Printer comparisons: Opinions wanted! Color? Laser? Deal?

seeker

Thu, Nov 27 2014, 8:06 pm

So does anyone here have printer opinions? The time is ripe and I see a bunch of black friday prices that are good according to camelcamelcamel (not going to bother with stores and risk getting sold out, just looking online)

I'm thinking of splurging on a color laser printer hoping that in the long run it will be worth the cost because I will have to neither outsource color printing (if I got mono laser) nor deal with ink cartridges (drying up if not used quickly enough; costing too much if yes used quickly enough - or either way actually)

Other options are mono laser printer, which costs more than inkjet but will take care of my document needs very well, or inkjet which costs less but has its downsides, namely that ink starts to clog/dry if you don't use it for some time, needs to be replaced more often which hikes up the cost, stuff like that. Does anyone have experience with this and can tell me how quickly the ink dries up if you don't use it? I need to print like 25 color pages occasionally, but I can also go a few weeks without printing anything at all. If it would be enough to help, I could see printing a couple of pages every now and then just to keep it fresh, would that work?

Currently I do not really outsource very much color printing at all, but if I had the option to print in color cheaply and conveniently I would definitely do more. I often wish to print something out but by the time I'd get to a copy place it's moot. Occasionally I want to print something badly enough to bother, in which case if it's a small job usually I bother a relative who lives nearby and has a high quality all-in-one embarrassed

For black and white I currently pay I think 5 cents per page at one library (not close to home but often on my route) or 10 cents at the closer library if I haven't planned ahead. And again, there are more things I'd like to print but often don't get to doing because of having no printer in the house. I do print things fairly regularly but I don't know if it's predictably enough that a color printer wouldn't dry up.

Budget for buying printer/ink: Well, none, because I was not planning on my old laser printer dying last year. It appeared to be in fine health after many years and suddenly got some kind of error that didn't respond to troubleshooting, and product support costs about as much as a new mono laser printer even if they can't fix the problem.

I currently also own an oldish color inkjet MFP but my feeling is that it would be a waste to keep feeding it ink. Any opinions on whether buying a cheap new printer that comes with starter inks is worth it as opposed to buying new ink for an old printer?

My other concern is that I hear color lasers don't produce as nice quality as inkjets. If this is true then I really don't see why it would be worth paying significantly more for the printer plus a small fortune for the color toner if the end result isn't even going to look good. Does anyone have experience with this?

I am looking at this color laser: http://www.amazon.com/Brother-.....nts=1 Which only has 4-star review average but is on the more affordable size. There's an HP for only about $10 more that has a better average rating but the toner is much more expensive, so unless I gamble with knockoffs my thought is that I should stick closer to budget, even if I'll likely only have to replace the toner once in 4 years or so.
I could also get a mono laser in the $50 range with BF deals and a color inkjet for $20 (cheaper than replacing my inks...) which unless ink drying up is a real problem that could easily take care of all of my needs at much lower cost than the color laser.

Sorry for such long post, I just can't figure this out because I have so little experience with printing...