Suggestions for a Laser Mono 3-in-one printer

[Gerry Lawlor]

Title says it all. I am looking for suggestions for a home-office oriented application.
Having looked at the market briefly via the usual sources it seems that HP have the market cornered. Have I missed anything and if not which is the best of the HP in users experience.
I have used a Pixma 640 happily for some years alongside a mono laser but a single economical solution is wanted now. A sheet feeder for scanning would be nice but colour printing is not required.

Regards

Gerry

[mixture]

HP have the market cornered

And for very good reason too.

The HP lasers you find in offices are real workhorses, they can take a hell of a beating.

Get one of their entry level business models and you should be set for life.

The only other safe bet I would suggest other than HP would be Xerox.

Those are really the only two brands you should be looking at for laser printing (black or colour).

A sheet feeder for scanning would be nice

You tend not to find multifunction laser printers, and when you do, they're as crap as the multifunction inkjet printers. Don't waste your time or money on them.

[Saab Dastard]

I have to agree with Mixture that HP office printers are fantastic workhorses.

I was lucky enough to get a 4050N that was genuinely surplus to requirements after a corporate tech. refresh back in early 2003 - it was well used then and it's still soldiering on 12 years later.

I'm a firm believer in keeping things separate - unless you are desperately short of space, buy a separate scanner.

SD

[Loose rivets]

Yep, most printer/scanner, scanners are not good enough for photographic work. I used a cheap Epson photo-scanner which cost $50 refurbished by Epson, and sold it for $35 the hour we walked out of our Texas home 6 years later.

I had to abandon my HP Laserjet 4 Plus in Texas. Took it to my son's house and he said he'd give it to charity. Silly boy. There are companies setting up now just restoring those.

I'm looking for B&W right now, and narrowed it down to HP or Samsung. Saw the latter in hospital recently and it looked a well made piece of kit, but it sounds like I should focus on HP.

What's the deal with the first Toner - do they give a low capacity first time?

[Background Noise]

I just went for a cheap mono laser with the eco-unfriendly expectation that I would buy another one when the toner ran out. Actually I now find that replacement toner is not too dear - and there are compatibles if one wants to go that way.

The printer is a Brother HL-2130, purchased in Sep 12 for £46 from Amazon. The toner is still going, although it now advises that it is low - I guess I am not a 'heavy' user, but still not bad. It is connected to an airport express and works flawlessly over the network.

As an aside, compatible inks seem to have come on - maybe it's just pot luck - but I recently bought compatible inks for a Canon multifunction inkjet and they are excellent. Photo printing is as good as the original inks - even just renewed a passport with a home-printed photograph. At £4.99 for 2 complete sets of cartridges (versus £35 for genuine) it seems pretty good value.

[jimtherev]

Originally Posted by Loose rivets

What's the deal with the first Toner - do they give a low capacity first time?

Yup. But another cautious vote for compatible toners. (Cautious because I except one cartridge which wrecked my Dell machine... but I didn't like that printer much: cheap and slow... and I never went back to that supplier.)

And certainly I still regret the death of my 13 year old HP.

[mixture]

What's the deal with the first Toner - do they give a low capacity first time?

Normally you get a standard low-capacity cartridge, but most of the manufacturers sell both low and high capacity cartridges, so all you need to do is buy a high-capacity toner when the low one runs out and you'll be set.

As others have already said, stay away from the dodgy third-party "compatible" stuff.

[Background Noise]

I'm not sure anyone above has said to stay away from compatibles - in fact I think both Jim and I have said we were generally happy with them, me more so than Jim.

[ExXB]

I found that an all-in-one was useless for scanning/photocopying without a feeder. And all the ones I saw were useless at feeding.

So I got a Fujitsu ScanSnap scanner. Very small footprint and you can load 5 or 6 pages.

Turns everything into PDFs, supports multi page scans and gives you some tools. Software a little weak, particularly with file names (I want my files to begin with YYYY-MM-DD and this cannot be done. YYYYMMDD is as close as it comes, so no big deal)

I'd recommend it for home or (very) small office.

[Booglebox]

Scansnap is a brilliant device. Only USB though so you need to hook it up to a scan server (Windows will do this for you if you are enough of a geek) if you want it on the network.

Another vote for HP, but I've also had good luck with Samsung MFCs, both mono and colour.

[India Four Two]

I have a Brother MFW-7860DW wifi-enabled laser printer, scanner, fax. I'm very happy with it.