Inquiry re Best Color Printer
Thea Barbato
Long time lurker/infrequent poster here! I know there was a recent thread
about printer cartridges and the 'throw-away' inexpensive printer concept as
compared to the disproportionately higher cost of replacement cartridges. I
don't want to repeat that exact thread, but I am interested in knowing the
best buy in a color printer, in terms of function as well as replacement
cartridges/toner. Our color printer recently went belly up and is not
worthy of resuscitation. I'm an artist and work from printed color digitals
of my subjects, so I need relatively good quality. We're thinking about
just going ahead and spending the extra $$ for a Laser color printer since
the toner replacement is less frequent and possibly cheaper than cartridges
although the per page cost is not as low. The printer that died was an HP
720 inkjet - a good printer for the duration (probably 3 years or more), but
no more. And it's no longer made, evidently. I considered the 'throw-away'
concept, but would probably rather just buy a quality printer for the best
money instead.
Any suggestions on input on a good color printer would be highly
appreciated. (And yes, I'm conducting searches as well to compare features,
cost, consumer feedback, etc., but thought maybe someone here relied on
their printer and found a good one!).
Thea
Gordon
news:P67ug.20319$so3....@southeast.rr.com:
I do not even know what model numbers that HP is up to, I have a Deskjet
832c which has served me well for many years. Cartridges last a long
time and are cheap to refill. But they don't make this model either.
Like Thea, I am also looking for a good inexpensive color printer.
Somthing cheap, easy to refill, and it must be laser. I need to have
water (or damp) proof copies.
hchi...@hotmail.com
>Like Thea, I am also looking for a good inexpensive color printer.
>Somthing cheap, easy to refill, and it must be laser. I need to have
>water (or damp) proof copies.
You aren't going to find a combination like that. Color laser carts
are much more expensive than inkjet carts. Figure close to $100 per
cart, and there are three color and one less expensive K (black).
Color variation and finish are also issues. I have a (heavy) Lexmark
network laser printer that sits in storage here because the cost of
the fix for it was more than the cost of a new little Oki color laser.
The Lexmark had fine color rendition and would be suitable for
artistic work, but IIRC I paid a deeply discounted price of over $1600
for the refurb one I bought. DId I mention it was heavy? It came
shipped on a pallet and takes two people to move.
The Oki works fine for my pamphlets and fliers because it has a
semi-gloss finish on the printing, which makes bold solid colors
"pop." Color balance is loose at best, and nowhere near as good as
the Lexmark for anything like a photograph. You'll find that all the
cheaper laser printers have color glitches that you have to work
around. Come to think of it, that is also true for many ink jet
printers when the ink is viewed under artificial light. Home printing
is still nowhere close to the standards of offset printing.
FWIW, If you get a color laser printer, you'll find the difference in
paper grades makes a huge difference in the quality of the output. I
have found the paper I'm most satisfied with is the Office Depot 28lb
COLOR laser paper at $10/ream of 500. I just returned a bunch of
their 24lb laser paper that is _greatly_ inferior to the color laser
paper, even though it only costs a couple bucks less.
I've kept my Canon ink jet for photos, use a Brother multifunction
laser for everyday use, use a dot matrix Oki for program dumps and
certain reporting, and use the color laser for promotions, invoicing
and the like. I also have thermal receipt roll and ticket printers,
but those are a different story. The point is that no one printer is
best for all tasks.
If you only have a passing need for waterproof output from an ink jet,
get artist's clear fixative or a can of clear spray shellac or laquer
and go outside and spray the finished photo.
Annie Woughman
I haven't had to replace the any of the toner cartridges yet. The "replace
toner" lights have been on for the last year, but I'm not replacing them
until the print quality looks like it needs new cartridges. Anyway, I have
printed several portraits of my kids with it, done two sets of wedding
announcements (with a picture of the couple on the inside), numerous
greeting cards and it is still going strong. Most people were shocked when
they found out that I had created and printed the announcements myself.
"Thea Barbato" <tbar...@carolina.rr.com> wrote in message
news:P67ug.20319$so3....@southeast.rr.com...
Thea Barbato
would be replacing them with something equally good (I know, it's probably
just a frugal consumer's dream : - ). If anyone has an HP color laser
printer that's still being produced and has given good service and doesn't
bankrupt you on the replacement ink, tell us.
Gordon and I have inquiring minds and we want to know!
Thanks in advance,
Thea
"Gordon" <go...@alltomyself.com> wrote in message
news:Xns9801CE451A81...@81.174.50.80...
Keith Jewell
I've had quite nice results with a Samsung CLP-550. At the time it was
less than $300 delivered. I've done something around a thousand pages
on it in the last 9 months and haven't had it say a peep about needing
any supplies other than paper. It has a duplexer built in and is
reasonably quick. It has Postscript so will work with non-Windows
systems, and came with Linux PPD files as well as Mac and Windows
drivers on the CD. The initial cartridges are supposed to be good for
5k color and 7k black, with a set of OEM replacements running around
$400, a set of compatibles for around $250 and a set of refills for
$150. They are supposedly easy to refill, with a removable plug, and
are good for two refills, though you do need do some process to tell
the printer they have been replaced. eBay refills seem to be running
around $150 for the complete set of colors with instructions. The drum
and imager need to be replaced after 15k pages, but at that point I
figure I will have gotten my money's worth from the existing set, so
the high cost will be justified. The photo quality is pretty good,
plenty nice enough for brochures. I have a dye-sub printer for
(expensive) high-quality 8x10 prints, which I do very rarely.
The bad: they've discontinued this model. The new models don't come
with Postscript and come with starter cartridges that are only full for
2k5 pages. The red loosens if the paper gets truly soggy--I tested this
by soaking paper in the sink for a while. The image looked fine until I
touched the paper, at which point some of the red came off. The parts I
didn't touch were fine once the paper had dried. I tried it for
business cards, but the ink is less durable than offset printing, so
I'll stick with that. Offset printed business cards are cheap anyway.
The photo printing is decent but not as good as even cheap inkjets.
However, I have done runs of a hundred brochures at a time,
double-sided, and can just come back to find them in the output tray.
Inkjets can't touch that.
The good: The new models are much faster at color, close to 20 pages
per minute instead of 5. The built in duplexer is really handy for
saving paper, especially printing manuals with the pages two-up per
side. A formerly imposing hundred page document will fit quite readably
on twenty five pages. It's very quiet for a color laser. There's no
spinning toner pods like in other color lasers, so it doesn't make a
kechunk-kechunk sound as it prints, just fan and drum noise. The only
quieter color lasers I've dealt with are Okidatas, and I won't be using
one of those again due to the annoyance of how they handle supply
refills--on the Okidata I had, replacement cartridges are refillable,
but the initial set are not, and drum life was miserable despite good
specifications.
The conclusion: I'd buy the Samsung again. I don't do photo printing,
but the low cost per page for brochures and business documents with
spot color has really improved my business image.
The trick: The CLP-550 seems to be discontinued. The CLP-510 is still
made, uses the same engine without Postscript on the fomatter, and is
less than $300 shipped from TechOnWeb, where I got my unit. The CLP-600
is much, much faster at color for $180 more, but that doesn't seem
compelling to me, especially since there isn't refilling information
out there yet for it. The CLP-510 has toner-out chips, but they're
available cheap on eBay and apparently install quickly with easy
soldering.
The specific application: In your case, color matching is important.
Inkjets walk all over the lasers. If you don't do any other printing,
I'd say get a well-reviewed inkjet and use it until it dies. Be aware
that most of them nowadays expire the cartridges based on time as well
as printing volume. I think Canon still doesn't do that. If you do
other volume, consider moving the volume to a laser: black and white if
that's what the volume is in, color if you need it. If your volume is
very low on photos, the best option might be to have them printed at
some place with a laser-to-photo-paper minilab. The quality is
exceptional, and the cost is reasonable given that you don't have to
keep current on a machine. The cost is a couple dollars a page, but if
you are printing only a handful of photographs a month, not having to
pay for a printer every few years may make it worthwhile. Also, many of
the Costco minilabs have been profiled, so if you are using a profied
or sRGB display device, you can get exact color matching to what you
see on screen with the profiles from here:
http://www.drycreekphoto.com/icc/
I guess I should have said from the start: the one piece of information
your original request is missing is the volume of printing you do. As I
tried to formulate a response, I kept feeling I had to hedge things
based on missing that information. Let us know that and advice can be
better targeted.
-Keith
Gordon
> Gordon <go...@alltomyself.com> wrote:
>
>>Like Thea, I am also looking for a good inexpensive color printer.
>>Somthing cheap, easy to refill, and it must be laser. I need to have
>>water (or damp) proof copies.
>
> You aren't going to find a combination like that. Color laser carts
> are much more expensive than inkjet carts. Figure close to $100 per
> cart, and there are three color and one less expensive K (black).
But how many pages do you get out of a cart?? Since I intend to
print flyers and brochures that only use spot color (not full
page color) the color cart should last a good long time.
>
> > The Oki works fine for my pamphlets and fliers because it has a
> semi-gloss finish on the printing, which makes bold solid colors
> "pop."
I'll have to look for one.
> I've kept my Canon ink jet for photos,
I plan to keep my deskjet for for that too.
>
> If you only have a passing need for waterproof output from an ink jet,
> get artist's clear fixative or a can of clear spray shellac or laquer
> and go outside and spray the finished photo.
Good idea but not feasable on 400 pieces.
Bob Ward
wrote:
Refill toner is readily available for color lasers, and refilling is
easier and less messy (in my opinion) than ink jet cartridges.
hchi...@hotmail.com
>But how many pages do you get out of a cart?? Since I intend to
>print flyers and brochures that only use spot color (not full
>page color) the color cart should last a good long time.
Well, I just replaced the original Magenta cart last week after about
a year of use, even though it was a starter cart. The Black went
first, pretty quickly, yellow was next, then cyan about six months
ago. Magenta just kept on and on. The color is closer to a dye-sub
wax than ink jet (similar but less dense than thermal business cards).
I can't give a precise number on pages of output.
Spot color is actually different. I use spot color in web press
output. Spot color means one or more of the press towers is charged
with a specific pantone color ink, rather than a standard CMYK four
color process. It can allow a denser color, can be less expensive, is
more forgiving of a less sophisticated press, and can be used on
presses with a minimal number of towers. The trade-off is a very
limited palette and more cleanup for the operator.
John Weiss
>
> Any suggestions on input on a good color printer would be highly appreciated.
> (And yes, I'm conducting searches as well to compare features, cost, consumer
> feedback, etc., but thought maybe someone here relied on their printer and
> found a good one!).
Laser color printers are NOT as good as inkjets at the same price point. You
will sacrifice speed or quality or both.
I just bought an HP K550 to replace another dead HP inkjet. I'm very happy with
it.