Colour laser printer

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Can anyone recommend a compact colour laser printer - that is cheap to buy and run - to be used for business documents (some in colour, obviously)? Low volume printing.
 
cheap to run and colour laserjet do not go well together in my experience. carts are expensive, so are transfer kits, fusers, maintenance kits etc etc.

whats your budget to buy and then monthly to maintain.
 
Colour lasers are very cheap - I have one (and have had it for 2 years now). CLX-2160. Full set of cartridges cost ~£20 off the bay. The great thing about them is the cartridges don't dry up and last an age (helps if you don't print that much). The bad thing about them is they're not great image reproduction machines.
 
neil_g said:
3rd party carts?
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Yes. Compatibles were around £50 when I first bought a set and they've lasted 12-18 months and still OK. I'm still waiting to put the e-bay cheapies in. I'm not a heavy print user and I'd probably be on my second or third inkjet by now with the inks drying up.
 
I've installed a couple of the Samsung CLP series, pretty cheap to buy, toner is around £40 per colour for genuine Samsung toner, think this is norm for lower end printers.
 
I'd second the recommendation for samsung. I have a clp300n. Toners look easy enough to replace as some of them are well awkward. Wouldn't recommend Oki as they seem to be unreliable and play up whenever you change toners.
 
We've got a Samsung CLP-315 and it's a great little machine for light use. Not the fastest but quiet and good results.

Also had a Brother 4040 which was incredibly fast both B&W and Colour, but the colours were not very good, especially the red which always came out more like maroon. Was like this from new but could have been a fault somewhere.
 
I just got a Canon iSensys5050 for £36, refurbished, carts already installed but full.
I'm most impressed with the colour printing once I sorted the options.
I mean, £36 is cheaper than a refill for my older mono laser which I was worried was going to run out sometime soon. (That one was £20 )
 
Cheap compatible carts work out more expensive as they trash your printer. I've lost one HP mono and one Xerox Phaser due to compatibles - and issues with another Phaser.

Look at the Xerox Phaser range with solid inks. Much better quality of output than lasers.

But stay off compatibles unless you are made of money ;)
 
I use a Brother HL-8250cdn colour laser with duplex facility to save paper. It costs me about £50 for a full set of cartridges with an extra black.

I spent 15 years fixing printers of all kinds and yes I use remanufactured carts, you have to find good ones but they have never wrecked a printer I own. As for drums, belts blah, blah, blah I would use originals.

Whilst mine isn't used for real business purposes I do get through roughly a pack of paper a week.
 
I have a HP 200 something which I’ve had for 6 odd years now. Compatible carts from Amazon are around £35-£40 for the set. It’s not skipped a beat yet and the prints are just as good as original carts at around £50 each.
 
I used to run a school network where we had all sorts of colour laser printers, eventually I got my own way using original toner after we had several expensive colour laser printers written off as a result of using compatible cartridges bought by our finance department who thought they could save money. The HP compatibles were the worst culprits.

I have a used HP CP3505dn printer which I bought some years ago for £100, it came with a full set of new HP original toner that would have cost £600+ to replace. These toner cartridges are good for 6000+ pages & include replacement drums. I suspect when I eventually need to buy toner I will look for a new printer.
 
I have a Brother HL-3040CN which has been going well for a few years cost me £72 end of line. The print quality is great for everything except photographs.
The only thing I'd change would be to have proper duplex rather than manual aka put the paper back in the other way up ;)
I buy refilled original carts from ebay in full sets - mostly this has been fine bar one leaky magenta cart that kept dropping toner onto the belt and causing dots everywhere. I wrote off the £20 it cost against the significant savings I've made over the time I've had it not using Brother originals.
I also don't change the toner when it moans about being low - I change them when it refuses to print, there's quite a difference.

I'd happily buy another bottom end colour Brother. They refer to them as laser but actually use high powered LED as I understand it.
 
broc said:
I used to run a school network where we had all sorts of colour laser printers, eventually I got my own way using original toner after we had several expensive colour laser printers written off as a result of using compatible cartridges bought by our finance department who thought they could save money. The HP compatibles were the worst culprits.

I have a used HP CP3505dn printer which I bought some years ago for £100, it came with a full set of new HP original toner that would have cost £600+ to replace. These toner cartridges are good for 6000+ pages & include replacement drums. I suspect when I eventually need to buy toner I will look for a new printer.
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In which case you may as well run a cheap compatible until you write it off and then buy another... whichever works out better.
 
srichards said:
I'd second the recommendation for samsung. I have a clp300n. Toners look easy enough to replace as some of them are well awkward. Wouldn't recommend Oki as they seem to be unreliable and play up whenever you change toners.
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i must of dropped lucky with the 2 oki printers i own, iv'e had them both ( oki C301dn and oki C822 A3 ) for over 3 years and are still going strong and i use compatible toners too from this place

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/OKI-COMP...e=STRK:MEBIDX:IT&_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649

you do have to make sure the toners are seated properly or they do play up a bit but apart from that iv'e had no problems
 
LongLensPhotography said:
In which case you may as well run a cheap compatible until you write it off and then buy another... whichever works out better.
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Unfortunately a set of compatible toner is still £275 with individual toner cartridges at £70+ . The printer is already 7-8 years old, at my current rate of use I think I still have 2-3 years toner left. When I run out of toner the printer will be 'recycled' . I also have an A3 colour inkjet printer so I will probably just get a cheap monochrome laser for documents.
 
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