What is the Best Colour Laser Printer for Business (laptop, hard drive, crash)

[Tam_73]

Hi,
I am currently searching for the best way to go with colour laser printers for our business, not sure what is around. we are a small business that runs events, so pretty heavy on the brochures, reports, menu's etc. so need something that isn't going to crash in the first week. also one that can alternate between black&white only to colour.
If anyone has used/uses one that they could recommend. any advise would be greatly appreciated.

Tam_73

[Tek_Freek]

You also want to pay close attention to the page count for the toner cartridges. A client of mine bought an HP and the page count sucked. At $75-$85 a cartridge, that sucks!

I have an older Samsung CLP 500N (has a NIC card built in for networking) that has been an excellent printer. Good life on the cartridges, great color, fairly fast, but cartridges are over $100 each, although I've seen them on Amazon for less. Doesn't do card stock very well even though the reps say it should.

Does duplexing.

I've had it about two years now with no complaints.

As with every laser I've ever worked with it is messy. Toner has a tendency to go everywhere even when it is supposedly contained.

Here is a listing of Samsung color laser printers. I sorted them by highest price first, but I'm not sure it will hold. There is a box at top right for sorting. Quite a range of prices, but that's not surprising. Print quality, number of pages per minute, duplexing, network connectivity, etc, all play a part in pricing.

Newegg.com - Computer Parts, PC Components, Laptop Computers, Digital Cameras and more!

[harry chickpea]

Tek-Freek is right about getting one with full duplexing. You want one that can also do post-script correctly. I had a Lexmark color printer that was an earlier network printer. The output was very good on color accuracy, but it would only print greyscale on legal size paper. I eventually dumped it when a repair was going to be over $400, something I regret now.

My current smaller OKI C5100 is a lightweight and not as good on color accuracy, but I like the gloss that the toner has, which gives more punch to tri-folds. I've had good luck with a number of OKI printers and couldn't resist the low price on this model.

Best advice is to read read read and get a sample output page of each printer you are considering.

[Tek_Freek]

I am assuming you are probably in the U.K. (colour) Hopefully you get the same or better selections than we do.

I have a client that runs a gardening business and she has an HP 7?10 All-in-one ink jet. When I was there Wednesday she showed me some color brochures one of her employees had printed on it. All I can say is wow! She purchased special paper and it really made the colors stand out. The quality of the image was superb.

Another option is thermal wax/resin/dye sublimation like this one. This is not a recommendation, just the first one I saw at a reasonable price when I searched. Don't let pricing scare you if you run a search, they don't all cost an arm and a leg.

Kodak Professional 8500 Digital Photo Printer Photo Printer reviews - CNET Reviews

[Tam_73]

Thanks everyone. I have had a look, and have chosen to go the samsung way. it is the best i have found here in Australia.

cheers

Tam_73

[Tek_Freek]

Originally Posted by Tam_73

Thanks everyone. I have had a look, and have chosen to go the samsung way. it is the best i have found here in Australia.

cheers

Tam_73

Aha! Colour! I was sorta close, if not off by a few (a few?) years.

Poker lovers now know "Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oy, Oy, Oy!" by heart.

[Radek]

Originally Posted by Tek_Freek

You also want to pay close attention to the page count for the toner cartridges. A client of mine bought an HP and the page count sucked. At $75-$85 a cartridge, that sucks!

I have an older Samsung CLP 500N (has a NIC card built in for networking) that has been an excellent printer. Good life on the cartridges, great color, fairly fast, but cartridges are over $100 each, although I've seen them on Amazon for less. Doesn't do card stock very well even though the reps say it should.

Does duplexing.

I've had it about two years now with no complaints.

As with every laser I've ever worked with it is messy. Toner has a tendency to go everywhere even when it is supposedly contained.

Here is a listing of Samsung color laser printers. I sorted them by highest price first, but I'm not sure it will hold. There is a box at top right for sorting. Quite a range of prices, but that's not surprising. Print quality, number of pages per minute, duplexing, network connectivity, etc, all play a part in pricing.

Newegg.com - Computer Parts, PC Components, Laptop Computers, Digital Cameras and more!

Tek, we're having a problem at work with the CLP-500. Leaves out a top header. Aka, it prints at the very top of the page. Any thoughts?


I've been a big fan of the HP Laserjets. We have one that continously will go through up to... like... 4 reams in a day during dead week (week before finals)... and it hiccups only minorly.
Though, its just the B&W version.

Also, with the HPs... get the knock-off toner cartridges or whatever. Don't buy the 'HP Certified shinyness'.

[Tek_Freek]

I ran into problems with envelopes in Word. Drove me nuts! It just started one day. Everything shifted left so the return address was half off the envelope. Because of other problems I ended up rebuilding the hard drive in my computer and the problem went away. Apparently it was Word, not the printer.

Did a Google and found this, which has nothing to do with your problem, but I think its good to know. I've been getting irritated about my waste toner lately....

Samsung CLP-500 - Waste Toner Sensor Replacement - fixyourownprinter.com

And refills - toner refill samsung clp 500 kit

[jdavid93225]

I have the Samsung CLP 510, non-network version. I've had it for a couple years, but only for home use. I really like the output quality on everything except card stock, as was mentioned earlier. It doesn't like to feed card stock through, so I don't recommend it if that's what you need to do with it. When it came time to get the toner cartridges for it, I went with the high capacity cartridges, which cost a little under $100 through a major on-line distributor. The high capacity cartridges are rated at 5000 pages color and 7000 pages black, vs. the supplied "sample" cartridges that were something like 1000 pages color and 2000 pages black. Even the cartridges that were supplied with the printer lasted a long time, so I can't complain about the limited page count of them. All in all, I would say the Samsung color laser printers represent a good value, and from my personal experience, are very reliable. The output quality is very good, even on plain paper, even though the toner is slightly dull, giving a slightly flat finish. This doesn't bother me though, since I am not reproducing photographs for anyone. The printer output is crisp and sharp for text and graphs as well as for pictures. I would (and do) recommend Samsung's color laser printers for light to moderate use, and possibly even for heavy use, though I haven't used mine in this way. With all the pages I've printed, I've had only a couple minor problems, all of them being paper jams. This occurred with the card stock mentioned above, and also when my daughter put paper into the printer wrong. Other than those times, though, it's been trouble free.

[RickySmith91]

From my view,choose that printer which have to compatible with most of lase toner cartridges and whose lase toner will work longer and give best quality printing.