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.

[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.

[Bill George]

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

Ditto and you can purchase toner cartridges at Amazon cheap and they are very good.

[Ken Burner]

I am also very happy with my Brother duplex monochrome laser printer/color scanner, after years of frustration with inkjet printers. I recommend avoiding HP, due to their anti-owner tendencies: https://boingboing.net/2024/03/04/hp...never-own.html

Ken

[Jim McCue]

I am on my second brother b/w laser printer after 20 years. I've replaced the toner 3-4 times in that span. I have the kind with scanner/copier. It does not have wifi but when hardwired into the router can be shared with everything on the network. I'm pretty sure newer ones come with wifi. For printing color pictures or artwork I upload pictures and print to CVS/walgreens/walmart and pickup in a day or so. I just learned my local library will print large pictures for similar prices but haven't tried them yet.

Inkjet printing was a scam 20 years ago and it's frustrating that it's still going on.
https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/18/i...ches/#hache-pe

[Brian Elfert]

Inkjet printing was a scam 20 years ago and it's frustrating that it's still going on.
https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/18/i...ches/#hache-pe

The first HP Deskjet printers became available in 1988. They were intended to provide higher print quality than dot matrix at a lower price than laser printers of the day. I started college in 1990 and ended up buying an HP Deskjet printer my second semester. The college computer lab offered no cost dot matrix printing, but the laser printer cost five cents per page.