Color Laser Multi Function Printers?

Ed the Roofer

I am upgrading my computer system and getting a 10 % to 20 % discount on any additional items I purchase at the same time.

I want to add on a dream color MFC laser printer.

After some research I am lead to believe that these 2 are the final candidates.

Brother MFC-9420CN

HP Color Laser Jet 3600 N

Am I to understand that with the Brother, I would not need ink cartridges. Their are 2 accessories that report a page output of 60,000 pages per item.. A fuser unit, FP4CL and an OPC Belt Cartridge, OP4CL.

Does that take the place of the individual Toner cartridges which provide 6,600 pages for the 3 color ones and 10,000 pages for the black toner cartridge?

What about the toner waste pack, WT4CL, yield of 12,000 pages.

No store clerks have the correct answers at office Depot or Best Buy. They are only familiar with the individual toner cartridges. I calculated the price per page difference based on list costs and page output and it is about a 67 % savings if I am correct.

I did not see this belt cartridge or fuser unit option available on the HP unit, but the ratings are very high.

Any feedback or alternative suggestions?

Thank You,

Ed

mickeyco

Don't know anything about Brother brand color laser printers but my girlfriend is on her second HP color. I forgot what happened to the first one, I think someone knocked it over or something, anyhow she likes it, the cartridges are expensive (probably expensive for all color laser), but readily available. Sometimes the color is a little darker than what it appears on your monitor but you can adjust for that, the quality is not as good as a printer (at a print shop) but it's quite good and won't run if it gets wet. She uses it for postcard ,brochures, etc. and it sure beats waiting for a printer (at a print shop). I like the HP because the laser printer is their business (I think they invented them), they've been making them forever.

dougchips

Ed, I am not sure if Canon makes one but if they do I would buy one. I've chewed up 2 Brother ink jets in the past few years that were purchased at Staples. Not sure if they make a homeowner version and an office version but the ones at Staples are not that great. Canon's customer service is great, they actually pick up the phone when you call and have answers to my dumb problems.

Canon didn't even laugh at me when I called them to bitch about their manual giving bad instructions........I was using the brother manual to program my Canon machine.

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Ed the Roofer

Thats funny DougChips,

I have a Canon Pixma 500 now and am very happy with it, but I want to upgrade to a Color Laser, which reduces the ink/toner costs by about 67 % if I did my math correctly on the per page calculations.

60,000 pages per fuser and belt cartridge with the Brother 9420-cn unless I am mistaken.

Ed

dougchips

The toner for my current unit is killing me! We buy the Staples brand which is less expensive than the Canon brand but still go through a unit every 6 weeks. Staples claim that they refill the empty Canon ones with more toner than Canon but I debate this!

Let me know how you make out, I am looking to get away from the toner printers.

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GregS

Laser tech has dropped considerably in the last 3 years. They are trying to get it to the point of ink-jets.. Where the printer is pretty much free, but they gouge you on the consumables.

The 3 consumables for laser printers are:

1) Toner, what 'sticks' to the paper
2) Drum, statically charged, drawn on with a laser to create negatively charged sections, and then rolled in toner to have it stick to those sections
3) Fuser, heat, makes the toner stick to the paper

Some printers may combine all 3 devices into 1 unit.

Unfortunately with the way the technology for these things has gone is that it is cheaper just to buy a whole new printer that includes the 4-toner cartridges than it is to replace the toner carts.

My HP1500L I bought for $800CAD. To replace all 4 carts in it would be about $170x4, or about $700. The latest model of this printer is about $300, including all the carts, more memory, faster engine, etc..

My old brother MFC-6800 was $700CAD. It now needs a new drum, which is priced at about $280CAD. I can buy the latest model, faster, more memory, for $299CAD.

dougchips

Food for the landfills. How long are they lasting you?

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RobertCDF

The new printers come with a 1/4 full toner cartridges. Like my Konica was $250 at Sams club and the toners should yield approx 1,500 pages. But the refills should yield approx 4,500 pages. That is why they cost more than the printer.

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GregS

The Brother was done a while ago, but still makes a good fax sender and scanner.

The HP is still clicking along with the original carts. But I don't use it that often.

mickeyco

I've been buying my ink and toner at (InkSell.com), great prices, delivered to the front door and they seem to work fine.

Kgmz

I will explain a few things about the Brother.

The waste toner pack is to catch any wasted toner. All it is is a garbage can, any toner it catches cannot be reused. A message will show up on the LCD telling you it is almost full or near full.

You will have to replace the fuser and belt cartridge pack when ever the printer tells you. When the printer decides they are used up it won't print, and it may be a lot less than the 60,000 page estimate depending on page coverage.

And of course the 4 toner cartridges. The printer comes with starter cartridges which are only partially full, a little less than half by the estimated page count.And any of the cartridges whether starter or replacement may not last the estimated amount of pages depending on coverage.


About HP lasers. The printers come with full cartridges unlike a lot of other brands that are partially full. The only consumables are the toner cartridges since everything is built into the cartridges. Unlike other brands which split everything up like fusers, drums, toner, etc.


So for any printer you need to figure out the costs of all consumables to compare them.

Also you said you were looking for a Multi function printer (MFC). The HP you are looking at is not a MFC.

Another thing don't expect the laser to print photo's as good as a inkjet. They just don't have the dpi capability. The lasers print at 600 dpi while a inkjet is printing at 1200 dpi and up. And they can't print as small of a dot which will affect how sharp the image is, since to make a color it needs multiple dots of the 3 colors of toner.

We own several printers; I have 2 Brother MFC's black only lasers. They have worked flawlessly and the cartridges do last as long as stated. We use them in our job shacks to receive and send faxes, make copies, and just general printing. In the offices we have Canon laser fax machines. We have 3 HP black only lasers for the offices and I still consider HP to be the best for lasers. Cartridges are fairly cheap compared to other lasers, and they are dependable. We have 3 Canon inkjets, and 2 Epson inkjets. The Canon's are just used for general color printing and the Epson's are dedicated photo printers with roll feedersand paper cutter. And I really don't like the HP inkjets, the cartridges are just too expensive for the amount of pages you get. But I do have one HP inkjet with roll feeder and paper cutter because it is a plotter and can print D size prints (2 ft wide by any length up to 50 ft) which we use to print our blue prints.


Forgot to add if your are geting a 10 to 20% discount. See if they will discount you some cartridges for whatever printer you get if the price ends up cheaper then what you can them elsewhere.

Ed the Roofer

Wow Kgmz,

You most definitely have more useful information about my questions than any store manager, floor associate, or geek squad detective I have inquired with so far. (More than the companys web sites too.)

The HP 3600 came up on my search for MFC's. Maybe I didn't look at all of its capabilities well enough. I did have all the information for the correct model researched previously, but my wife cleaned up my box of papers when we had a St. Pattys day party. Now it has gone to the great abyss, sort of like fell in a black hole.

My biggest question about the Brother 9420 CN, was do you eliminate the individual 3 color cartridges and the 1 black cartridge by ordering the OPC Belt Cartridge and the Fuser Unit?

I will check out the HP line in further detail, but one I saw at a Staple Office supply storee earlier today was the model, HP Laserjet 1017 MFC.

You seem to be in the know about these things, so please freely offer your suggestions outright.

So far, you are satisfied with about a half dozen brands for varying purposes, but which would be the best for all around including significant pages printed and copied and photos included. Photos in good enough quality for color brochures and to include in proposals.

Thanks,

Ed

Ed the Roofer

Upon further investigation, which of these fit the best quality level in your opinion. Consider total medium to high small business volume costs please.

Brother 9420 MFC $ 649.00

HP Laser Jet CM 1017 MFC $ 624.00

HP Laser Jet 2840 All In One $ 749.00

Canon Pixma MP 960 $ 359.00

Or, would you recommend something else?


Thank you once again for the very detailed written introspective on the previous options discussed.


Ed

reveivl

I don't know squat about these things but I'll tell my story anyhow for the input...

I got a Samsung CLP510 for around $300CAD, worked great for two months then I started getting the "waste toner tank full" message. After playing with it and the very helpful people on the help line (telephone) I wound up getting them to send me a new one, which I received in three days and then sent them back the old one, all this at no charge. When I read the directions for sending back the old one it said that all accessories: power cords, patch cables and toner tanks were not to be sent back! So I wound up with the four new toner tanks from the original and the new ones that came in the new machine.

No one has mentioned this printer, is it junk? Seems to be working fine now.

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Kgmz

My biggest question about the Brother 9420 CN, was do you eliminate the individual 3 color cartridges and the 1 black cartridge by ordering the OPC Belt Cartridge and the Fuser Unit?

You do not eliminate any toner by ordering the Belt cartridge and fuse. They are just a part of the consumables you will need to repace as needed. You will be replacing these after about 3 or 4 sets of toner cartridges if I remember the page counts right.

About the printers you listed in the other post. Go to Macworld.com, they have over half of the printers reviewed last month.

Also go to PCworld.com and PCmag.com for some current reviews of color lasers.

Also when you go to a store to look at printers, take a file of your own to be printed. That way you will see something you would print and be able to see the quality, otherwise they will print something for you that has been optimized for that printer to look good.


My recommendation is to not get a multifunction color laser.

Why? If you read the reviews they are just not good at printing photos or even a good brochure with light graphics. You will read about problems with banding, white lines showing between colors, blurry images, color bleeding or overlap, and on and on. And I have seen this for myself on a few printers, which is why I don't have one or even a cheap color laser non-MFC.

For what you are saying you are going to print, photos, brochures. You should get a stand alone color laser with a duplexer (prints on both sides of paper), like you might print for a trifold brochure. And the printer is not going to be cheap, around $1000 and up. This is the league where you will start getting quality printing. A recommendation for this class at the lower end, a Lexmark C534dn at around $850 or so. PCmag has a good review http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2034550,00.asp


So I would recommend a printer like that or better and a cheaper monochrome laser MFC to be used for general printing, faxes, copying, etc. And maybe a dedicated photo printer if the color laser is just not quite perfect for photos.

There is just not one machine yet that can do it all.

Do a lot of research instead of rushing into it so you will not regret it later. When I bought our large format printer/plotter I researched for about a month, did a lot of test pages, etc. And I didn't want any regrets with a $2000+ printer.

Also you will find out at the higher price ranges of color lasers that the cost per page is a lot cheaper. So if you figure out the amount of pages you will be printing and including the cost of the printer you may be saving money with a more expensive printer and getting a quality print that you won't be throwing out and reprinting.

Ed the Roofer

Thank you so much for the information Kgmz,

Initial price is not my concern at all.

Back in 1993, I paid $ 1,850.00 + tax for an HP 1200 C, so the prices of anything now a days seem cheap by comparison.

Finally, someone had the knowledge to answer my question about the Brother. I had thougt that the OPC belt cartridge and the fuser unit took the place of the 3 color and 1 black ink cartridges.

Much obliged,

Ed

mseneker

I like our Brother MFC-6800.

What about recommendations for a wide-format printer for "blue" prints?

I've just started to research them. We don't print enough to cost-justify a laser so it's an ink-jet for us. We spend about $500-$600 a year on prints we send out.

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wireless

Ed, What did you end up buying? I have been looking at the MFM from brother capable of duplex scanning and printing I think it is the 9940.

Ed the Roofer

I wound up not going the initial route that I was thinking. I thought a color laser would have done the trick for my own in house flyers, but was convinced to go with a desk jet.

I have been through about 3-4 printers since this thread started, and I was very very satisfied with my Canon Pixma MP 500, until it finally gave out. The other ones were Epsons, which just could not stay working without having to continually send them in for warranty repairs.

I just bought an HP OfficeJet Pro L 7580 from Best Buy for about $ 249.00 or $ 299.00?

The ink cartridges do not have the electronic do-hicky on it, so the cost of replacement ink is theoretically supposed to be much lower.

So far, with 2 days of service, I have not killed this one yet.

One reason that I suspect that several of my Epsons failed, was due to a previous part time secretary doing me a favor and getting about 150 replacement ink cartridges from one of those refill outlets, called Cartridge World. I think that may have had something to do with some of the issues, but not all of them.

Ed

Grumpy

Ed, are you checking the duty cycle of the printers before you buy them, and do you know how many pages you printer per day/per month? This should be a huge factor in how you buy your printers.