So many printables! Should I get a laser printer?

[akichan]

Has anyone bought a laser printer for their home to keep up with the hsing printables? I have pre-K kids so it would be a long-term investment that I would like to keep throughout their hsing years (at least through high school). Even before printing all the handwriting printables, our inkjet is running us about $75 every other month. ($50 per refill, no clue how many pages of print I can do before I need a refill)

Can anyone recommend a brand or specific printer? I have no idea about laser printers, I just think they may be more cost-effective for our family. Anyone with experience/recommendations would be appreciated.

[akichan]

No replies. I guess I will cross-post in Frugality and Finances.

[StormySar]

I was using an inket and refilling my cartridges at home with bulk ink. I think that ended up being cheaper, though I use my laser printer, turn off the low ink threshold and can print hundreds more pages without being stopped due to low ink. It may end up being cheaper now. I am going to look into refilling my toner cartridges.

[meco]

Have you considered buying off brand ink, refilled ink or refilling at home? It is substantially cheaper.

Also, you'd have to compare the cost per page for each printer you are considering to see if it's more cost effective. I thought that while laser printers were a higher initial cost, the ink cost was overall lower. I would check this out on each printer though especially given the inexpensive cost of off brand ink or refurbished cartridges.

[PGTlatte]

We have a Samsung ML-2010 black and white laser printer. It's great.

We used to have color inkjet printers. The ink was always drying out and clogging up, and was expensive, and once the ink dries in the lines the printers can't be fixed. I personally don't miss having a color printer at all. This black and white laser was really affordable and has been much more reliable and less expensive to use than our inkjets were.

[CariOfOz]

In short... YES! I purchased a laser printer (colour) for about 180$ at the start of 2009s school year (feb for us) and it's just now requiring new black toner, and the colour is still 1/3full.

We had an inkjet and it cost us about 65dollars to replace both cartridges, and I had to replace them THREE times in the year prior to going laser. We tried to make it more cost efficient by using the refill kits, but it seems that SOME inkjets have a chip or something in the ink cartridges. Because our printer refused to accept that it had any ink in it and wouldn't use it until we placed a NEW cartridge in there.

Our colour laser says it does 2k pages colour ad 5k pages b&w on average (depending on the amount of the page actually filled, so a photo is nearly 100% coverage... a page of txt is maybe 10% I think it said.

[moominmamma]

I cannot imagine not having a laser printer. It's all I've had for the past 10 years. Previously I had an HP but I wanted a copier function, so I upgraded to a multifunction machine, a Canon Imageclass. It cost me less than $200 and it's brilliant. I do a lot of music publishing, so laser printing has been a must-have, but I honestly can't imagine doing without it for home and family use anyway. Fast, affordable and versatile. I don't miss not having colour printing. When I need something done in colour I outsource. It's rare I bother.

Miranda

[dotnetdiva]

I also couldn't imagine not having a laser printer. Luckily, both my husband and I had them for our careers, so we ended up with 3 that we can use for homeschool. One if a b&w fax/copy laser printer, the other 2 are color. I haven't used ink jet for as long as I can remember.

[CariOfOz]

Originally Posted by moominmamma

I cannot imagine not having a laser printer. It's all I've had for the past 10 years. Previously I had an HP but I wanted a copier function, so I upgraded to a multifunction machine, a Canon Imageclass. It cost me less than $200 and it's brilliant. I do a lot of music publishing, so laser printing has been a must-have, but I honestly can't imagine doing without it for home and family use anyway. Fast, affordable and versatile. I don't miss not having colour printing. When I need something done in colour I outsource. It's rare I bother.

Miranda

AWww no FAIR!!!! We still have our annoying inkjet simply because it does the scanner/photocopier thing (and just had to buy ink so I could photocopy.. boy did that rile me ) Things like that are SO expensive here though.. one of these days!

[RiverSky]

Yes, but note that a black/white laser printers will be much cheaper with regards to toner ($80). Color laser printers have very expensive toner cartridges ($400?). We had a used b/w laser printer for over 10 years and it worked fantastically in every way, including labels and business cards, etc.. Now we have a color laser printer and though we love it, we can't print on business cards or labels (we have tried using the Avery color laser specific items and it still didn't work) or photo paper. Pictures printed on plain paper look AMAZING though. We expect to pay hundreds when it is finally time to replace the toner though and that makes me a little nervous.

[CariOfOz]

Riversky, yeah ti does bite that you cant' use photo paper, but as you said.. the colour print quality on plain paper is awesome! I just checked my printer and I have actually got HALF of all 3 colour toners left Then, because your revelation of how much you were expecting to pay scared the bejeeezuz out of me I had to check that out too. I have a Samsung CLP310 and each of the colours is 65each (mail order) and the black was about 79.. or I can buy a set of all 4 for 239.

I need a new black toner now, and I figure it'll last about a year, like the last one did. THen I can plan to put a few bucks back now & again and order the set of 4 next year at this time. For me though, I don't consider that a bad deal since I will have gotten nearly 2yrs out of the colour.

[Mama~Love]

I want a laser printer, but can't decide on which one to get. DH wants an all-in-one (scanner, copy, fax, print). I'd like a color one maybe, can't decide on that.

[kgianforti]

My mom bought me an HP Laserjet 4L printer back in 1994 to go along with my first computer. It was maybe $400 back then and I'm still using it to this day. It survived about 7 moves too (not counting back and forth from college for 4 years).

ETA: it runs great and still is our only printer. It is black and white and I've only changed the cartridge maybe 3 times. It does need a change now though! This was an amazing investment because it has lasted so long with NO problems. It was "top of the line" back then too.

[briansmama]

We LOVE our laser printer. It's b/w and it was about $100 from Office Depot. Look for deals, they always have specials. I print all the time and the toner lasts for thousands of pages vs hundreds with our old inkjet.

It does save a lot of $$. One thing I wish I would've done though is paid a bit more for a b/w laser printer with duplex capabilities. Duplex allows you to easily print on both sides of the paper. We use e-books for homeschooling so I was printing a lot of material and a duplex would've been even more cost effective, but I didn't know about that when we bought the laser printer last year.

We just bought an e-reader for all the e-books we use with homeschooling though, so the problem is solved. I still use the printer a lot, but I'm not printing large documents as much since I no longer print out all the e-books. But if you're using your printer for free e-books, I would look into a duplex laser printer.

HTH!

[Mama~Love]

briansmama - thanks for the tip! That would help save on paper as well.

So, is a color laser just not worth it? Is B&W sufficient? We don't print photos (hardly ever, anyway). We could always take the camera card somewhere to print them, I guess.

Been searching eBay for a good deal on a laser, but it's so hard to decide on what to get. We could get refill toners through DH's work - he's asked about that already.

[briansmama]

We didn't need a color laser printer because I use ours for content, not graphics or anything like that.

I know some people who use a laser printer for content purposes and hold on to their inkjet for crafty things like printed invites and other graphic stuff, but I couldn't wait to get rid of my inkjet. That thing was such a $$ sucker!

If it's in the budget and you think you might need color or want the option, you could always keep an eye out for good deals on a color laser printer with duplex capabilities. They have sales all the time these days at office supply stores for things like that.

[Mama~Love]

Thanks! I don't think color is that important, I guess. We'd just be priniting lots of coloring pages and worksheets mainly.

[dotnetdiva]

The color laser toner cartridges last so long, and my printer gives me a warning months ahead of time when I need to buy a new Yellow (for example). Eventually I go out and buy a yellow at Staples for $75-85. I have my own account manager at Staples (since I used to buy so much) and she gets me better deals and rebates if I use her.

So $80 once a blue moon works out nice for us. The color laser looks great for the stuff we do, but mostly the stuff we print is in B&W.

[skueppers]

I have a black & white laser printer and a color inkjet printer. I do most of my printing on the laser printer, but if I need color for some reason, I use the inkjet.

I bought the color inkjet printer specifically for homeschooling, as I was finding that there were things I really wanted to do in color.

I'm happy with this combination of printers, but I wouldn't want either of them to be my only printer.

I don't print photos on my inkjet printer, as it's both easier and cheaper to send them to Costco on-line and have them printed there.

[onyxravnos]

many 'all in one stores' have refilled ink thats cheaper or if you look around i bet there is someone local who will refill your ink for really cheap. thats what we do..