Choosing a printer
Hello,
I have decided to get myself a laser printer.
My intentions are to have a working printer occasionally. So sometimes I will print a lot, but then it can be left unused for a couple of years and I want it to be usable in the instant I want it without having to go and get new whatever.
My question is are there any considerations besides the printer being listed at https://openprinting.github.io/printers that I should make?
I will not hunt down the most open (as in copyleft/libre soft- & hardware) printer but would not mind it being open.
More importantly is the expectation that I could find new toners (I think that's the word for "ink" in laser printers) in 5 years.
I don't really want color, but if it isn't that big of a difference I might as well.
(I could change my mind to get a different kind of printer, but you'd have to be really convincing.)
Sounds like a job for a Brother colour laser. Your use case sounds remarkably like mine, and I've had a Brother HL-L3210CW for 6 years, and it's still on its shipped toners (though it's bleating at me now for replacement). Still readily available consumables.
Brother are usually good about not locking down their hardware to their own toners.
I second this. I also have a Brother printer (HL-L2350DW) and it works perfectly. The toner lasts quite a lot, it's pretty cheap and I have never ever installed any drive. I print from every device and the only difference from trim's printer is that mine is in black and white because I decided needed no colours (said in this way it did sound depressing... But you understood what I meant :)
Fantastic! Thanks <3
In general: are the toners for colour and black different? I expect to print much more in black than in colour and it would feel quite bad to need a new toner to print black when the colours are still barely used.
Yes, the 4 different colors are different toners. In my model (brother hl-3170cdw) the toner cartridges are otherwise identical, so you could put them in the wrong slot and change all the blue colors pink if you wanted for some reason. For my model, brother sells black standalone and a combo pack with the three colors which is slightly less than buying the colors separate. But you can replace each color individually as needed. Unlike inkjet printers which mix some color into black printing to get a “true black”, laser printers just use pure black toner. My printer will run just fine with only the black toner cartridge installed.
One thing to note is the toner cartridges you get with the printer are often not full cartridges. Ours listed them at like 10% the capacity of the replacement cartridges. So don’t be disappointed when you go through the first set fast. The replacements will last much longer.
Another note: these machines can last a long time, so it’s worth investing in a good one. I just pulled my dad’s printer out of his classroom. He would use it at least weekly. It was an HP laser jet 4100 from 2001. It is still a perfectly cromulent printer. The only issue with it now is that it uses a printer port instead of usb, and doesn’t have drivers for anything remotely modern. My dad fixed that by getting a network card for it. With that, it works perfectly to this day.
Man those old laserjets were legendary. The last one I had was a cheap ass 5L but they'd already jumped the shark by then.
Something over ten years ago I was in a very similar situation to you and I bought the cheapest Samsung wifi-capable mono laser I could find, an M2020-W, for I think £50 and it's been rock solid ever since. Sometimes I don't print for months, sometimes every other day. It sits on a shelf out of the way and it Just Works. Every few years I buy an unbranded toner cartridge for £20 and that keeps me going perfectly well.
If I ever need to replace it, I'd look at Brother devices first, a friend has one and it's equally rock solid but looks slightly nicer. I don't know if Samsung even make a cheap mono laser any more. I just checked and toner carts are still available for mine.
Excellent! Thanks <3
Yeah, mono laser seems like the way to go, I just have a small itch around colour but I suspect it's more of a FOMO than actual wanting.
The very few times I want/need colour it's either photos, in which case I pay a photo printing service a few pounds for the use of their insanely high quality photo printers (which I could never afford to own one of); or it's just a document that I can print at my local library on a colour laser for a couple of pence (I can even email a document from home and have it ready at the printer when I get to the library).
Of course your mileage may vary on that front, but I don't miss having colour printing at home at all.