I am in need of a light duty but high quality color laser printer. I've always had great experiences with Brother mono laser printers, but not sure if they are best in the color game. Any recommendations are appreciated. A wireless connection would be ideal.

I had a need for a color printer a few years ago and I went with a large HP model from Costco. Long story short, it failed totally after 33 pages. It was the main board and not serviceable. Costco took it right back. I gave up on HP and bought a Xerox Phaser 6600. It has been trouble free for me. Just realize that toner is spendy since you need to replace four cartridges at various times.

I have it hardwired into my home network so anyone on the network can print to it. I've printed things from my iPad and iPhone without issue. It's about 7 or 8 years old and still going strong.

Good luck with your decision.

Been pretty happy with my HP 252. Got tired of ink jet cartridges drying up so I started looking at cheap and laser color. I print maybe once or twice a month, been a couple of years and still on original cartridge. Color is okay, bit for $200-$250 it's great enough.

Have multiple HP Printers at work and the HP LasertJet M651 is bulletproof, but expensive. We use it daily for shipping documentation for orders we ship.

Have another HP, Laserjet M452 (M454 is current model-~$300) that is used for less intensive printing.

I have a Brother HL-L8260 in my office that is very good but a little slow, but it was not expensive. ~$250

Be careful with off-brand toner. We used Cartridge World stuff for a while but the cartridges kept leaking toner and smearing the printouts.

Make sure you the model you select has the features you need (e.g. wireless, duplex, networking, etc)

Make sure you check out the price of the replacement toner cartridges. Some can be almost as, or more, expensive as the printer itself.

And often they come with a 'starter' toner cartridge.

Brother had been good to me over the past 12 years. I own a B&W and a color laser printer by them.

quote:

Originally posted by k:
Been pretty happy with my HP 252. Got tired of ink jet cartridges drying up so I started looking at cheap and laser color. I print maybe once or twice a month, been a couple of years and still on original cartridge. Color is okay, bit for $200-$250 it's great enough.

Sameone I have. Works great and replacements aren't outrageous.

I've been using an Epson workforce 840 for about 8 years now. Color, duplex, all-in-one inkjet. It seems to go through ink pretty fast, and I'd definitely look at a color laser next time, as they've come down in price drastically.

The one I'm eyeballing is the Xerox 65xx series. The reviews are great, and a racer friend that bought one loves it.

I have three HP 477 All-In-Ones at the office and at the house. Never a problem with any of them.

quote:

Originally posted by 229DAK:
Make sure you check out the price of the replacement toner cartridges. Some can be almost as, or more, expensive as the printer itself.

And often they come with a 'starter' toner cartridge.

HP and Lexmark both make pretty good color laser printers, with a range of prices and options. HP has better on site support. Virtually every printer is less expensive than a full set of replacement cartridges, including inkjets - that's the business model of printer sales. The difference between lasers and inkjets is that laser toner will generally be good for the full number of rated pages - generally in the thousands range - where inkjet cartridges dry out and get clogged, requiring unclogging or replacement, wasting ink - particularly if you print infrequently. You can usually count on 50-75% of the rated output of an inkjet cartridge, which in the case of light business inkjets is more in the 500-page range, with luck. Cost per page for inkjets is on the order of .10 - .25 per page, for lasers (color) in the range of .03 - .05 per page. What a laser will not do is print on a wide range of paper finishes or print large, high-resolution photos well.

I have a canon multifunction laser that I am very happy with.
Worth looking at

THanks for chiming in everyone. Looks like there is no consensus pick at all. Xerox, HP, Canon, Brother....all good so far.

And damn, those toner replacements are a killer.

I lean toward HP and Brother, I can say categorically is that (from personal exp.) I would stay away from Lexmark.

quote:

Originally posted by ChicagoSigMan:
THanks for chiming in everyone. Looks like there is no consensus pick at all. Xerox, HP, Canon, Brother....all good so far.

And damn, those toner replacements are a killer.

I have had an HP laser jet pro 200 all in one for 5 years now and it doesn't miss a beat. Granted I only print about 100 pages a month.

We have a Brother that’s been reliable. My only complaint is that when printing envelopes they get a little wrinkled other than that, it does a very good job.

You did not state a price range. I have tried many as technology has developed

Ricoh gets my vote.

Aftermarket toner is reasonable and lasts a loooong time.

Invites me to use them.

Surprisingly, reasonably priced.

30,000 copies before cartridge change? That takes a while and avoids something like HP hitting you for toner, costing more than the price of the machine pretty quickly.

Another vote for Brother. I have a color laser MFC-9970CDW and it's been trouble free for years.