Every time I need to buy a new toner for my existing printer I get angry.
Currently we have a samsung color laser + scanner thing that is huge. We never use the scanner, and we have to plug it in physically to the usb to print. I bought it in 2012 or so?
New (samsung - i'm aware there are cheap ripoff) toner cartridges for the whole thing are more than $200. Even just the black is like $65 or more. I think the cartridge is only rated to print like 1200 pages or so - currently that lasts us a couple years but less probably as my kids grow into school age. I hardly ever print something in color, and for photos we just get em printed at walgreens.
So, are there any printers out there that are 100-200 but bring the per page cost down significantly and can connect to my wireless network? Duplex printing to save paper would be cool too without having to take the paper out and try three times to flip it correctly before printing again. Emphasis on a printer that I could buy and have still working 10+ years from now. If there are good laser printers to look for on CL or FB I'm all ears there too.
If black n white is good for you This one has been a tank
I like it much better than my lexmark color laser
It's even happy with not brother branded extra large toner cartridges
About 2 year ago, my wife bought a color laser, used off Ebay. It's been great.
HP Color Laser Jet Pro M254dw
I have a couple of these brothers, one at the office and one for the kids at home
You can see the toner lasted 4 years, and the kids print like there is no tomorrow.
This one has a page counter so it will stop printer and asking you for a new toner at some point. You just reset the counter and keep going. I think I did that 3 times before the pages started coming out faded.
Its bulky but I would buy again. Also its wireless so you can print remotely.
I'll second Brother. I have one that is wifi enabled too that works just fine. Mine is a full color but I really only use it for black and white. It has held up for 10 years and 3 moves. I think I may have replaced the toner once? But honestly it may still be on the original. I can't speak to duplexing, but it does everything else great. I have a brother HL-3070CW Series
I'd probably look at the HL-L2370DW XL, it has better wifi options than it's little brother. Or look at an older model.
https://theoatmeal.com/comics/printers
What's the joke about getting around printer ink? Buy a new printer every time it runs out of ink, sell the old one on craigslist as a "one year old printer." Net loss is 50% of the cost of the ink?
Look for an old office printer on CL or such. The toner will not be cheap but should last quite a while at home.
With regards to your current printer and having to plug it in. Does it have a network port on it? If so plug it into your router and you will be able to print to it without plugging directly into it.
+1 more for Brother, ours has never had a printing issue and the starter toner lasted us almost 1 yr with daily printing. We have this one, which is WiFi B&W, though the WiFi interface can be clunky unless you use Google Cloud Print (which is going away this year of course):
https://www.amazon.com/Brother-Monochrome-HL-L2350DW-Two-Sided-Replenishment/dp/B0763WDSYZ/ref=sr_1_5?dchild=1&keywords=brother+laser+printer&qid=1605019541&s=office-products&sr=1-5
B&W is all you need, don't bother with color laser printers.
I'm in a similar boat. I had an Epson color inkjet. It was really necessary about 10 times a year; bill of sale when I sell a car, printing out a receipt for a warranty registration, printing a wiring diagram to take to the garage.
I would get about 5 pages of use from a set of cartridges.
Someone suggested I get a tank printer. You buy the ink in bulk and just refill the tanks. It was also suggested that I figure out the solvent used in the ink and when it dries out you can just add more solvent.
I'm still not sure why anyone has invented a toner system that doesn't dry out. I think it would instantly sell out for whatever the pricetag said.
Expecting an entry level printer to last 10 years is wishful thinking. The printer manufacturers are in a race to the bottom and at the bottom, reliability is not an important attribute. What is the chance of the wifi configuration software working on Windows 14, 8 years in the future?
Part of the race to the bottom is using toner to subsidize the cost of the printer. Would you rather pay $200 for the printer and $200 for toner or $300 for the printer and $100 for the toner? The price to you is about the same. The low end models ship with a small amount of toner to bring the MSRP down and force you to buy more almost immediately.
On brother laserjets, you had to replace the drum every couple of toner changes. I am not sure if that is still the case. Make sure to factor into the cost per page if it is.
If I was in your boat, I would pick up a Brother HL-2300 series for $100, replacement toner for $40, and a Raspberry Pi running CUPS for internet connectivity for $40-60. Then plan on replacing toner every 2 years and the printer every 4 years.
John Welsh (Moderate Supporter) said:
About 2 year ago, my wife bought a color laser, used off Ebay. It's been great.
HP Color Laser Jet Pro M254dw
This was going to be my recommendation. I bought nearly the same model, but a bit older, CP2025N about a year ago locally from someone off of facebook marketplace for $100. This is a hearty +1 that a buisness-class HP is the way to go. Mine only has a network port (no wifi) so it's plugged into the router. It replaced a ~20 year old 4100N b&w printer that was still working perfectly fine but the fuser was finally dying and it wasn't worth replacing. Thanks to HP print service app, it prints fine from both of our phones and the iPad, though we do most printing from our laptops.
Note that these things are built like tanks, but most small-office/home-office gamers will get rid of them after 5-10 years when they start getting "paper jams" every 4th or 5th page. I put it in quotes because it's not a real jam normally, it just didn't pick up the paper from the tray. Look on amazon and pick up a new set of rollers for $12 or so. It takes <20 minutes to replace all 3 of the dry-rotted rollers. There's instructions all over Youtube on how to do it.
Thanks to the pandemic, we're home-schooling this year so we've put a whole box of paper through it. Before the rollers it was giving a jam error every 4 or 5 pages. Since replacing the rollers, it's been fine for at least two reams of paper.
I replaced the black toner cartrigdge when we got it since it was printing black poorly. On this replacement we've printed 2256 so far and it says there's ~800 left. After that I'll give it a shake and see how it pans out. All 4 cartriges were ~$60 on amazon for "greensky" brand refilled. We've barely dented the color cartridges, so I don't know how long they'll last. For the black, they sell a two-pack for $25, so even if shaking the toner doesn't replenish it, that'll be around $.004 per page ($12.50/3000).
Edit: I should have specified that the price above per page is only the toner cost.. When you consider the cost of printer and roller kit, the first 3000 pages end up costing $.04/page (say $125 for the printer, black toner, and rollers). Cost goes down the more you use it from there of course.
Oh, on the longevity front, that CP2025N has printed 13689 pages in its life, 7127 of those were color. So we've printed about 25% of the total prints on it and there's no sign of degredation, and at least 2000 of those had no problems since I replaced those rollers. I think the old 4100 that I retired had well over 40000 pages on it before it started streaking.
Inkjets that aren't used regularly don't work very well, you end up using more ink to clean the jets than print.
I would buy a laser printer for which you can buy cheap toner on ebay/amazon. My 5 year old Samsung multifunction uses $20 generic toner carts. However... Samsung has been bought by HP and I would never buy a new HP printing product. They're locking out third party refills and generally being a pain about supplies they don't sell you.
In reply to jwagner (Forum Supporter) :
I bought my samsung in 2011 or 2012 and it is a huge pain to get anything to work for it that isn't from Samsung boxes.
That said, it is still working just fine, and apparently expecting something to last 10 years anymore is just a fools errand.
Maybe the best thing for me is to plunk down another $65 and forget about it for a couple years...
+1 on the used office equipment HPs. Brothers have been fine, too.
This advice may be somewhat outdated by now by the fact that plastics get brittle, but if you come across an old HP4000 (B&W laser) or 3800 (color laser) on CList snatch it up. Toner isn’t fantastically cheap but those things run forever and a cartridge lasts forever too.
The way the printer tech described it to me was that any of the sub $300 all in ones aren’t serviceable by anyone- including him. Breaks at all under warranty? Replace entire unit. Out of warranty? Buy a new one.
It kinda hacked me off that we got rid of a bunch of 4000s because they couldn’t deal with the new print server. Seemed like we were shooting ourselves in the foot even getting into the roulette wheel of buying another printer was that wasn’t a known entity
I've had a Brother B&W only for a long time. I don't know how many pages I can print on a cartridge because I've never had to replace it. It just keeps trucking along and doesn't need anything. Would recommend.
I think this might be a canoe zombie thread, but I do find it funny that literally just Monday I finally broke down and ordered more toner for my existing printer. Had just been running on empty since this thread, and the printer is still working fine.
I also learned that my local library prints B&W for .10 and color for .25 /page. Since they are literally about 7 houses away, I might just opt to keep my printer for quick and dirty and outsource anything that needs to be nice.
Right at the beginning of the WFH Times, I bought a HP OfficeJet 7740 which has worked pretty well. I've bought ink for it once since then. Two paper trays and the ability to print 11x17 were key features for me along with scan-to-PDF.
I think the key to making sure the ink doesn't dry out is to make sure you print something reasonably often. I don't print a lot, but I do make sure to print out my pay stub every two weeks.
A laser printer would be nice, but I can't justify the cost for one that can do 11x17 prints (something I use for work).
RevRico said:
If black n white is good for you This one has been a tank
I like it much better than my lexmark color laser
It's even happy with not brother branded extra large toner cartridges
That's what my family has at home. It got us through a year of home schooling and printing out all the kid's worksheets and assignments, and I've used it to print out several novel manuscripts. If this is for home use and you don't need color printing, it's a great choice.
In reply to KaidenJackson :
If you get that Brother printer you will not need a mortgage. Can print your own money all day long!
