and I think it has a fax machine built in too. It's really useful being able to feed scan straight to a network share.

Compatible toners are cheap too (I never use Dell ones!)

Edit - just to make you aware, Dell printers are just rebrands. The Dell is a rebranded Xerox WorkCentre 6015

 

 

 

Thanks, will look at it. Do you know if it supports Airplay ?

[Brian M. Veteran]

Thanks, will look at it. Do you know if it supports Airplay ?

It doesn't support AirPrint out of the box.

I just make AirPrint work using CUPS. Cups running on a server, setup the printer over IP in CUPS and enable shared printing. Works like a dream (but you have to be a bit techy and have somewhere to run cups).

[Anibal P]

IF I were to buy a printer it would have to be a lazer color or monochrome, ink jets seems more and more like a scam these days what with the ripoff prices on ink and how little the actually last. And since we print very rarely in the house the jets would just be clogged more often than not, so even more wasted money

[Amamba]

IF I were to buy a printer it would have to be a lazer color or monochrome, ink jets seems more and more like a scam these days what with the ripoff prices on ink and how little the actually last. And since we print very rarely in the house the jets would just be clogged more often than not, so even more wasted money

 

Yes, I am looking for a laser color. Already have monochrome but for kids' school projects the color is a must. About the only reason to buy inkjets nowadays is if you want to print your own photos on a photo paper, but it's cheaper to just use a decent lab.

[Night Prowler]

HP Photosmart 7515 from Costco as low as $109 and as high as $169. Free fax number, and free 20 pages of fax per month from HP. Grab your cartridges from LD Products (amazing prices, and quality). 2 years, and zero problems.

[+BudMan MVC]

I moved to color laser last winter from monochrome, more so that the toner had ran out and printer was 4 or so years old and time to move to new tech. Airprint support vs having to support that through cups on a vm, etc..

I went with the brother HL-3170CDW, it was at my price point of $200 at the time and got good reviews and had all the features I could use. Its a bit bigger than I would of thought - but one point I love about it is the very low power usage while it just sits there waiting for someone to print. And the quick time to print from that mode - pages are out in like 15 seconds from powersave mode to paper in the tray.

Not a real heavy printer, my current page counts

Page Counter

204

Color

138

B&W

66

Image Count Total

595

Cyan

134

Magenta

134

Yellow

131

Black

196

So the starter ink should last me a while ;) I show it on amazon currently for $239 - I got it for $199, but still think its a good price at that point.