Color Laser Printers

[El Cugino]

Prices of color laser printers have really come down. Do they print
photographs as well as the Ink Jets? Is the cost to print much
higher than ink jets? I would like to hear some discussion on this.

Thanks

 

[Impmon]

Prices of color laser printers have really come down. Do they print
photographs as well as the Ink Jets? Is the cost to print much
higher than ink jets? I would like to hear some discussion on this.

Thanks

Unless something changed recently, the cost for per page from laser
printer is far cheaper than from ink jet. Laser printer do have
higher initial cost, easily running $100 or more for set of toners vs
under $50 for set of ink carts.

I don't know about picture quality. 10 years ago I would have said
color laser printer hands down but ink jet nowday have very high
resolution print. I do know laser printed photo have far better fade
resist than most ink.

Feel free to correct me if something did change since I last looked at
color laser printer a few years ago.

 

[Rob]

Prices of color laser printers have really come down. Do they print
photographs as well as the Ink Jets? Is the cost to print much
higher than ink jets? I would like to hear some discussion on this.

Thanks

You are limited to A4 in cheaper lasers.

Depends on what size you print I use a R1800 for my A3 prints and that's
fine.

 

[Impmon]

You are limited to A4 in cheaper lasers.

You are limited to A4 in cheap ink jet printers anyway.

 

[Bob Headrick]

Prices of color laser printers have really come down. Do they print
photographs as well as the Ink Jets? Is the cost to print much
higher than ink jets? I would like to hear some discussion on this.

Even the $49 inkjets can generally print better photos than most laser
printers. Printing costs for the laser printers are generally lower than
inkjet printers, with the lowest cost inkjet printers generally having the
highest printing costs.

You can compare page yields for recent HP printers at
http://h10060.www1.hp.com/pageyield/us/en/index.html. The inkjet yields are
based on an ISO standard, they can be compared to others manufacturers
yields if they use the ISO standard as well. There is not yet a standard
for color laser page yield.

Regards,
Bob Headrick, MS MVP Printing/Imaging

 

[Arthur Entlich]

This issue has been discussed many times here and elsewhere, so if you
have access to archives you will find quite active and interesting debates.

In a nutshell, the quality is improving all the time, but they are not
yet at the quality a good inkjet with specialized paper can produce.
Then again, most color laser printers print to pretty low cost paper stock.

Cost is a real issue. The reason the prices have dropped on laser
printers (including black only) is because the inkjet business model has
caught on there, as well. They basically give you the printers and
gouge you on the consumables. How much a print costs has a lot to do
with toner coverage. The companies use 5% per color as their average
when they quote print figures for you but usually an image (unless there
is a lot of snow and polar bears, will cost you between 20-50% per color
and possibly more, so take their numbers and divide them by 4 to 10
times.

Also, make sure to check out the prices of toner cartridges, and other
consumables which may include the transfer belts, fuser oil, etc. Also
watch out for the attempt to sell you extremely overpriced memory
expansion RAM. Recently, the manufacturers have moved many units over
to standard RAM, so you may be able to buy more if you need it very
reasonably, so don't buy extra RAM for the laser printers until you know
the type and configuration, cause you may find you don't anything special.

Art

 

[Arthur Entlich]

Quite a bit has changed.

They are smaller, faster, cheaper, the quality of the image has
improved, but still doesn't surpass the majority of higher quality
inkjet printers, and cost per page has gone up considerably, as EACH
color cartridge ranges from about $100 to $200.

Most also require a costly transfer best of drum replacement, every so
often, although after several sets of cartridges have been gone through.

The toner is typically less fugitive than dye inks, but I'm not sure
about newer pigment inks for inkjets.

Art

 

[John Beardmore]

Prices of color laser printers have really come down. Do they print
photographs as well as the Ink Jets? Is the cost to print much
higher than ink jets? I would like to hear some discussion on this.

We have used some fairly good inkjets including the HP CP1700, and some
reasonable laser printers, most recently a Dell 5110cn with all the add
ons: extra RAM, 3000 more sheets of paper draws, 30 gig hard disk etc.

The ink jet may just have an edge on quality when the page is freshly
printed on a good grade of 100 gsm paper, and having the option to print
A3 is cool, but for most work the laser printer is more than adequate,
much quicker, more reliable, and cheaper top operate.

Best yet, the laser images don't fade perceptibly, and don't run or
smudge. I was pleased with the CP1700, but I'm delighted with the
5110cn. With a 250 sheet output capacity and such large paper trays,
the 5110cn also scores re reduced operator intervention, and for those
that enjoy hand writing RPN etc, it also has postscript which I use for
some jobs.

To date on the 5110cn, we've printed 2365 sheets, all but 10 of them A4.
It claims that we've only used 20% of each toner. If this is true, it's
remarkable, as these are only supposed to be the 'small' toner
cartridges supplied with the machine, and most of the pages we print
contain either a full width solid colour logo, or one or more colour
photographs which we generally print in high quality modes.

The consumables for the CP1700 are also fairly decent in that they are
large, but piss poor in that they are chipped and expire after a
predetermined date. The third party supplies we've used have been great
ink, but the suppliers are not beyond sending cartridges with out of
date chips. The frustration this causes doesn't make me want to buy HP
again in a hurry, though I fully accept that most manufacturers indulge
in this kind of stupidity.

The Dell 5110cn cartridges are chipped, but as far as I know, they don't
have a shelf life !


Cheers, J/.