Colour laser printers

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#3200046 26-Feb-2024 09:14

Not colour, but we have an old Brother MCF-2713DW that cost next to nothing new and just seems to keep on going. Gets used more for scanning than printing as we are forever printing /scanning emailing things for trusts and other legal faff. I wish more people would use electronic signing.

robjg63

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#3200052 26-Feb-2024 09:25

The comments about HP above are all valid.

The head of HP has been talking up making 'consumables' a subscription item. When the subscription ends the device wont work.

ie You might have toner, but the subscription stops and so does the printer. Guess it might suit some people...

We have an HP laserjet and I noticed that there were comments about a firmware update blocking third party toners etc. Fortunately I disabled the firware update feature and am able to buy and use third party toner. The scanner/printer was around $500 several years back.

The complete HP toner set (Its colour - so 4 toners) is anywhere from around $600 - for the lower capacity (around 1400 pages) to ~$1000 for the higher capacity toners (around 2500 pages).

I found a place selling a generic set (4x toners - around 1400 pages) for $173.

I would not buy HP again - but will continue buying knock-off toners as long as I can.

The ink tank printers look good - the only problem with inkjets that I recall (maybe they have solved the issues) was that if you are an infrequent user like me, the ink dries up and damages the print heads.

Maybe part of that issue was that the ink was so expensive that we didn't use the printer as much as we wanted.

PS There was a hack for that firmware update that HP issued to block non HP toners. One solution was to pop the little chip out of the original HP toner and put it in the generic toner. The chip was almost like a phone SIM card and easy to swap. It would mean that the printer recognised the toner and work just fine. The problem is that the chip stores the number of pages printed. So you would never really know how many pages you have used on the new toner. I think I saw some Aliexpress or Temu 'chips' that were designed to defeat the HP system checks as well.

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turtleattacks

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#3200062 26-Feb-2024 10:04

We have had a HP OfficeJet Pro 9028 All-in-One Printer for many years.

It's fine, more or less. Slow if you want to print hundreds of pages.

We've had to print hand-outs for workshops, in the region of 400 pages sometimes and it still works well, although slow.

Colour replacement cartridge are about $55 each colour for the XL-sized ones, so only about $150 to replace the three colours. Black is on top and obviously lasts a lot longer.

Doesn't block if we don't use it for weeks/months.

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old3eyes

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#3200243 26-Feb-2024 14:35

freitasm:

I have had Epson EcoTank inkjet here and have a HP Smart Tank.

I never had to print a test page to prevent blockage. We just use the printers. Sometimes a few pages a week, sometimes a few of weeks without printing anything. Never had a problem.

Perhaps you are thinking of inkjets from fifteen years ago?

No about 7 years ago when my Canon TS9060 that I bought in July 2017. The print head blocked up about 1.5 years and cleaning didn't help and after talking to Canon in Auckland they wanted me to sent it to Auckland for the privilege of being charged $75 to look at it plus and addition items. I searched the net and found out how to remove and clean the heads and all was OK for another 8 months but finally they would just not clean so bought a TS8160 for $100 from 1-Day. This one has been fine and no problems . I did last year buy a Brother L3770 CDW laser for color and keep the Canon just for printing disks and do a page print once a week on it.

The big problem I found with the inktanks at the time was the lack of touch screens or ones that were way too small.

Regards,

Old3eyes

MarkM536

309 posts

Ultimate Geek

#3200272 26-Feb-2024 16:30

quickymart:

I was considering something like this:

https://www.warehousestationery.co.nz/product/W2658660.html

One of these would suit all my needs however I was blown away to see the cost of replacing the toner - almost as much as the device itself! 😮 It's like they're (quite literally) printing money off the cost of the toner cartridges.

Looking around all the ink suppliers - even using aftermarket toners - there's not a lot of price difference (for example: https://www.tonerink.co.nz/HP206A)

So my query is: is this normal? Are all colour laser printers saddled with ridiculously expensive toner cartridges, regardless of brand? At that price point I get the feeling they're more geared towards a small office situation as opposed to a home user.

Many years ago my house had an ink jet with an external tank. It still got clogged and the final straw was ink leaking.

I've got that exact printer linked from Warehouse stationary and it is a great printer. Printing on heavy cardstock is handy.

I buy generic toner, around $150 for BK, C, M & Y. Printer complains about generic toner but there is a setting in menu to allow non-HP cartridges. Another setting to allow printing beyond 'low toner'.

I replaced a toner a month ago... the test report before changing it said over 2,000 pages.

I wouldn't go back to an ink jet. Print quality is also much nicer.

The HP printer itself is good quality and I haven't had an issue. What I do have a problem with is HP wanting to you use their crappy HP printing app to scan and it needs to be signed into an account....

I use NAPPS2 software for scanning to get around this. That is great software for any printer.

quickymart

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#3220894 21-Apr-2024 09:57

Still weighing up my options, but apart from the Smart Tank thing, what would be the difference between, say, this:

https://www.warehousestationery.co.nz/product/W2771024.html#prefn1=brand&prefv1=HP&srule=price-low-high&sz=48&start=1

and this? https://www.warehousestationery.co.nz/product/W2800569.html#prefn1=brand&prefv1=HP&srule=price-low-high&start=49&sz=48

Sorry if that's a dumb question.

freitasm

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Geekzone

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#3220895 21-Apr-2024 10:12

The cheap one uses cartridges, not tanks. Ends up more expensive to run. It also will ty to get you to use the subscription service instead of store-bought cartridges. Also it won't work with non-HP cartridges.

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quickymart

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#3220896 21-Apr-2024 10:24

Thanks for the clarification, much appreciated.

1cloud

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#3220900 21-Apr-2024 10:54

quickymart:

As I mentioned in the other thread I'm having issues trying to get my son's Windows 11 laptop to talk to my trusty old HP mono laser printer via my home network.

I'm partly inclined to look at upgrading it anyway as I got it in 2006, and was looking at a copy centre/colour laser combination thing. HP has really proven its worth to me, so I was considering something like this:

https://www.warehousestationery.co.nz/product/W2658660.html

I switched from Brother MFC- xxxx. Colour laser to HP office deskjet colour printer with smart ink subscription and would reckon to everyone for only for household uses.

Jase2985

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#3220902 21-Apr-2024 10:59

FYI a full set of high yield cartridges for the first printer are around the $300 mark and will do between 1600-2000 pages.
The ones that come in the printer (if it comes with any) wouldn't be high yield ones, and they would only give 800-1000 pages

The Tank cartridges that come in the second printer give 6000-8000 pages and a refill is a whopping $21-24 each so about $90 for all 4, and gives 4 times as many prints.

Lias

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#3221024 21-Apr-2024 13:45

+1 for Brother Lasers, been using them for years and they're great.

Also +1 to avoid HP printers at all costs.

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rugrat

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#3221033 21-Apr-2024 14:00

I have an HP inkjet. Won’t be buying another HP. I do not understand why it won’t print in black when one of the colour cartridges runs out.

And the colour ones seem to still go down when just setting to print black only.

FineWine

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Nurse (R)

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#3221045 21-Apr-2024 15:30

We have had a Brother MFC-9340CDW for several years now. Used to buy the toner from Tech Warehouse on-line for $460 all cartridges in Auckland now we just buy direct from PBTech. They are same price and sometimes cheaper.

As for the printer it is great. The big thing with laser is that you are not using ink/toner each time you start up as it cleans the jets etc. What a waste. Plus with ink jet printers you might as well buy a whole new printer each time instead of just buying the cartridges.

Whilst the difficult we can do immediately, the impossible takes a bit longer. However, miracles you will have to wait for.

quickymart

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#3345823 23-Feb-2025 07:55

freitasm: The cheap one uses cartridges, not tanks. Ends up more expensive to run. It also will ty to get you to use the subscription service instead of store-bought cartridges. Also it won't work with non-HP cartridges.

I finally bit the bullet and bought one of these: https://www.pbtech.co.nz/product/PTRHPD28751/HP-Smart-Tank-Plus-7305-Inkjet-Colour-Multifunctio

Haven't really tested the scanning part but it makes nice colour prinouts of the few pages I tried 🙂 will put it though its paces this week and give the colour printing a real runthrough.

Only issue was setting up the wifi on it - I had to powercycle my router as the printer wasn't connecting to the network, but once I did this everything went smoothly afterwards 👍

Will probably keep my old mono laser as a backup.

Handle9

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#3345824 23-Feb-2025 08:10

freitasm: That's the thing with eco tank printers: you only refill. There is no parts replacement for years.

We bought our ecotank at the start of covid. It gets used daily and we are still on the original set of inks it came with - it did come with two sets of inks and we are on the second set.

It’s a much better solution for home users than a laser printer IMO.

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