Choosing a Personal Printer For the Long Haul

The Optimizer writes "After 16 years of service, my laser printer, a NEC Silentwriter 95, is finally wearing its internals out, and I need to find a replacement. It's printed over 30,000 pages and survived a half-dozen long-distance moves without giving me any trouble. I believe it's done so well for two reasons. First, it's sturdily built and hails from an era when every fraction of a penny didn't have to be cost-cut out of manufacturing. The other reason was its software. Since it supported postscript Level II, it wasn't bound to a specific operating system or hardware platform, so long as a basic postscript level 2 driver was available. A new color laser printer with postscript 3 seems like a logical replacement, and numerous inexpensive printers are available. I'd rather get a smaller, personal-size printer than a heavy workgroup printer. Most of all, I would like it to still be usable and running well with Windows 9, OS X 11, and whatever else we will be using in 2020. Can anyone recommend a brand or series of printers that is built to last and isn't going to be completely dependent on OS specific proprietary drivers?"

Comments

HP

[Anonymous Coward]

I realize things have changed, but I still stick by HP laser printers. Try to get a midrange one with a network connection and PostScript Level3, and you should hopefully be set.

Re:HP

[i.r.id10t]

My mom is still using a laserjet II that she got for $25 on a surplus sale from the county. When she had it serviced, the built in utility reported that it had printed over 2 million pages.... still going strong, she's had it for 10 years.

So, I'd say haunt surplus sales, etc. and pick up an older HP laserjet .. built like a tank.

Re:HP

[pz]

I realize things have changed, but I still stick by HP laser printers. Try to get a midrange one with a network connection and PostScript Level3, and you should hopefully be set.

I'd go one farther. I've bought a handful of printers (4 total) to do some medium-duty printing (25k pages per year). HP's consumer-level stuff is reasonably well-made, but ends up being very expensive in toner. Many people use aftermarket toner for that reason. HP's entry business-level stuff is GREAT. Printers made with an anticipated lifetime of over 100k pages. The newest ones (like the 2055d and related B&W laser printers) are pretty small, too. They speak PS and PCL. You can get off-lease units on eBay for not too much, or wait for one of the sales at tech stores. If you get a used one, the most important thing to watch for is the number of pages on the print path, and try to find one with less than 10k. From time to time HP has trade-in bonus programs where you send them an old printer and get money back, when you buy one of their new ones.

But, if you elect to go the color route, be prepared for sticker shock on the toner. You should expect to start paying 3-4x the money because you'll be buying 4 times as many cartridges. Even if, like most, your printing is primarily black-and-white, you'll be replacing the K (black) cartridge quite often, because for a given size printer, the four carts for color reproduction (CMYK, cyan, magenta, yellow, black) hold less than 1/4 the amount of toner each as the single K cartridge in a B&W printer.

My wife and I have a Dell 1710 printer at home, that's a B&W non-duplex model made by Lexmark, and I'm waiting for it to die to replace it with an HP equivalent. The Dell prints great at first, but altogether too quickly , the output becomes shoddy. I've not had such problems with the HP printers in my lab (again, with 25k pages per year at work).

Re:HP

[Anonymous Coward]

Find a used hp 4200 series. We have a dozen of these at my office. One of them prints twenty thousand pages per month. It never breaks, i can print to it from linux or windows, it prints fast, etc. They just go and go and go. And theyre cheap as hell too.

Re:HP

[afidel]

I don't think a 1xxx will fulfill his needs, the 1xxx series are almost all win-printers (host based). For duty cycle it would absolutely be enough as 30,000 pages is the monthly duty cycle for a 2xxx series printer. If you need a more substantial printer I think the 4xxx series are the best built printers HP still makes. They are nothing like the LJ3/4 printers though, I once repaired a decade old LJ3 that had over a million pages on it, the only reason it needed repair is that a tooth on the single plastic gear had broken (everything else in the unit was metal). Personally I have an old Lexmark laser with a 500 page feeder and the backup is a LJ4. My primary color need is photos and those are best done by a mini-lab on real photo paper.

Re:HP

[bleh-of-the-huns]

I disagree about the 1xxx series, I have a 1020 laserjet, and it works just fine on my freebsd cups print server I use to provide print services to all the machines in my house (2 OSX, 3 or 4 windows boxes, and a bunch of openbsd and freebsd boxes).

Re:HP

[Reece400]

Yes, so long as the printer supports PCL5 (which almost all HP laserjets do) it should be nearly as universal as one which supports postscript. However that said, if he is looking for postscript, I don't believe the 1xxx series support that.

Re:HP

[Technician]

I'm using a Laserjet III. I picked up the memory module cheap online so it will now print a full graphic page. It's hardly portable like the Laserjet II. Aftermarket cartridges are 4 for $100. The consumables for this are about the same price as 1 set of carts for the color HP950c color ink jet, but last 5X as long. This makes it's operating cost about 1/20th the ink jet. The inkjet is seldom used for this reason.

I recently picked up a laserjet 1100 for free. I use it when traveling. I'm still running on the original cart. The toner doesn't dry out like an unused inkjet so when I do need it, it just works.

Re:HP

[eam]

http://www.fixyourownprinter.com/

Re:HP

[Kagato]

I just don't think they make HP's like they used too. Even the medium duty office printers like the current 4500 series are a bit dodgy. Brand new laser printer and the gears inside are so loud you can hear it from across the office. Not to mention the odd squeeks. Those aren't good signs.

I used to repair prints as a lad just out of school in the 90's. Most HPs back then never broke per se. You'd replace rollers and other consumable parts now and then, but an actual failure was pretty rare and often attributable to not doing the recommended maintenance kit. I think the best printer they put out was the 5simx. I would still see them around offices 8-10 years later.

Re:HP

[techess]

I've seen the same. Our old HP's (5+ y.o.) work like champs and you can't beat them into submission. Our new ones seem flimsy and fail too often. Also we've been getting more and more problems with ps/pdf files not printing correctly on the PCL based models. Even after updating the firmware to new PCL revs.

We've switched to Ricoh. Their printers feel a lot like the old HP's. The Ricoh's we buy weigh about 20 lbs heavier than their Xerox or HP counterpart. Some of the printer models are Mac & Windows only, but you can use the Mac PPD or get a custom PPD at linuxprinting.org.

So far I've been really happy with them. Plus you can manage them via https/ssh instead of http/telnet if you want.

Re:HP

[ndege]

Agreed. I am responsible for approx 950 employees's IT equipment; this includes printers. For 98% of our users, we purchase refurbished HP LaserJet 5n. I am sure nearly everyone has seen them; here is a photo to remind you. These are the old B/W workhorse laser printers that go and go. We can get about 10,000 pages per toner cartridge, and replacement cartridges are approx $38. Works beautifully when connected via ethernet. There is great driver support (uses PCL5). We use stock drivers which are included for everything from Windows 98-Windows 7, Debian, FreeBSD, and Citrix (strickly speaking, this isn't a different OS, but most printer drivers are a PITA to get working correctly and fast within the citrix environment.)

And, if you are interested, we order our refurbished units for under $200 each shipped from Global Printer Services.

Note: I have no affiliation with global printer other than being a satisfied customer. Also, just FYI: They are a smaller business, and as such, treat their customers very well. I deal with enough junk from the likes of AT&T^H^H^H^H "telcos" that it is nice to not have to hassle to get a printer or parts on order when needed.

Re:HP

[binary paladin]

I still use an HP LaserJet 4 Plus and although mine lacks the PostScript module, it does have JetDirect and every machine on the planet supports it. I used it to print forms for a political campaign I was a part of a couple years ago to the tune of about 25,000 pages in a matter of 2 weeks. It's old. The plastic is all yellowed. It still works just fine.

I tell most people I know to check eBay or Craig's List for old HP LaserJets. They last forever and can be had for almost nothing. The toner isn't even that pricey.

Laser printers

[DurendalMac]

Get another laser printer. Take care of it and it'll last forever. Postscript means no serious OS dependence. Hell, I just set up a new Ricoh printer at an office that needed to be used with a Mac OS 9 application. It only needed very basic printing, so no biggie. It worked fine, so thank God for Postscript. Ricoh and Brother are good in my eyes, but I'm sure someone with more experience will chime in.

HP

[benwiggy]

You can't go much wrong with a decent HP Laser printer. As long as you don't get the completely bargain bucket, bottom of the range ones.

30,000 pages is nothing. I've got an 8-year-old HP5000 series that does 10,000 pages a year.

Anything with an Ethernet socket and support for PostScript (or even PDF natively, these days) is not going to need much in the way of drivers, particularly on OS X.

Brother HL-2150N

[gngulrajani]

Was 80GBP has cheap consumables and works fine with CUPS.
A lot of the Brother lasers get good reviews.

Re: Brother HL-2150N

[jizziknight]

I'll second this. They generally don't require any software to work properly either. Just plug it in, and it's good to go.

Re:hmmmm

[Tubal-Cain]

Thanks.

OSX 11?

[Rhaban]

Doesn't the X stands for 10?

HP P2015dn - I love it

[squallbsr]

Get yourself another laser printer, after I bought mine (HP P2015-dn for $300 2 years ago) I haven't looked back. 99.99% of my printing is black and white anyway, I use the crap out of the double sided feature and I love the networked aspect.

My only complaint is that it needs to be restarted every month or so - otherwise it takes 20 minutes to print 1 page.

Re:HP P2015dn - I love it

[pz]

Get yourself another laser printer, after I bought mine (HP P2015-dn for $300 2 years ago) I haven't looked back. 99.99% of my printing is black and white anyway, I use the crap out of the double sided feature and I love the networked aspect.

My only complaint is that it needs to be restarted every month or so - otherwise it takes 20 minutes to print 1 page.

I have a p2015dn with that same problem, only it was after every big document. It was 100% solved by putting more memory in the printer.

One suggestion

[Anonymous Coward]

Brother has some of the best Linux support I've seen. And their products are well built.

http://www.brother-usa.com/Printer/Color_Laser_Printers/

The HL-3040CN is personal-sized, but packs a punch.

Network-ready
17 ppm
LED instead of laser (higher dpi, fewer moving parts)
under $300

Re:One suggestion

[Anonymous Coward]

I second Brothers products.

I've had the 4070CDW for about a year now and it runs great. Internal duplex printing, 21 ppm black and 21ppm color, PCL and postscript 3 support. Wifi, Lan, etc., etc. My only complaint is that unless you specify that the print job complete in monochrome, it will use some of the color toner even if all the font printed is black. Small gripe though, easily solved by selecting mono for everything but true color and is actually an issue for a lot of other brands. Plus Brothers provides Windows/Mac/Linux drivers, so there is no need to use post script emulation. The printer is a bit large for home use, and costs almost $500, but for a 15 year investment like the op asked for that's $33/year plus your paper and toner costs. The printer goes to sleep when not in use, warms up within about 20 seconds, prints, then goes right back to sleep.

Regards

Re:Samsung

[outcast36]

I bought a Samsung ML 1710 about 5 years ago, and it's worked from Ubuntu, Xandros, OSX10, Windows 2000-2008. Cheap workhorse, not a lot of extra features that you don't need breaking down and slowing things down. When it goes, I'll replace it with another one.

Re:Not a printer expert but..

[jimicus]

Most of the stuff out there now is cheap plastic crap for "personal size" printers.
You get 18-24 months of moderate use out of them before they die, and ALL of them are proprietary drivers.

Not strictly true. Kyocera's printers are Postscript throughout the range, and they have got a cheapie model, the FS-1100.

I don't think it's as sturdy as the HP Laserjet 4L I bought it to replace, but it's not as bad as some.

Older generation HPs

[citking]

The older generation of HP printers are about the best one can get. The LaserJet 4/5 series were built like tanks, using steel for the frame and being very, very simple to repair.

Since HP 4s and 5s use standard PCL and PS languages they are very easily able to work across platforms. (One note however - if using PostScript with a LaserJet 4 or 5 be sure to have enough printer memory or you'll have a few issues with the printer becoming overwhelmed).

Before Carly Fiorina destroyed HP they used to be the leader in printers (or at least in the very top tier). Now they crank out plastic pieces of shit that break after a year, are difficult to repair using off-the-bench tools, and try to market a new toner cart to you when the old one is still at 20% capacity. Seriously, our LaserJet 4200 will not go into powersave mode when it is telling me to order a new cartridge with 1/5th the life remaining. It is very annoying.

While the LaserJet 4/5 series of printers are not small, personal-type lasers they are workhorses. As I stated before parts are cheap and are easy to replace should that be necessary. Toner carts are prevalent and are reasonable. I'd go with these tried-and-true printers if you are looking for another decade-plus of worry-free operation. Personally I'd go specifically with the LaserJet 5m, but if you don't like the size/heft of that perhaps a LaserJet 4p would be more to your liking, though they can be a bit more difficult to work on because of their small stature.

Re:Older generation HPs

[rkww]

Personally I'd go specifically with the LaserJet 5m

I concur. Note that the 'm' suffix means 'Macintosh' and indicates that it comes with ethernet and PostScript 2 as standard.

XEROX Phaser 6280N

[characterZer0]

PCL 6
PostScript level 3
IPv6

That should be okay for a while.

Re:Samsung

[datapharmer]

I second the samsung printers. We purchased a ML-2851ND for work and have been very happy with it. For a laser printer it is relatively small (not as small as an hp-p1005, but the hp already requires you to track down a driver for osx - at least for 10.5, which worries me); the ML-2851ND printed on windows, osx, and over the linux network just fine without any special drivers. There are easy configuration drivers on cd for several operating systems, but for osx and xp I just listed it as generic postscript and it prints great. It offers duplex which is nice and the dual usb/ethernet interface means it will be more likely to survive changes in technology over time... there is bound to be something that can convert to either usb or ethernet 20 years from now. The memory can be upgraded or replaced if needed and it is fast out of the box.

Brother Printers

[mgbastard]

I've had great results with Brother's printers. Postscript, good driver support, etc. etc. Also, the ones with wireless are pretty handy too. Ethernet for cheap, and decent consumables, both offbrand and onbrand. e.g. HL-5370DW PCL, Postscript clone, duplex, straight paper path (cardstock!), wireless 11g, ethernet & usb. Paper trays available. $249 USD Also, total MFC with Fax, flatbed: MFC-8890DW $499 and down.

Do you really need color?

[localman57]

One question I ask people when they're looking for a printer is if they really need color. They typically say, "Of course! I print photos!" but the fact is you can run a few hundred digital prints from Wal Mart for what a single color Inkjet cartridge costs. The quality is better, the fade resistance is better, and most people don't get a few hundred prints from a cartridge. And, assuming you're going there anyway and you have a typical cheap inkjet, it's easier to send them to the photodepartment via their web site and pick them up when you go shopping than to print them at home.

Loyal Canon Customer

[rcolbert]

I have to give credit to Canon. I've had a few of their printers now. One experience though galvanized my loyalty. I bought a fairly nice MFP from them a few years back. After a few months, the unit failed to power on (likely due to problematic power surges that I've since mitigated with strong ups/power conditioners, btw.) Anyhow, I called their support, and here's what happened:

The first person I spoke with was able to handle my call from start to finish.

The call took less than ten minutes total.

They determined quickly that the printer should be replaced.

I was never asked to 'prove' anything, everything was on trust - no receipt, warranty registration, etc.

Canon shipped me a brand new printer that arrived in two days. I used that box plus their own pre-paid, pre-printed shipping label to return the old printer.

Long story short, I've never had such a positive customer service experience with a consumer level product. It was the most hassle-free RMA I've ever experienced, consumer or otherwise. I'll continue to buy as long as the support is there. And by the way, their photo printing is quite impressive at the mid and high end.

Re:Not a printer expert but..

[drinkypoo]

Making the printer physically larger means that the polar moment of inertia is increased, and that the forces of the reciprocating print head reversing direction are dissipated through a longer lever arm. Or in even simpler terms, making it bigger makes it shake less. This translates into a longer lifespan and overall cheaper design phase. MemJet has promised to deliver print technology which will permit portable printers with good quality and absurd print speeds but, uh... where are they? I'm still waiting. You can buy a report about the technology, but you can't buy a printer. M'aidez!

Beware of toner cartridge DRM

[HeikkiK]

I was hoping to get a printer with similar requirements. I end up to buy Samsung CLP-350N, a color postscript laser having ethernet and USB and good Linux support both by free and Samsung provided drivers.

I was happy and I recommended it also to others, UNTIL the first black cartridge was finished. The first one does not contain any DRM chip so I did not know the printer has DRM at all. The printer keeps an internal counter how many pages are printed with the first cartridge and refuses to print anything after a certain limit unless the new cartridge contains a DRM chip. The chip coming with the unofficial cartridge claiming compatibility with CLP-350N did not work in via ethernet. Via USB it might have worked according to instructions given by cartridge seller but network functionality was required. So now I'am quite disappointed with this model.

I would go for HP now. Its popular so it is quite certain that toners are available after 10 years - either from the HP itself or from unofficial sources.

Available Cartridges Re:The best laser printer is

[AJ Mexico]

The joke translates: find one with readily available cartridges. :) If you have a little more volume, the issue becomes cost of consumables. Toner and drum cartridges are expensive, and often proprietary. Next printer, go to visit your local Cartridge World, or similar cartridge recycling vendor, and ask them: "What cartridges are cheapest, and most readily available, with no proprietary crap making them unrefillable?" Then, go buy the printer that uses them.

Can't go wrong with HP? Disagree ....

[King_TJ]

I'll give you a prime example. About 2-3 years ago, I decided it was time to buy a good, solid color laser printer for use with my side business. (I wanted to print my own business cards and advertising 3-fold fliers, among other things.) I finally chose an HP Color LaserJet 2550N since it got good reviews for print quality, offered OS X as well as Windows support, had built-in ethernet, and so on.

Well, it turns out it has several big problems most of the early reviewers neglected to mention. For starters, it has a really annoying habit of rotating the carousel the toner cartridges drop into, every 4 hours or so. There's *nothing* about this in the owner's manual, but people complaining to HP tech. support were supposedly told it's "normal behavior" and done "to ensure the toner doesn't clump up/settle in the cartridges over time". All fine and good, except the loud racket it makes, with a big "Cha-chunka, ka-chunka, ka-chunka, ka-CHUNK" drives you crazy when it wakes you up in the middle of the night, and you have to wonder how much extra wear and tear it makes on the internals.

  But wait, there's more! The second "surprise" HP had in store for owners of this printer is that each time it cycles the toners around like that, it counts it as 1 print cycle. The toner cartridges and the developer drum all have computer chips in them that track page count, and when it reaches HP's predefined "limit", the toner or developer reports it's "empty" to the printer, and stops working - no matter how much longer it could *really* go! So theoretically, if you leave this printer powered on, so it's available to print to on your LAN, but never even print anything - it will eventually tell you all the supplies are used up and need replacements!

After I owned this printer for the first year or so, I noticed it was quickly replaced with a newer model that uses totally different supplies, too. This is typical for HP's products these days - and becomes a real problem when you run out of a toner and want to grab a replacement locally, so you don't suffer a lot of downtime. At least with cheap inkjet printers, you can usually find what you need, even for popular older models, if you check several office supply places. But they don't like stocking > $120 each color toners for a printer that few people purchased before it was discontinued. So basically, I can't get anything locally for my 2550N!

It's a huge waste - but honestly, when my toners run out, my smartest move (money-wise) is to sell the printer for "parts" on eBay for $25 or whatever, and buy a new color laser that comes with the supplies. The supplies are often as costly to swap as it is to buy the whole printer with them!

Re:Not a printer expert but..

[story645]

and ALL of them are proprietary drivers.

HP's recommended generic linux printer driver (it's open source) works for practically their whole line (I switch between personal and workgroup printers and haven't had to install more than one package) and I find the linux tools to be less fussy than the windows set.

Brother Lazer printer

[RingDev]

After getting fed up with an ailing Lexmark and it's freaking ridiculously priced ink cartridges, I started looking around for a replacement. I pick up a Brother HL2170W for $60 on sale at some box store. That's right $60.00. The same cost as the two ink packs for the Crapmark I had been dealing with. It has it's own WAP built in and can auto detect and configure for most modern wireless routers (my Linksys WRT54GL's one-touch config picked up the printer with out me having to do a thing), or you can connect directly using ethernet (maybe even USB, I can't recall)

Anyway, for $60, this thing has performed admirably. I'm not printing off nightly novels, but it fulfills my educational and gaming related printing needs with ease. Time to first print is extremely fast. The only thing that I've heard people complain about is that in order for it to heat the corona wire so quickly, it has to pull 6-8 amps for a few seconds at the start of print jobs. So you'll probably want to put it on a different circuit than your PC.

And if it breaks, it's only $60...

-Rick

Re:hmmmm

[BrokenHalo]

You want a well built device that is not going to rely on OS specific closed source drivers?

I've had a Samsung ML-1710 laser printer for several years. It's only monochrome (which satisfies my limited requirements) but it has a very small footprint and is 100% reliable and is reasonably fast for a consumer-grade machine. And it works perfectly with CUPS. No proprietary hocus required.

Re:DENIED!

[Andy Dodd]

Are you speaking of an inkjet or one of their networked B&W laser printers?

Pretty much every one of their networked lasers (definately any that are currently manufactured) has PCL emulation, and in addition to that, CUPS supports their native protocol quite well (although I've actually had better results in general with PCL mode.)

Almost all manufacturer's inkjets are POS winprinters - HP's inkjets are crap for the same reasons you bash Brother for, in complete contrast to all of the reccomendations here saying how awesome their B&W lasers are.

It seems to be a general theme that manufacturers that make awesome B&W lasers are still pretty bad offenders in the "crappy inkjet" category.

If you want a good inkjet you need to go with a pro-level Epson or Canon IMO, but a Brother or HP B&W laser will be far less expensive for far more quality if you don't need color.

Re:Samsung

[Anonymous Coward]

I third Samsung printers. I have a ML-1750 and a CLP-510, and print to them from both Windows and Linux (CUPS rules). The ML-1750 has been great for black-and-white and trouble-free for years. And you can easily get linux drivers for them from their web site. They even list Linux support on the box, which is really nice.

Do you care about total cost?

[managerialslime]

I'm going to leave the longevity and O/S driver issues to the other posts as they have done a great and humorous job.

Instead, I'm going to present a different perspective.

You state that you printed about 30,000 pages over 16 years.

Rounding up, printing 2,000 pages a year on an old used HP Laserjet II, II, or IV might cost you between $0.10 and $0.12 a page when you calculate the cost of energy and supplies even if you get the printer for FREE. That amounts to between $200 and $240 per year. (FOREVER!)

Newer energy-efficient printers from Samsung, Dell, HP, and others print black-and-white pages for about $0.008 (yes - less than a penny a page) and color pages with saturation averaging 15% at between $0.08 and $0.12 per page. In other words, if you do your homework and spend between $150 and $250 in year one, your subsequent years may cost you between $16 and $30 a year depending on your print mix and volume.

Right now, I support a wide mix of new and old printers. We have a few legacy apps with weird drivers that require us to print only to HP Laserjet 4's. Until we re-engineer those apps, we buy old replacements on Ebay. The HPLJ4 energy draw is enormous and some employees that use them at home have reported flipping breakers and restarting cable boxes as all the lights in their home dim during warm-up prior to the first page of each print run. Yes they are solid. But operating costs are higher than new machines and this is not environmentally friendly.

On the other hand, if you live in a building with older electrical service and would enjoy aggravating others....

Kyocera - Ceramic Drums

[EEPROMS]

Were I work we have a "no print" policy and just archive everything on a file server. About a year ago I had to look at purchasing a small enterprise printer that was both green in the power consumption and also in the consumables sense with cost in mind of course. The issue I had with most printers is that the drum and toner had to be replaced on a regular basis and toner print capacity was not that good. So after doing all the math we went with a Kyocera FS series laser printer with a long life ceramic drum and rather large toner carts. The up side is this printer works with OSX, Linux, BSD, Windows, you name it and the print quality is very good and isnt slow when going from a sleep mode to printing a page like many printers I reviewed. So its about 2 years on and we have used two carts and no drums versus our old HP that would be on its second drum and fourth cart. Also I have noticed our office staff as of yet have not been able to make the printer jam, a miracle considering the HP printer kept jamming every few days thanks to our ham fisted sales team.