Inkjet vs Laser for the seldom print job

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I'd vote for Laser for infrequent B&W printing. For color printing, Inkjet all the way as color lasers will kill you on toner costs.

Those complaining about ink costs - STOP BUYING THE CONSUMER PRINTERS! It's that simple. Pay a little more for the business class printers and your ink costs will go down dramatically. I've got an OfficeJet Pro 8500a and the inks are under $40 each and last for about 1k pages and "cleanings" are kept to a minimum. We go through a set a year if that. Certainly less than our previous color laser and not obnoxious at all.
 
I have had a brother cheapo monochrome laser printer for 5 years.

It was 75 dollars new.

Once every two years, I put a new toner cartridge in it, they are 15 dollars on ebay.

After 4 years I had to replace the drum. It was 10 dollars.

Works great, but we don't need color and we won't pay for it.

Sharp also makes a good cheap monochrome printer.

There are a bunch of companies who make remanufactured cartridges for the brother, thats why I stick with it. Get one from a top rated seller and it will be better than OEM, because they put more toner in the cartridges than brother does.
 
I would suggest a laser printer.

When my HP all-in-one started having mechanical problems, I replaced it with a refurbished p1102w laserjet from Staples. With a combination of a good sale price and rewards credits (mostly from recycling ink cartridges), it cost about $50. That's less than a replacement toner.

We print a lot more than it sounds like you do, but I got the printer last spring and it just now needs a toner. I'm not sure whether it came with an intro toner or a full-sized one.
 
Buy a used laser on Craigslist for $10, and shake the cartridge. I've been doing that on a printer I bought 5 years ago with an "empty" cartridge.. Have been printing sporadically without needing to get a new toner since..
 
Originally Posted By: pcoxe
Replacement toner cartridge prices can be scary, but they can be good for 1000's of copies vs only 100's of copies with ink. Well worth the extra cost.


I pay less for toner than I did for HP inkjet. Granted it's not made by Xerox, but the quality is identical. My all in one was $300, not fancy, but is a WIFI printer that works flawlessly. Never again will I consider inkjet. The printer has been sitting idle for the whole summer, and first time I'm not concerned with dry ink cartridges.
I pay 85 bucks for two black, and 1 of c/m/y.
 
I've had experience with both.

We have a Canon Pixma iP4200 which uses 5 separate cartridges (even a large and a small black). It's efficient in that different cartridges need replacement at different times. We've had it for years, probably 10 at least. Does beautiful photos. Only problem was when we were away for several months and had to replace the print head for about $40. We fixed it because we couldn't find anything we liked as well. To minimize the loss of ink during the cleaning cycles we just leave it on. That doesn't seem to cause a problem. I suppose we use it enough to keep it clean.

We bought a cheap laser printer for our daughter about 20 years ago. The printer eventually asked for a cartridge replacement but she just kept using it. It went for years that way. Overall must have lasted for 10 or 15 years with light - moderate use.

We have a colour laser printer at work. Very expensive to buy, expensive to use and quite a bit of maintenance.

If you're only doing light printing and only need black and white I'd have no hesitation going with a (cheap) black and white laser printer. A used high quality one would be another good option.
 
I have a Canon MP495 inkjet all in one and while it's been very reliable from a mechanical standpoint, it swills ink like no tomorrow. I've had inkjets in the past that had the ink dry up but not this one - the ink is gone long before it ever has a chance to dry up. I would guess we get 150 pages at most from a black cartridge and even less from a color cartridge. We just finished the first ream of paper with this printer and we've replaced both cartridges 4-5 times. A ream is 500 sheets so you can do the math.

I'm in the market for something new but it needs to support Google Cloud Print as we have added some Chromebooks to our network. So we'll see where that takes us. An old laser is not an option, although I wish it was. Something like a late 90s HP Laserjet 4, those things were rock solid and the toner cartridges were reasonable, plus there were aftermarket options.
 
Originally Posted By: Rhymingmechanic
I would suggest a laser printer.

When my HP all-in-one started having mechanical problems, I replaced it with a refurbished p1102w laserjet from Staples. With a combination of a good sale price and rewards credits (mostly from recycling ink cartridges), it cost about $50. That's less than a replacement toner.

We print a lot more than it sounds like you do, but I got the printer last spring and it just now needs a toner. I'm not sure whether it came with an intro toner or a full-sized one.


To update: I just changed my toner cartridge. I took it out and shook it a few times in the last few weeks, but it finally needed replacing. Printer specs say I got 983 pages from the "introductory" cartridge.
 
We have a workhorse 1102w laser by hp that refuses to die. It is a great daily printer for all our work orders, etc. Great machine that was less than 100 bucks!

Our new 8620 Officejet does all the color stuff, faxing, scanning and such. I am amazed at how far cheap printers have come. There's a lot of value in these...
 
I'm gonna have to go laser. I have a HP injket all in one that constantly goes into Power Save Mode and will not come out unless I physically unplug it from the wall.
 
Its not even close anymore. I have migrated to laser printers (3 in all), one is a color laser, and I won't be going back. I keep one old Epson inkjet R260 around for the occasional pics or CD/DVD prints.

No idea how the inks carts/heads in that Epson haven't dried out yet (knock on wood). It just keeps on truckin', unlike the other Epsons I have owned in the past.
 
If you get a laser, make sure to empty or replace the waste toner bottle every few years.
 
I scored a free HP Laserjet 4100 in my building's tech recycle dumpster. Previous owner upgraded to a laser AIO so they didn't need it. It had a NIC expansion card so I just plug it into my router in the living room and run network printer configs on all the computers and it's good to go. Now I barely use my HP PS Premium AIO since the only coolest thing from that is printing from iphone and wireless network scanning abilities.
 
inkjet printers are HORRIBLE for occasional use.

You will go through more ink because it dried out in a year than the entire cost of a laser printer plus toner.

Then consider the laser printer should last for decades. Toner doesn't expire (though the seals can dry rot so they're not entirely ageless)

I ditched my inkjet for laser and will never go back. I don't print enough to justify the high cost of needing new ink every time I do print.
 
Originally Posted By: Michael_P
If you get a laser, make sure to empty or replace the waste toner bottle every few years.

Home use laser printers don't have this. Nor do larger office ones anymore. I only saw these on large Xerox or Toshiba MFP devices.

Are you from the 80s?
 
Last edited:
Originally Posted By: Subdued
Originally Posted By: Michael_P
If you get a laser, make sure to empty or replace the waste toner bottle every few years.

Home use laser printers don't have this. Nor do larger office ones anymore. I only saw these on large Xerox or Toshiba MFP devices.

Are you from the 80s?


Agreed most or all home units don't have waste toner bottles, but we just got a new Konica Minolta color laser at work (something like $16,000) and it still has a waste toner bottle. So does our $25,000 large-format Oce.
 
Inkjets bug me in a lot of ways. They're too expensive for heavy use, and they wind up being too expensive for ultra light use.
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Others here would know far more than I do about their print quality for photos and the like, but the cost can be up there.
 
I'd use a laserjet printer. Brothers is a good brand.

For my business churning out receipts, I'd use a dot-matrix printer.
 
Originally Posted By: linksep
Originally Posted By: Subdued
Originally Posted By: Michael_P
If you get a laser, make sure to empty or replace the waste toner bottle every few years.

Home use laser printers don't have this. Nor do larger office ones anymore. I only saw these on large Xerox or Toshiba MFP devices.

Are you from the 80s?


Agreed most or all home units don't have waste toner bottles, but we just got a new Konica Minolta color laser at work (something like $16,000) and it still has a waste toner bottle. So does our $25,000 large-format Oce.
My point is the post wasn't relevant to this thread
 
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