At work where time is important, I have a color laser multifunction machine. It is fast, but the toner cartridges cost a lot.
The older inkjet printers were very expensive to operate, but the newer ones run off of reservoirs the user refills with bottles of liquids. This is supposed to be much cheaper. My endocrinologist uses one of these, and it prints reasonably fast, but not the speed of a laser printer.
The inkjets cost about $150 less than the lasers initially.
Anyone have any thoughts about the merits for a color laser versus a newer inkjet for home use?
I use an old HP Laserjet P1505 workstation printer I got at Costco 10 years ago for $150 and a Brother HL-L8360CDW color laser printer I bought from Amazon in 2017 or so for $500.
I’ve owned four HP color laser printers and found all of them inferior to the Brother HL-L8360CDW.
I get off-brand toner cartridges from 1ink.com and don’t have any issues with toner, and it’s pretty cheap.
I stick to 24-lb bond paper for most applications and occasionally use 32-lb bond for some graphics and instruction application. Both printers have proven pretty trouble-free and dependable. I’ve had a couple of inkjet printers but I wouldn’t have one today.
I occasionally use an old HP printer/scanner that ran out of ink 10 years ago that I use as a dedicated scanner. But even as a scanner it is not as good as using my iPhone with the Genius scanner which comes with the Genius Fax app and scans directly to multi-page PDF documents.
My printer from the office is a MFC Brother. The cartridges are expensive. The cheap off brand ones are often reloaded and often do not work. I learned the hard way.
Color laser is the cheaper way to go . But if you print photos inkjet is best. Laser is not going to give you photo quality because it is a powder plus photo paper will melt in the printer even if it says laser photo paper. Using generic/refilled cartridges can work depends sometimes the colors can not be adjusted properly by the printer . Some generic toners are just bad quality . I used to refill them for a living , you need a local company you can trust , When I refilled them I was not just dumping toner in them , I would change parts like the drum and wiper blades to give better quality then just filling them.
Years ago I went through a bunch of ink-jet printers. Some good, many horrible. I had a girlfriend who bought one of those horrible LexMark printers. It worked out of the box but soon ran out of ink with those “starter cartridges”. Bought brand new ones, printer would not work at all. $80 for printer and $50 for replacement cartridges down the toilet!
About 10 years ago I decided to buy a Canon color laser 3 in 1 office printer. Well over $300. But it still works like new.The Canon toner cartridges ain’t cheap but I found an aftermarket seller on Amazon. They are much cheaper than brand name and last a long time. And did I say the printer just keeps working and working!?
after fighting with various inkjet printers over the years I bought a brother color laser printer and it works great. the toner lasts a very long time so I don’t think the consumables cost is too bad but does hurt every few years. still cheap enough that I don’t want to try to off brand toner
my mother has a HP color laser printer which works ok but is more temperamental. HP as a company is less trustworthy for me. this paragraph is obviously personal opinion. I’ll never buy anything from HP
We have an Epson ET-4800 printer whichr can print 4,500 pages in black and 7,500 pages in color with one set of ink bottles. This is equivalent to about 90 individual ink cartridges.
At a cost of $ 43.99 per set of 5 cartages this is a cost of 0.005 cents per page for the ink.
It is a little slow and a little loud.
I am old and in no hurry an hearing impaired so this is not an issue.
I also have a Brother MFC laser printer. Unfortunately, I could never get the off-brand toner to work, despite trying some of the you-tube techniques. I still love the printer, though, and am now thinking about getting a color laser.
I use E-Z Ink (Amazon) for my Brother Color Laser printer and has worked great. I also had to switch to the heavier printer paper at Costco to be able to print 2-sided.
We have an older HP laser printer from the windows 95 days (black & white with toner cartridge) since 99% of the time a color copy is not necessary. For those rare times when you need color, you can put the document on a flash drive and take it to a store (such as CVS) that has the necessary equipment. Plug in the flash drive, load your document, make your copy, pay a small fee and you are done without purchasing an expensive home machine.
In general I would say you are correct but you are not factoring in one thing, convenience. How close is place you have to go to? How much time, gasoline or electricity, will it take to get your one or two color documents printed? There are possibly other factors as well.
You do not have to say it, I know it would probably still be cheaper, but is it worthwhile? Maybe for you it is but not for others depending on their situation.
I remember losing about $120 on a Brother color laser cartridge on E-Bay. Some had refilled an old one and repackaged it. Printer repairman said they have some sort of electronic link that burns through when the cartridge is empty, so they cannot be reused again, no matter how much powder is dumped into the thing.
The cartridges have a chip , most people who refill the cartridge will also replace the chip so it can be used again, You might be able to buy a chip from a local company that refills the cartridges or maybe on ebay.
