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Ask Slashdot: Best SOHO Printer Choices?
rueger writes "I can remember trading up from a daisy-wheel printer to dot matrix, and can remember when Jerry Pournelle used to say 'Buy the most expensive HP printer you can afford.' Mine was a 4P. Times have changed, though, and I'm looking for trustworthy advice before buying a couple of new printers. Specifically, a B&W Laser with sheet feed scanner, and a color inkjet with a solid flatbed scanner for copying music. We want solid, reliable machines that will give a few years of small office service, that have reasonably cheap consumables, and that will "just work" with Windows and Linux. Network ready of course. Let me expand. These days there seems to be no market leader in printers — they tend to be cheap disposable items. Part of the reason is that it is hard to find any real user reviews of these machines — most of the comments on Best Buy or other sites are full of fanboy enthusiasm, or extreme negativity — nothing that can be relied on. Between those, and the sock puppets, and the astroturfing, there's nothing I'd trust. I do trust Slashdot, though, for things like this. People here are able to offer realistic advice and experience that can usually tell the story. So, I ask: who's making good printers these days?"
Kyocera.
They're not cheap but they just need toner, everything else lasts forever.
Nobody beats their price per page. I've seen companies who print 50.000 pages a month throw out new HP printers to replace them with Kyoceras because it saved them money after only a couple of weeks to pay for the 'old' and new printer.
I did a lot of doctor's office programming and I always included a Kyocera free with the apps because then I'd never get any calls about printer problems.
they just don't get it.
Rule1: You brought an inkjet and use it heavily, it would have been cheaper to buy a laser in the long run.
Rule2: You brought an inkjet and rarely use it. You now spend so much on cleaning the heads that a laser would have been cheaper in the long run.
I have in the past owned an inkjet, these days if I want a photograph printing, I use an online photographic printing service and get my prints delivered to my door printed on real photographic paper. By the time you factor in the cost of the printer, inks and paper it works out just the same for a better result.
Also anything without a ethernet port is a piece of junk not worth considering.
I can't comment on the cost of consumables, but the office where I work has had a couple of Brother MFC lasers. The Brother site has linux drivers and I've been able to do everything the Windows users can do. These 2 printers get used a lot and have held up well.
I'll second Kyocera. The drums eventually need replacing, but even then they're cheap to run and damn near bulletproof.
For the inkjet, I'd recommend talking to a local vendor of continuous ink supply systems about what they'd recommend. Continuous feed bulk ink systems are *much* cheaper than paying obscene amounts per cartridge.
I'm looking for a multipurpose B&W printer, laser, for home.
My current choice is the Brother MFC-7460DN , also good for SOHO.
It's a multipurpose B&W laser printer, 26ppm print; 35-sheet Auto Document Feeder; Duplex print, Fax, colour scanner.
It looks like people have less problems with this brand/model than some others, so I think I buy it
http://www.consumerreports.org/
and a color inkjet with a solid flatbed scanner for copying music
Forget about inket altogether.
Just use a colour laser, toner is much cheaper than ink, and most modern mid- to high- range laser printers have a good enough quality even for photos.
(If it's single pass, and has a high dpi, you're okay).
In addition of the price, there's a technical advantage of laser: you can print at any pace you want, as seldom as once per month if you want (or even rarer) all the way up to what your printer can mechanically sustain before falling apart (most printers can take quite some abuse, well within the needs of SOHO). Ink can dry and clog printing head or ink channels. Either you'll *HAVE TO* print at least a few page now and then to keep the ink flowing. Or you'll have a printer which will automatically run through a clean/un-clogging cycle (spitting some ink into a reservoir) or you'll need to replace completely clogged cartridges/printerheads. You can store a laser printer unused in you basement for as long as you wish, whereas an Inkjet will always cost some (expensive) ink, even if you don't use it.
If you really must buy a inkjet and cannot buy a colour laser for some obscure reason, at least try to go for a brand where the ink refill is just that: ink. (some Epson would be a random exemple). At least the refills are not too expensive, and because it's an open market, you can find a whole range of options. Including dead cheap no-name refills of dubious quality, but also refills from cheaper 3rd parties which are known to make good inks (and probably have been already in the ink business even back when fountain pens have been introduced)
*ABSOLUTELY* avoid any brand where you replace the whole cartridge (ink + printing head). There is a very small marginal advantage in that (new cartridge means a brand new CLEAN printing head, and shorter paths between ink and head means less risk of clogging). But in virtually every brand, the cartridge has some electronics built-in, which is used as a crude for or DRM and anti-tamper. That means that you're in a locked market (no 3rd party licensed to sell cheaper heads, difficult to refill your self and persuade the electronics that the cartridge is (again) new). And thus, such brands tend to pump up catridges' price like crazy, so much you'll wonder if their ink is made out of unicorn blood. (Up to the point that a whole printer refill could cost more than the printer and would probably have throw away a lot of the old ink anyway).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I'm not old enough for a daisy-wheel (although my dad had one, and I remember it from when I was tiny) ...but I've owned a lot of printers over the years, and I tend to be the go-to guy to set up and configure those of family and friends.
;)
;) Bottom line, whatever printer you get, make sure you can buy non-OEM consumables readily.
First off, the only reason to have an inkjet is for photo printing. But the consumables are rediculous, so only get one if you can get third party ink at reasonable prices. Also plan on printing something at least once or twice a month, or the heads will clog, necessitating wasting even more ink! I'll just print out a cute picture or webcomic to put up the fridge if I have nothing else. And I may not bother buying a new one in the future... but I have an old epson 6-color (CMYKcm) printer that's almost 10 years old and still works great (as long as you don't let the heads dry out)... which also takes super-cheap generic ink. Newer ones can have issues with DRM chips in the ink cartridges which can make it harder to get generics sometimes. YMMV. But it costs me less to print a full page photo on cheap glossy-photo or matte paper, then it would to order it online, so I've stuck with it.
But for any normal printing (i.e. NON-PHOTO), you're going to want to use laser printers exclusively. Their more durable, much much much faster (a 8x11 photo in hi quality on the ink jet takes something akin to 12 minutes to print)... on a laser, everything is blindingly fast.
You also definitely want to find a laser printer with cheap non-OEM toner that's readily available. I have two laser printers for day-to-day printing, a cheap ass low-end 600dpi brother (which is perfect for text buisness documents, word processing, printing the ocassional groupon or amazon return lable, etc) and generic replacement toner is dirt cheap. Even the drums are very reasonably priced. Use this for standard monochrome documents (comes out to under $0.01 a page (not including paper, and assuming %5 coverage, standard text documents, not solid black, etc))
I also have a nice office color laser (full duplex is a bonus in these larger higher-capacity office printers). There a lot of options here, look for a refurbished one online. (Also verify you can get generic toner) Mine was $300 and comes to about ~$0.06 a page.
Are you getting a theme here?
---
the pen is mightier than the sword, the sword is mightier than the court, the court is mightier than the pen.
First up, let's get this out of the way: all inkjet printers are cheap (and nasty) because they are loss-leaders for consumables.
I used to swear by HP but they've started this nasty habit of discontinuing ink cartridges after about three years, forcing you to buy a new printer because you can no longer get "original" cartridges for it.
On Windows I like Canon printers. But forget about trying to use the CD/DVD-printing Pixma series on Linux - while you can print on paper and labels just fine there is insufficient adjustment in the printer driver config files to allow proper alignment/registration when you wish to print directly on a CD/DVD, meaning you have to plug it into a Windows machine and use Canon's crappy CD Label Printer software that looks and behaves like a Windows 3.1 reject.
I'll be due for a new printer as soon as I can't get cartridges for my current HP OfficeJet. And this time I'm seriously considering a Samsung laser printer, or perhaps a Kyocera.
Why do you need a colour inkjet for copying music? I don't think I've ever seen sheet music where the colour is important - to the extent that about three quarters of the sheet music I've ever seen (and I've seen a fair bit) has been photocopied on a black and white copier.
I guess if you're copying for sale then you might think that colour decoration / presentation is important. But if you're doing this as a business, you should be using something more amenable to high volume than a colour inkjet printer.
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50% of my printer usage is to print images onto printable DVDs. AFAIK, there is no laser printer which will do this.
3rd party ink is cheap enough that I'm not too worried about cost. And so far the chipped cartridges don't give me too much trouble (Last 3 printers have been Epson).
It'd be very useful to know what volume of printing you estimate each printer will be used for.
Slashdot - News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters, in ISO-8859-1 Has just realised that beta makes this signature redundant
At work, we nog have a Xerox WorkCentre 6605DN. Scanning (with feeder), duplex, network, PostScript and Fax. It was a mere 650€. which is damned fine. From what I hear the consumables aren't that expensive (but not dirt cheap)... at least, I didn't get any complaints from accounting.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Several years ago, I moved from an inkjet printer to a (color) laser printer. At home, for private use. I've never looked back, and these days I have no f&%$! idea why people buy injket printers.
It's got higher quality, it's cheaper per page, a toner lasts forever, and I can fire it up after not having used it for three months and it'll print - no cleaning required.
I personally own an OKI and am happy with it, but I agree with you that there is no true market leader. Online reviews can't be trusted, so I went with the technical data. Maybe that's a workable approach for you, just go for the facts?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Already people are perpetuating a lot of myths.
- Laser ist cheaper than Inkjet
This is not true. A cheap color laser has very expensive toner needs whereas an expensive inkjet printer can be cheaper than many color lasers. If you cheaply want to print color the Epson B510DN is a goot choice. It is not so great for photos though and as with any Inkjet it wants to be used regularily.
If you want a color laser you have to buy a very expensive model to achieve cheap toner costs. This is only interesting if you have to print enough color pages,
Personally I would buy an Kyocera FS-1370 for cheap black and white laser printing. As mentioned by a post above this, it only needs toner and cheap refills are available without loss of quality. A new toner cartridge wheighs like a pound and it's all toner. But if you buy a cheap color laser from Kyocera the toner costs a lot.
For cheap color printing I would buy the above mentioned Epson.
And I woul buy a dedicated scanner.
If space constrains make you buy an all in one machine for scanning copying and color printing. I would get an Lexmark X748de It's expensive but the toner costs are OK. YOu can even use it as a b/w laser without feeling too bad. Lexmark has a rightfully deserved bad reputation for their small printers because ink was very expensive. Their professional models are great, though and the repair service is good.
I found this link ( http://theoatmeal.com/comics/printers ) from the comments section of this ( http://www.howtogeek.com/174232/htg-explains-why-is-printer-ink-so-expensive/ ) article. Hope it helps.
I work for one of the Manufacturers, and I can tell you that at the SOHO level they're pretty much all the same. They all have their positives and negatives though none really related to the function of printing or standout. In fact most of the manufacturers re-badge the print engines and add their own features for which can be good and bad (good if they pull it of, bad if there are compatibility issues between the engine and controller Firmware).
NOTE: stay clear of inkjet cause they just cost you a fortune.
My usual question to people in your market is "Why do you need a printer"? Unless there is a specific legal requirement which is daily business, you don't actually need a printer. There are a host of ways to communicate without printing out reams of paper (ie email). Of course this is different in every country, so check what "legal needs" you have for hard copies before deciding. The other point is that in most cases an account at your local print shop can often suffice for incidentals, just save to PDF and get them to print it out, it will cost a lot less, and they usually offer pretty decent contract rates based on minimum volumes (can can often include mailing services if eg it's like an invoice run).
(remember I work for a manufacturer of printer products, so I don't say the above lightly).
Finally, if it's a must, get a Multifunctional network device, that was you'll have all the doc input/output functions you need, and make sure that the printer works with whatever "special" systems you use on your network (ie anything not Microsoft related, and even then sometimes Microsoft)
Also, I've seen SOHO Kyocera laser printers with a flat bed scanner under the document feeder. You won't need both types. [But stick to their proper network printers. There's a newer range for small offices, and many functions may not work properly over a network, only 1:1. Whether that means Kyocera is starting down the path of shitty consumer models, I don't know.]
If you print a lot of non-photo colour, pump for a colour laser. If you only print a bit of colour, occasionally but on demand, buy a cheap consumer inkjet or photo-printer every 3-12 months depending on use and plug it into a spare laptop, not the network. (I've had reasonable luck with entry-level ($50) Canon MFPs not drying out from lack of use. But cheap Epsons and HPs can't seem to handle not being used regularly.)
"Must last several years" is the wrong thinking with inkjets. Treat them as disposable, save yourself grief. If you get more than 12 months out of it, bonus. If not, who cares.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
Get something with PostScript support. That pretty much guarantees the thing will print, now and later, certainly any Unix, any other OS probably too. Can get away with very simple lpr configs too.
And it's available on pretty cheap printers these days, though obviously not on "winprinters" that depend on the driver to do all the lifting bar the putting stuff on paper part--you don't want those anyway as they might not work with the next version of windows either.
Apparently various "linux" (in casu freedesktop) apps now produce pdf instead of postscript, but that's no matter, since the printable part is a subset of postscript; the same stuff with loops and such removed and compression added, and so trivially convertable to postscript for printing. For that reason it'd be extremely strange to find a printer that would print pdf but not postscript.
Personally I picked the hp 2200d (and ended up with a dt), which is the last model in (that market segment as hp sees it) with unchipped toners, is hp so likely to have toners available for a long time, was available cheaply second hand, does postscript and has a duplexer, and has an EIO slot for a jetdirect. Extra memory and a jetdirect would've been nice, but it does USB and so works well enough for the few times a year that I need it.
But the niceties aside, the one thing that really matters is making sure it does PostScript. Even if you only ever install the thing once, the difference in hassle is worth it. That this requirement mostly wipes out the oh-so-cheap-but-screwing-you-on-the-ink inkjets is just happy coincidence, I'm sure.
For an Office. Sure. But at home I don't like having a laser printer buzzing away. They create a lot more pollution in the form of nanoparticles and ozon than an inkjet printer.
On the other hand, at home you'll print a lot less pages than in an office. Thus generating less noise and dust.
And the laser printer can just stay where it is fine (toner doesn't age). Whereas, as said before, an InkJet will either have do go on self-cleaning cycles and waste some of its "unicorn-blood-priced" ink, or risk ending up being clogged, which will require you to change the cartridges and throw away the remaining ink.
I was told (by a workplace safety expert) that laser printers should ideally always be in their own, well ventilated, room.
If you're that much affraid, you can still keep the abominable printer in its own closet or cupboard (advandage: the material needed to clean dust spill in case of mishandling toner replacement is in the same closet).
(For the extra paranoid: but a vacuum cleaner's HEPA filter [to filter dust] and a fan blowing out of the cupboard [to keep the pressure gradient lower and keep dust particle in] - that should enormously lower the amount of particles in the air)
But if you find laser printers scary, think also about all the evil solvent that are inside the ink and that evaporate as the ink dries.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Does everyone really just know that SOHO = "Single Owner Home Office" (took a bit of Google fanciness to get around the neighborhoods in London & NYC).
To answer the OP's question, I've had great luck with my Canon Pixma MP495. Canon *did write* Linux firmware/software, it's just not available through their US site for whatever reason (it's also kludgy as hell, but it gets the job done).
Agreed on Kyocera. Once we moved to them for the majority of our clinic's printing, we had a measured 90% decrease in printer problems. It also is a good idea to find a local printer maintenance company that specializes in Kyocera printers as I have found that when there is a problem it is generally a worn out part that is causing it. Which speaks volumes about the quality of the printers as they wear out before they break something. I have never seen them fail to the point of disabling the printer without having printed well over 10000 pages first. Our current Kyocera with the record for the most pages printed is somewhere above 1 Million pages printed.
Communism will never work. People LIKE to own things.
The question did not limit recommendations to printers in production.
If my color laser printer came from Goodwill and it works, I'm a happy camper.
No brain, no pain.
Wildly overkill for SOHO when the submitter is talking about the level of inkjets.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
amazing that no one has mentioned Lexmark printers. and that should tell you all you need to know about them.
I'm also a huge fan of the Kyoceras in an office environment. Rock solid and dependable and the cost per page is very low. I've yet to have any trouble with their drivers but they could use a bit of improvement in that area from an ease of use/ease of administration standpoint. If they spent a little time improving their website that would go a long way.
In an office environment I'm also a fan of purchasing through local dealers and getting a support contract. Most outfits will give you a per-page price that includes toner, maintenance, and even lease cost if you want to go that route. Do this for ALL paper handling devices (Copiers, high speed scanners, printers, fax machines, etc) - Paper handling devices are money sinks and knowing your costs is worth a little overhead. You may think you can save money supporting your own printers, but the first time any serious maintenance needs to be done your imagined savings will evaporate. ALL paper handling devices seeing any non-trival use need a lot of regular maintenance if you depend on them. In an office, don't think of printers as devices. Think of printing as a service.
For cheap/home use I'm a fan of Brother laser printers. Low price, dependable, reasonable toner costs. No cheap printer will last for ever but I've had by far the best luck with Brother devices. Their drivers are great, and updated frequently. (Linux support too!) The network support is nothing short of fantastic. Even the cheapest printers support a laundry list of services (Just spit out a network diag page and look for yourself)
Logging in for the 1st time in ages to comment....
This post about Brother using a "flag gear" on their cartridges is spot-on. I have a Brother DCP-7040 and a Brother DCP-7065DN, both monochrome laser scanner/copier/printers, and both have the "flag gear" on the replacement cartridges (but not on the "starter"/"teaser" cartridges that come with the printer).
Here's how Brother's consumer-unfriendly method works (as it occurred with my DCP-7040):
It starts out the usual way -- like a lot of printer manufacturers, they sell you the printer with a "starter" cartridge (in my case, one with an advertised 1000-page capacity). In my case, it started warning me about "Toner Low -- Prepare new toner cartridge" after 813 total printed pages. But since the pages were still printing out nice and dark, I did nothing.
Later, at 987 total printed pages on the "starter" cartridge, they started getting noticeably dim. As I'd done for years with my (still-working) HP LaserJet Series II, I did the usual "gently shake the toner cartridge to evenly re-distribute the toner" trick.
But since the 987-page value seemed suspiciously close to the advertised 1000-page limit, I also did some research. I found that there is a clear window on the DCP-7040 "starter" toner cartridge that's used with an optical sensor to detect toner level. As suggested, I covered that clear window with a small piece of black electrical tape and continued printing.
The pages were coming out noticeably darker, presumably from the re-distribution of toner rather than from the "fooling" trick with black tape.
I continued to use the DCP-7040 like that, simply ignoring the ever-present "Toner Low -- Prepare new toner cartridge" message. After a few hundred more pages printed, I had to bump up the page contrast setting a bit to get the darkness I wanted, but the pages were still printing fine.
At 1305 total printed pages, the message from the printer changed to "Toner Life End -- Replace Toner Cartridge". IIRC, the printer refused to print at that point, but my notes are not 100% conclusive.
So I installed the new "TN-360" 2600-page toner cartridge and verified that it worked. But, being the curious and experimental type, I immediately pulled the new 2600-page cartridge out and replaced it with the old 1000-page "starter" cartridge. To my surprise, it started printing again just fine!!!
This led me to do some more research. This is when I learned about Brother's consumer-unfriendly "flag gear" trick. The new cartridge has a gear that rotates just one time -- ever! It essentially tells the printer that a new cartridge has been installed, allowing it to continue printing. Once the printer thinks you've installed the new cartridge, it will happily print with whatever cartridge is installed, even the old, original, 1000-page "starter" cartridge that they wanted you to believe was exhausted!
I continued printing on the "starter" cartridge. It went on to print a total of 1951 pages before it was truly out of toner -- almost twice the advertised life!
At this point, I had to re-install the once-used 2600-page replacement cartridge. And, of course, the printer thinks I've been using it for the last 646 (1951 - 1305) pages, so it will presumably tell me I'm out of toner 646 pages before it normally would. But I intend to do the "flag gear reset" trick mentioned by "TheloniousToady" when the time comes to further fool the printer into continuing to print on my long-from-empty toner cartridge.
The DCP-7065DN is still on the starter cartridge (which curiously lacks the clear window that I put black tape over on the DCP-7040's starter cartridge), but it appears I will have the same issue with the "flag gear" trick when the time comes.
Having said all that, I like both of my Brother printers (using them full-time with Linux as both a sheet-fed + flatbed scanner and as a printer/copier). They are quite cheaply made (very "plastic-y", for lack of a bet
I bought an HL-2170W a few years ago after comparing consumables prices; out of consumer brands, Brother definitely came out on top. You do have to replace the drum eventually too, which can get a bit pricey relative to the cost of the machine, but it helps that the machine's completely no-nonsense—it doesn't try to foist any fancy interfaces on the home user, and it's got a somewhat disturbingly long list of ways to submit print jobs when running in network mode (directly to the printer via FTP? what?) And it's easy to get off-brand replacement toner that's high-quality and cheap, too; they don't invent new cartridge types for every piece of equipment they make.
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Show me the calculation, I'm not convinced.
What is the use case? Color or B&W? How many pages per month? Printing text, pictures or graphics?
When I replaced our inkjet at work with a color laser printer the payback was basically about 2500 pages (the first set of toner cartridges) to erase the price premium of the laser. I did the math just out of curiosity. Plus it allowed me to use the printer in circumstances where it didn't make economic sense before (ink cost too much). Add in the fact that the laser was FAR faster, has a larger paper tray, could print duplex and was network capable and it was pretty much a no brainer.
We replaced every inkjet in my office with a laser. For basic B&W printing we use some basic Brother laser printers that cost about $75 when on sale and print 3000 pages per toner cartridge.
Inkjets have some very narrow use cases where they make sense. Printing high quality photos is the most common. A good inkjet will print images better than a consumer grade laser printer.
I'm going to also put in a vote for Brother for laser printing. I have found that they are very durable, they work fine with the inexpensive third party toner, and they are inexpensive to buy. for the last 4 years, I have been using a Brother 7360N. It has been rock solid. It works with Windows/OSX/Linux. My wife was doing a lot of home loan document signings last year, so we went through a period where she was printing 300 to 400 pages a day with no problems. I get my toner at Supplies Outlet.
For color, unless you are printing photographs, I would recommend getting away from Inkjet. Even if you are, you might want to consider avoiding inkjet. Inkjet printers simply fail. They break if you use them too much. They break if you use them too little. They break if you use them just right. And, the ink is some of the most expensive stuff on the planet. Color laser doesn't bleed like inkjets, so you might see a bit more pixalization, but it is way cheaper to use laser, and the printers don't break as easy.
The final piece is the sheet fed scanner. If you are doing nothing but 8.5 x 11 sheets of paper, the Multi-function printers/scanners are fine. If you have odd sized paper, or you have a lot of scanning to do, so laber is more expensive than the scanner, I highly recommend the Fujitsu ScanSnap line of scanners. I scan every single receipt that I get. I used to try scanning them in my Brother MFC-7360n. It worked, but it was massively labor intensive. Long receipts would require cutting and pasting. The scans would either be all cockeyed, or even more labor was needed to line things up. I had to use the flatbed because the receipts would not run through the sheet feeder. I got the Fujitsu ScanSnap s1500 for ~$400 at Costco. It had a tough time convincing myself to spend that much money on a scanner, once I did I found it was well worth it. Scanning that used to take an hour, now took 10 minutes. It would take all different sized reciepts at the same time. It would automatically straighten the image, and it would auto-detect whether the scan needed to be b&w or color. There really is a difference between the scanner that comes in a $200 Multi-Function printer and the canner that costs ~400.