New Printer Required

[adrianwi]

I know this is somewhat off-topic, but I'm guessing most of you are still using printers in the home/office.

I've had 2 for the past few years - a small Brother Mono Laser (HL2030) and a HP All-in-one Colour Inkjet (C8180) - but this evening I went to print a photo on the HP and I ended up covered in magenta ink. It doesn't look like it's repairable, or at least not cheaply, and as I've had it 5-6 years it really doesn't owe me anything.

I started looking for a replacement, but then thought I might be able to replace both with a single machine and free up some desk space. From what I can gather, Laser/LED colour printers are now pretty cheap (<£200) and would do everything my Brother does and also deal with the scanning and colour (and duplex) printing from the HP. Most of the reviews suggest the problem will be with photo printing, which seams to be the weak spot for laser printers in general. Is this true even with photo quality paper? I'm not looking for results to match the local and online print services, but would like to be able to print my own photos that look respectable in a small frame.

Any suggestions and/or recommendations much appreciated.

 

[jgreco]

The glossy photo paper output from our HP Color LaserJet CP2025's isn't that great, but is pretty acceptable if you're looking at it from a slight distance.

Why not take a stroll down to the local office supply store or tech outlet, see if they have a printer of the desired type, and take a USB flash drive and some photo paper with you? If they smell a sale, they're likely to honor a reasonable request for a print sample.

The only bad thing about the color lasers are that their consumables are pricey, and the generic cartridges don't work anywhere near as well as the HP's. You'll want to make sure your computers are tightly locked down into printing in grayscale by default.

Honestly, I do kinda miss the big LaserJet 5Si we used to have. It was cool to load up the 2000 sheet feeder and not have to be constantly feeding paper into the thing. But the quality of the color prints and the convenience of having a small-footprint laser with duplexer right in my office with me is very nice, no more walking to the big printer to get the printouts.