Cheap Laser Printer .....

[John G]

Good argument JSR, main thing you have left out is that laser printers are hassle free.

With a laser you can leave it for a day, week, month - even a year and the 1st page will be the same as the last. Try that with an inkjet - I ran an epson inkjet for a while and got pee'd off everytime I switched it on the inks had either dried up, the nozzle was blocked or it had a paper feed problem - never again. When I did have this piece of crap the inkjet carts where around £20.00 each (originals) and there was two to buy every other month due to them drying up - I never got the 500 pages you suggest.

A laser printer will never be as cheap to run as a inkjet, but I'd pay the extra for the ease of use and the speed compared to an inkjet.

[JSR]

The thing is that laser printers used to always be cheaper to run than an inkjet, that's what causes the misconception. My first colour laser printer had over 10,000 pages from a single cartridge - but the printer cost £999. Page cost was negligible.

Laser printers can be hassle free, you're right and if you've had a bad history with inkjets then it's possible you may find it worth paying the extra for the hassle free nature of laser printers.

But are they hassle free? I've had several colour laser printers in my time. One of them was a fairly expensive (in today's terms) Epson Aculaser C1000. It developed a problem and while Epson were top guys for trying to help without charging, even cleaning up a sensor for me for free, it ultimately needed servicing. The minimum service cost would have cost more than to buy a brand new replacement printer. I replaced the printer with the Aculaser C1100 (because I'd been happy with the print quality of Aculasers). That worked fine until a jammed up sheet of labels caused a mark on the transfer drum. That mark prints on every page, yet to replace the drum would cost more than the printer.

I also have a good Samsung colour laser here. That sits idle, like the Aculaser, because of the high cost of toner. You get 5,000 colour pages or 7,000 black pages per toner - but each toner costs £100+. I can't keep finding £100 every time a toner runs out. I tried the refill option (from the link in my post), which saves significant amount of money - but it's a hassle, and it's messy, so I stopped doing it. The more toner you buy, the more pages you print, the sooner you'll have to replace the imaging unit/transfer belt/fuser unit/something-else-that-costs-more-than-the-printer.

I've tried many different options and solutions. Although I've not had big problems with Epsons in my time, my office printer of choice these days is my Brother MFC-5890CN. It's a £100 A3 inkjet printer. I use large refillable cartridges (which hold 70-100ml of ink in each one - the equivalent of 10 regular inkjet cartridges). I paid £9.99 for 100ml of all four colours back in January - and I've never had to refill/replace the cartridges since, and there's still plenty of ink left in each cartridge. The printer has not had one fault, one glitch, or any instance of "hassle" whatsoever. No head block issues, no nothing. Running cost is virtually £0.

When printing before, whether using a colour laser or an inkjet, my first thought was always "can I afford to print that?" Now, I print everything without thinking because cost is no issue and there is no hassle involved.

PS - The "500" figure is a 5% coverage figure used to compare claimed cartridge capacities. The Magicolor claims to do 2,500 (high yield), 1,500 (standard), and 500 (starter) pages per cartridge - but that's at the same 5%. Your typical page will be 20% coverage, so you should always reduce the claimed capacity of any toner/inkjet cartridge by a factor of 4. If they say you'll get 500 pages @5%, they mean 125 normal pages. If they say 2,500 pages at 5%, they mean 600 normal pages. That's why you didn't get 500 pages from your inkjet cartridge, and it's why you'll never get 2,500 pages from a toner cartridge even when they claim that you will.

[AdamB]

I've tried many different options and solutions. Although I've not had big problems with Epsons in my time, my office printer of choice these days is my Brother MFC-5890CN.

Always been an epson man myself - don't ask me why I just have.

But, the brother printer looks nice - what's the print quality like? (i.e can it print out photos?)

[JSR]

Always been an epson man myself - don't ask me why I just have.

I know what you mean. For years I was an die-hard Epson "fan". I still believe their top-end printers can produce the best compromise between quality, colour gamut, and long-life (although the likes of HP have caught up with them now, I believe).

The best printer I have here is my Epson R1800, but I don't use it because I can't afford the inks. A printer can be the best in the world, but if you can't use it then it doesn't matter how good it is.

But, the brother printer looks nice - what's the print quality like? (i.e can it print out photos?)

Brother printers used to be pretty terrible. My first foray into the world of Brother was an all in one fax/answerphone thing. For features, it was great. For print quality it was questionable. Quality was "almost" there, but colour accuracy wasn't. Build quality was questionable, and having to open the whole printer just to change the ink was a real bind.

I didn't expect much when I got my A3 Brother printer. It was on special offer, came with a free camera, and someone else bought it for me when I expressed a vague interest. I may not have bought it myself.

From it, I learned that Brother had improved. Print quality (using their inks and their paper, of course) is really quite superb. Of course, using their ink and their paper costs more but you do get a sizeable chunk of ink in the cartridges if you go for one of their printers that takes the "high yield" cartridges.

Day to day printing (by that I mean photos on plain paper) isn't up there with Epson, but office printing is fine. It's not ultra-quick, particularly in any of the quality modes and there's never been a clearer example that draft/fast mode is for draft prints only. However, I accept the day-to-day printing and speed deficiencies for the convenience of the large size ink cartridges and near-zero cost ink.

Third-party ink won't be identical to OEM ink in many areas, but it comes reasonably close in terms of colour accuracy. I have profiled my printer to print photos from Qimage if I need to print to my vast collection of Epson papers that I've stocked up over time.

You have to accept compromises, of course you do, because you're getting a lot for your money - all Brother printers have scanners on top (even the £50 ones!), most have displays on the front (often colour displays for standalone printing), and most network ones have an iPhone/Android app that can both print *and* scan.

If your sole goal is for photo quality on thick photo paper, then go with Epson, HP, or Canon - every time, don't even think about it. If your main aim is economical printing with occasional photo printing, then consider the Brother because these days they aren't all that bad.

I hope I haven't come across as some kind of "brother fanboy" or something...