Color laserjet all-in-one recommendations 2021

GalaxyBoy

GalaxyBoy

Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
Joined
Jul 7, 2009
Messages
2,798
Location
The Beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains
There have been threads in the past regarding printers but it's been a little while. I want to upgrade to a color laserjet with scanning capabilities for printing genealogical records, enough to fill notebooks, and for scanning a fair number of antique photos and paper records. A document feeder would be nice. I currently have an Epson inkjet which is working OK, although it's been making some pretty scary grinding noises while printing. WiFi and Mac airprint capabilities are musts. I'm willing to spend several hundred bucks.

Any recommendations? Anything to avoid? Folks seem to like Brother and HP in the past, but I'm not married to any particular manufacturer.
 
I'm happy with the Brother MFC-L3710CW. I've had it for almost 3 years and no complaints. Does everything I ask and more.
 
I can't speak about a printer, but if you are scanning antique photos I would definitely invest in a decent flatbed scanner. Which does not need to be super expensive. When I began my scanning project in 2015 I picked up a Canoscan 9000 for ~$200 out the door.

A side note which you may well be aware of, save the images in a lossless format, TIFF is an ISO standard lossless format and is probably your best bet for long term support.

For the type of imagery you want to save I would not cut corners on quality and you definitely want an image format that is projected to be around for the long term.

Have fun!
 
We have a Brother MFC-9970CDW. Had it for Eons, still plodding along, it does everything we need. However, we do not have a land line so we do not use the Fax part. It is very heavy but.
 
I cannot recommend Cannon laser printers. I bought one about 2 years ago and ended up buying an Epson Inktank as my main color printer. I still have the Cannon as there are times I want printouts that can't afford to get wet and the Inktank printout doesn't play nice with water.
 
For printers, I will always buy Brother after wanting to throw every other brand out the window in frustration. However, I try to never do the all-in-one stuff, because they never seem to be able to do all things exceptionally well. So I'd say, get your printer (a Brother!), and get a scanner. I love Fujitsu scanners, but mine is not a flatbed.
 
Can't really help but good luck on finding a great printer for your needs!

I had a Brother color laser printer for about ten years or so, and it worked really well! But that model weighed 180 pounds, so a few years ago I replaced it with a Brother black-and-white laser printer that is very lightweight and inexpensive. I'm sure they don't weigh that much any more. Anyway I'm voting for some sort of Brother printer for you.
 
JT90505 said:
I can't speak about a printer, but if you are scanning antique photos I would definitely invest in a decent flatbed scanner. Which does not need to be super expensive. When I began my scanning project in 2015 I picked up a Canoscan 9000 for ~$200 out the door.

A side note which you may well be aware of, save the images in a lossless format, TIFF is an ISO standard lossless format and is probably your best bet for long term support.

For the type of imagery you want to save I would not cut corners on quality and you definitely want an image format that is projected to be around for the long term.

Have fun!
Click to expand...

Agreed! Good recommendation for a dedicated scanner. I do save scans as TIFF format, converting them to jpg when necessary to have a smaller file size such as emailing, posting to the internet, etc. Hmmm, more dough getting blown... :)
 
Just acquired an HP color laser with scanner for MOL and set it up for her. So far so good. Due to ongoing supply chain issues selection for printers is pretty limited at the moment. Would buy again!
 
We bought a Canon MF 644 CDW all-in-one color laser printer earlier this year. Very happy with it so far.
 
GalaxyBoy said:
... Any recommendations? Anything to avoid? Folks seem to like Brother and HP in the past, but I'm not married to any particular manufacturer.
Click to expand...
Here's what I do: I try to avoid the consumer products completely. I have a standard query watch on Craigslist for "laser workgroup printer." The workgroup printers are tanks, rated for thousands of pages per month and with large-capacity toner cartridges that are available refilled by third parties. It is also fairly routine for them to have automatic double-sided printing. Page counts can be surprisingly low, probably due to lease returns. The one I have now is an HP 2300dn. Right now I see on our CraigsList: "HP LaserJet Enterprise P3015dn Workgroup Laser Printer $99" Fantastic deal if page count is not astronomical. Tank? It weighs 45#.

That approach is unlikely to yield a scanner, though. But scanning can be difficult. I have a Xerox Documate 3125 which is a private-labeled Fujutsu ScanSnap. It is a sweetheart that happily chews though piles of paper with great software features. For highest quality and oddball stuff, I have an elderly Microtek flat bed with enough resolution to digitize 35mm slides. I'd recommend a separate-box approach for your genealogical records and photos. Risking oddball and not-perfectly-flat material to a doc feeder is not something I would even consider. Doc feeders are happiest with pristine letter-size sheets.
 
W2R said:
Can't really help but good luck on finding a great printer for your needs!

I had a Brother color laser printer for about ten years or so, and it worked really well! But that model weighed 180 pounds, so a few years ago I replaced it with a Brother black-and-white laser printer that is very lightweight and inexpensive. I'm sure they don't weigh that much any more. Anyway I'm voting for some sort of Brother printer for you.
Click to expand...

W2R, what model do you have? I'm looking for one now.
 
I agree about having a flatbed scanner. My Canon one has outlasted the HP I used to have. It is thin enough to slip under my desk side.
My issue with all in ones, is if one function fails, you are stuck.
I also have a Brother B & W laser printer and am happy with it
 
I bought a Brother CDW-L3770 CDW a couple years ago and I still love it. Prints and scans 2 sides (saves paper) multi page auto feed. Good picture scans, good color, sends and receives faxes and still running on same toner cartridges.

It was on sale for $350 at Staples.
 
I have an HP multi function color laser. I love it but hate hate hate the cost of HP toner cartridges. Third party cartridges can be had for a substantial discount, but they’re not all good and some even require that you cut the chip out of the cartridges that came with the computer and insert them into the new (refurbished, third party) cartridges. Then you lose your page count and other information, but technically, they do work. But, a PITA for sure.

As others have said, you’ll be better off with a separate scanner for your purpose. The HP obviously has a scanner, but DW (the photo librarian) uses a separate scanner that has way better functionality. It’s old and I’m sure they don’t make that model any more, but it had special functionality for photos and for negatives and for slides. I recommend a multi function machine, just don’t think it will be the right tool for the photo scanning. It is great for making copies and scanning documents and turning them into .pdf files for storage or sending information to others (email).
 
This isn't a Laser Jet, but we love our color Epson WF-7720 Inkjet Printer.

It has a very large scanning bed, is rather quiet, reasonably fast. We also like VueScan for scanning software. You buy it once and updates are free. It sounds similar to the Brother RobbieB described. Our model can easily handle letter, legal, and 11x17 paper. You can crop photos. I scanned multiple very old photos and blew them up so tiny ones are easier to see.

We use an older scanner for slides.
 
RobbieB said:
I bought a Brother CDW-L3770 CDW a couple years ago and I still love it. Prints and scans 2 sides (saves paper) multi page auto feed. Good picture scans, good color, sends and receives faxes and still running on same toner cartridges.

It was on sale for $350 at Staples.
Click to expand...

Ditto. Great printer. Also has all the modern airprint and such, so I can print photos, texts, etc directly from my phone.
 
RobbieB said:
I bought a Brother CDW-L3770 CDW a couple years ago and I still love it. Prints and scans 2 sides (saves paper) multi page auto feed. Good picture scans, good color, sends and receives faxes and still running on same toner cartridges.

It was on sale for $350 at Staples.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I dropped by Best Buy this morning and this would be my choice out of what they happened to have in stock. It was $399.

I seem to see a trend in this and other threads here for a recommendation for Brother.
 
Per-page cost on inkjet printers is very high, I don't think I'd buy another.

I like the Brother laser printer suggestions.
 
Is anyone aware of a good consumer-type laser printer that supports 11x17 paper? Black and white is fine, I don't need color.
 
GalaxyBoy said:
Yeah, I dropped by Best Buy this morning and this would be my choice out of what they happened to have in stock. It was $399.

I seem to see a trend in this and other threads here for a recommendation for Brother.
Click to expand...

Printers were heavily sold at price gouging prices last year since so many people for stuck and home having to remote work and school. I so happened to be [-]wanting[/-] needing a new color printer and was monitoring closely.

As soon as the printer when down to $399 I pulled the trigger. Prices were regular marked up to $599. Even today, the printer I got is selling for $499.

A Brother Inkvestment (their version of an inktank) had sold for about $399 I saw marked up to about $799 or so. Them gold diggers :(.
 
GalaxyBoy said:
There have been threads in the past regarding printers but it's been a little while. I want to upgrade to a color laserjet with scanning capabilities for printing genealogical records, enough to fill notebooks, and for scanning a fair number of antique photos and paper records. A document feeder would be nice. I currently have an Epson inkjet which is working OK, although it's been making some pretty scary grinding noises while printing. WiFi and Mac airprint capabilities are musts. I'm willing to spend several hundred bucks.

Any recommendations? Anything to avoid? Folks seem to like Brother and HP in the past, but I'm not married to any particular manufacturer.
Click to expand...
Availability, cost, supplies, noise, duty cycle. Opinions and feedback are useful, but your needs are not necessarily mine.

I have a multi-function Canon B/W with color scanner, etc. It works fine after 10 years. I have a color HP CP2025, and it too works fine for 10 years. I do print some genealogical records, but the color is ignored since I print mostly in B/W.

For a genealogical book, I'd probably make a PDF and decide what pages to print in color. Last time I looked at imprint cost B/W was about .10 while color was .50.

FYI, I did purchase a B/W Brother model this year, and the quality is fine.
 
Out of Steam said:
Per-page cost on inkjet printers is very high, I don't think I'd buy another.

I like the Brother laser printer suggestions.
Click to expand...

We've had a couple of Brothers (B/W and color) for years and they just keep on chugging. Easy to get cheap toner carts and the built-in scanners on both have worked fine.

Highly recommended and I would never bother with an inkjet now after all the ones we've had to toss because the printheads go bad.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

D
Recommendations of color laserjets for photos?
Replies
6
Views
528
Davidhelp
D
braumeister
Need computer recommendation
2
Replies
27
Views
2K
mpeirce
mpeirce
C
All in one printer recommendation please
Replies
23
Views
2K
Cpadave
C

Latest posts

Back
Top Bottom