Color laserjet all-in-one recommendations 2021

[Sunset]

W2R, what model do you have? I'm looking for one now.

I'll jump in with my Brother printer happiness:

Brother MFC-L2690DW Monochrome Laser All-in-One Printer, Duplex Printing, Wireless Connectivity
$139.00 at Walmart (from Walmart).
Works for me on Windows/Linux/Android phone.

It's my 3rd Brother laser printer over a 20 yr span.

It does everything: print, scan, copy, fax

I've scanned photo's with it, and I'm happy it does them up to 1200 x 1200 dpi (from Scanner Glass) which from a printed photo is fine for me.​

 

[GalaxyBoy]

Printers can’t be had for love nor money these days, it seems. Just when I found something else to blow my dough on, it is not to found be due to COVID-19.

Oh well.

 

[easysurfer]

Printers can’t be had for love nor money these days, it seems. Just when I found something else to blow my dough on, it is not to found be due to COVID-19.

Oh well.

No luck even online?

 

[camfused]

Printers can’t be had for love nor money these days, it seems. Just when I found something else to blow my dough on, it is not to found be due to COVID-19.

Oh well.

Did you see my post above? You can get the one people are recommending right now.

 

[GalaxyBoy]

Did you see my post above? You can get the one people are recommending right now.

Yeah, they’re sold out. You don’t see it until you try to add to cart (which I intended to do, thanks for the link).

 

[GalaxyBoy]

No luck even online?

I saw a few links where they claimed to have it but were asking about double the list price.

 

[JT90505]

The bottom line is if someone is happy with scanner results, all is good.

That said there is more to scan quality than dpi. Given the time investment required to scan a photo collection, especially valued older images, I was very happy with the results received from a dedicated scanner vs. the all in one (AIO) I own. Part of that certainly was the higher quality scanner software Canon provided.

One other consideration is whether AIO supports scanning negatives or slides, if applicable for the application.

Slightly off topic, I have gotten great enjoyment from having over 100 years of family photos digitized, easy to view and share.

 

[Ncc1701]

I recently picked up a HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M283CDW from Costco. Love it.

 

[Jerry1]

I recently picked up a HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M283CDW from Costco. Love it.

We picked up one for our grandkids. They really like it. Unfortunately, good luck with new cartridges. A full set of HP’s is $300 to $400 depending on whether you go with standard or high yield. If you want to use third party toners, you have to cut out the chip from the original toner cartridges and insert them into the third party cartridges. You then lose your diagnostics like page count and amount of toner left. My daughter went that route and the quality of the toner sucks. Of course that’s only a sample of one, but it’s still a pain.

I’m going to get her a full set of HP high yield cartridges for the kids for Christmas. The best deal I’ve found is at Office Depot. They don’t discount the cartridges, but they do have sales where they give you store credit. The best I’ve seen is 30%. So, on a $400 set, you’ll get $120 of store credit and we’ll use that for other supplies for the kids.

And you thought ink cartridges were a racket.

 

[easysurfer]

We picked up one for our grandkids. They really like it. Unfortunately, good luck with new cartridges. A full set of HP’s is $300 to $400 depending on whether you go with standard or high yield. If you want to use third party toners, you have to cut out the chip from the original toner cartridges and insert them into the third party cartridges. You then lose your diagnostics like page count and amount of toner left. My daughter went that route and the quality of the toner sucks. Of course that’s only a sample of one, but it’s still a pain.

I’m going to get her a full set of HP high yield cartridges for the kids for Christmas. The best deal I’ve found is at Office Depot. They don’t discount the cartridges, but they do have sales where they give you store credit. The best I’ve seen is 30%. So, on a $400 set, you’ll get $120 of store credit and we’ll use that for other supplies for the kids.

And you thought ink cartridges were a racket.

I've been overall quite happy with my Inktank as my main color printer. It still has inkjet technology but print cost I think comes down to like about 3 cents a page for color and about 1/4 of a penny a page for black.

The other questions of the inktank of course is does the nozzle get clogged like regular inkjets. So not really, with my strategy of printing out a page of a solid bar with all the colors once a week to keep to juices flowing.

As for the OEM cartridges of a color laser. I found that out the hard way too with my Cannon color laser. A choice between inferior 3rd party toner or get taken to the woodshed at OEM toner prices.

Happy with my Intank . Though for me the Cannon with 3rd party toner still serves a purpose so not ready to part with. I'm [-]not rich enough[/-] too cheap to pay for OEM prices.

 

[Jerry1]

Happy with my Intank . Though for me the Cannon with 3rd party toner still serves a purpose so not ready to part with. I'm [-]not rich enough[/-] too cheap to pay for OEM prices.

My HP printer is very similar to the one I got at Costco for my daughter, however, I was able to buy third part toner cartridges for it that are indistinguishable from the OEM’s as far as I can tell. However, I believe the one from Costco is too new or too small of a base to have enough cartridges out there to be re-manufactured (just my guess). But my complaints are specific to that model HP.

Also, me and DW use a fraction of the toner that three school aged grandkids use so it matters way more for them than it would for me. I think it took two years for me to run out the cartridges that came with my printer. It took my daughter less than six months with three kids home doing virtual school during a pandemic.

 

[easysurfer]

My HP printer is very similar to the one I got at Costco for my daughter, however, I was able to buy third part toner cartridges for it that are indistinguishable from the OEM’s as far as I can tell. However, I believe the one from Costco is too new or too small of a base to have enough cartridges out there to be re-manufactured (just my guess). But my complaints are specific to that model HP.

Also, me and DW use a fraction of the toner that three school aged grandkids use so it matters way more for them than it would for me. I think it took two years for me to run out the cartridges that came with my printer. It took my daughter less than six months with three kids home doing virtual school during a pandemic.

With my Cannon Laser (which is an ink toner hog) I could not justify either paying for OEM cartridges (great quality prints but very expensive) or 3rd party (cheap cartridges but inferior pictures of photos).

So now I used the Cannon (with cheap cartridges) mostly for stuff I can't afford to get wet. Like if I print the address info to ship off an ebay sale. Otherwise, I like using the inktank to print and enjoy how much ink still remains .

 

[USGrant1962]

Make sure you look up how to reset "empty" toner carts for your model of laser printer. For home use, most cartridges will have months of toner in them after the printer reports empty.

 

[eytonxav]

I have been debating about replacing my OfficeJet 6700 for some time due to wifi connectivity issues, although it has been stable now for several months. I am really wondering if a monochrome laser printer would be a better choice for me, as I rarely print in color. I assume you can still scan something in color with such a printer and the cartridge costs should be even lower.

 

[easysurfer]

I have been debating about replacing my OfficeJet 6700 for some time due to wifi connectivity issues, although it has been stable now for several months. I am really wondering if a monochrome laser printer would be a better choice for me, as I rarely print in color. I assume you can still scan something in color with such a printer and the cartridge costs should be even lower.

Yes, you can still scan in color.

I still have an old trusty Samsung monochrome MFC printer. Scans, copies, prints, faxes. Scans to color are a yes.

For me, I'm both spoiled with color printing also with older eyes, the contrast color adds is a nice addition over monochrome.

Color print, one of my splurges .

 

[eytonxav]

Yes, you can still scan in color.

Thanks!

 

[camfused]

I have been debating about replacing my OfficeJet 6700 for some time due to wifi connectivity issues, although it has been stable now for several months. I am really wondering if a monochrome laser printer would be a better choice for me, as I rarely print in color. I assume you can still scan something in color with such a printer and the cartridge costs should be even lower.

Since your rarely print in color, but apparently do occasionally, get a color one. The toners are individual per primary color (and one for black too), so your color toners will last a very long time, but will still be there for when you occasionally need them.

 

[GTFan]

Make sure you look up how to reset "empty" toner carts for your model of laser printer. For home use, most cartridges will have months of toner in them after the printer reports empty.

That's a good point, have done this with our Brother color laser and it's still printing fine on the starter carts. Another way they want you to buy more toner because they're not making a lot on the printers.

 

[2177V]

my two cents:

I love my older HP printers but HP recently designed their printers to reject all non-genuine cartridges. To add insult to injury, the HP genuine cartridges costs are much higher than other brands genuine cartridges costs. HP lost me as a customer.

I had a Canon printer but it died in less than 3 years.

I had a Epson printer but it started printing badly after 3 years and it too dies in less than 4 years.

I now have a brother HLL2390DW black and white laser printer which I really like because of the laser quality and low cost of genuine cartridges. Consumers Report rates the HLL2390 DW very highly. I do 90% of my printing on the HLL2390 DW. A genuine large capacity cartridge cost $76 for 3000 pages or 2.6 cents per B&W page.

For color printing I have the brother MFC J5330DW inkjet. Consumers Report rates this inkjet as average overall but the color printing quality is very high. The genuine brother inkjets are lower cost than HP and I do not do very many color prints. The genuine black inkjet cartridge cost $48 for 3000 pages or 1.6 cents per B&W page. I estimate a color copy will cost 5 cents per color page.

When I compared the cost per page for HP genuine cartridges, HP is about 25% higher than Brothers depending which model you buy. I suggest closely comparing the cost of ink or toner cartridges as "cost per page" in your buying decision.

 

[Camas Lilly]

I did a lot of research before letting go of my ancient Brother MFC 8440. It was a great printer and still worked, but I needed wireless and smaller. I went with the MFC-L3770CDW and it has been great.

 

[RobbieB]

Yeah, a full set of cartridges will set you back as much as the printer, but my starters are still working 2 years later. If I have to spend $400 every 3 or 4 years (high caps) so be it. Unlike ink jets, there is nothing to clog with non regular use and they are fast and don't smear.

 

[easysurfer]

I bought some ink bottles today for my Epson Inktank printer. Not because I needed the ink as I still have over 1/2 tank remaining from my initial printer purchase Nov last year.

I bought the ink from Amazon to bump up the purchase price to over $35 for faster shipping on something else I got.

Will need the ink, sometime. A bottle lasts thousands of pages of print .

 

[camfused]

^^^ How are these giant tank printers for users that print maybe once every 3 months? With regular inkjet printers, they tend to dry up if left for months with no printing.

I ask, because this use case fits one of my family members.

 

[easysurfer]

^^^ How are these giant tank printers for users that print maybe once every 3 months? With regular inkjet printers, they tend to dry up if left for months with no printing.

I ask, because this use case fits one of my family members.

I had the very same concern.

The printer has a nozzle check ability to print out a nozzle check to see if any nozzles are clogged.

I did some testing with my printer. I left idle under normal non-use for about 2 weeks. The nozzle check pattern did show that needed cleaning. So I ran the clean nozzle routine that did waste ink.

But now, instead of letting idle. Once a week, I print out a pattern using all the colors (see attached) of my printer's ink. By doing that (have done so for about 6 months) and haven't encountered more clogging (knock on wood). Waste a little ink and paper each week, but so far, clog free.