Printer purchase advice

[Tim Elett]

I have a printer that uses the cartridge system and I don't use it a lot,but from time to time I like to make a print of a segmented bowl pattern, and the cartridge has dried, would a laser printer be a better option for me? I don't need color.

[Earl McLain]

When i was working, most of the printing i needed was at the office, and we printed very little at home. Almost every time we did, we needed to change one or more ink cartridges because they had dried out. After retiring last year, i bought a wireless HP "tank" laser (black only, i think the model is 2604?). Came pre-loaded with an estimated 2,500 pages of toner--if that's close to right it might be the rest of my life. Laser toner doesn't dry out--so for those of us who print very little, laser is probably much more economical. I have no hard data on that--but we no longer have to run to a store to buy an inkjet cartridge to print two pages!!

[Lee Schierer]

We don't print a lot of documents. A number of years ago, we tossed our ink cartridge printer for the very reasons you described. We replaced it with a Brother HL-240 series laser printer that has a toner cartridge. It is just a printer, no scanner. It is much faster than an inkjet printer. Our printer will print a complete document each and every time over 500+ times even if we haven't printed anything in a month or more. It has worked for over 15 years and is still going strong.

[Tim Elett]

Thanks for your advice, I already ran my case past the first lady,with no objection. 😉

[Larry Frank]

The Brother Laser printers are great. We have two of them and work without issues.!!

[George Yetka]

I went the other way on this. Again not much printing at home. I buy a $60 printer every 4 years or so.

[dennis thompson]

The Brother Laser printers are great. We have two of them and work without issues.!!

Me too, one color, one black and white, they have been great and are not too expensive

[Dave Fritz]

Brother tn-630 going strong for many years.

[Dwayne Watt]

I would suggest going the multi-function laser printer route. Having that scanner and copier is very useful at times. Whether one goes B/W or color laser is a personal choice but I prefer color. We purchase off-brand toner cartridges with reasonable success. They typically don't have as much toner contained therein but still have overall lower cost. Having wireless capability is even better so you can print from any of your devices (laptop, phone, tablet, etc). A B/W Canon printer with those capabilities is about $200.

[Jim Becker]

I recently switched Professor Dr. SWMBO to a basic Brother monochrome laser printer. "In theory", it should be a lot more reliable than inkjets that have ink drying issues with limited use, etc. For $139, it's surprisingly fast (once it wakes up for the job) and the print quality is excellent. I'd consider one for myself if I ever decide I no longer need color printing and even then, if I needed color (and not photo printing which I rarely do now), I'd still go laser instead of inkjet. Inkjet printers are cheap to buy but expensive to use...'cause the ink business is gamed if cartridges are involved. I use a tank type inkjet which is not affected by that so much, but with limited use, I burn a lot of ink just cleaning the darn thing so it prints well.

[Bill Howatt]

I ditched inkjet printers a long time ago since dry-out is a problem if they aren't used frequently and the ink is relatively expensive.

I have 2 Brother B&W lasers that handle the printing and it is quite intermittent. I also wanted to have a color capability so I bought a Brother 9130 combo color laser printer. Not quite the same as a glossy inkjet but pretty darn good color photo rendition on 32lb paper. It is used very infrequently, I've had it a few years and it is still on the cartridges it came with and it prints every time (and scans with a document feeder too).

Before the color laser, I bought a Canon Selphy which makes 4x6 prints using dye-sublimation, not inkjet. It has a color ribbon cartridge so it doesn't dry out and has been good for producing 4x6 photos but I have to admit I don't print many photos now. I notice the current Selphys have a lot more features on the little printer than mine does.

[Rich Engelhardt]

Another happy Brother laser user checking in.

[Ron Selzer]

I have a printer that uses the cartridge system and I don't use it a lot,but from time to time I like to make a print of a segmented bowl pattern, and the cartridge has dried, would a laser printer be a better option for me? I don't need color.

That was me over 20 years ago. Went to a Dell B/W laser, then a color laser very happy
Ron

[Dave Zellers]

Re the ink jet head drying out issue- I have an Epson that prints up to 13x19 and I don't want to give it up because it is so nice for printing out plans, so I have gotten in the habit of printing a test pattern once a week. That uses almost no ink and keeps all the nozzles clean. Sometimes I might need to do it 2-3 times to get a clean result but I just rotate the paper and still the amount of ink used is tiny. Seems to be a good solution for me.

[Mark Wedel]

I went with laser after having ink drying problems, and my current printer is a MFD (multi function device) - copier, scanner, printer, which can also output double sided pages without me needing to flip them.

Except for the up front cost, laser printers are likely to be more cost effective - you are not needing to replace dried up ink cartridges if you print infrequently, and if you print a lot, the toner is almost certainly going to be cheaper than ink.