back to article Desktop Colour Laser Printers

Laser printer have been hit hard by the rise of inkjet machines in the last ten years or so. Excellent inkjet print quality, especially in colour and on photo paper, caused many pundits to predict that was it for the laser - and the colour laser in particular. But laser printer makers have rallied to the cause, and in the last …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Huh?

    "Colour lasers deliver much better print quality than all but the very best, most expensive inkjets". Ummm ... ever tried to print a photo on a colour laser?

    1. Paul Crawford Silver badge

      @Huh?

      The comment is true for graphics with sharp edges and uniform colours, but as you point out, not for photos.

      Also confusingly there are other comment locations for this article, for example, at the conclusion page http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2010/03/26/grouptest_colour_laser_printers_verdict/

      Maybe El Reg should keep the forum posts together in future?

  2. Duncan Macdonald

    What about the Samsung CLP315

    The Samsung CLP315 which is available for under £125 should also be included in this survey.

    1. Dapprman
      Thumb Up

      Agreeed

      I picked up the wireless version about a month ago after my latest inkjet died on me. I was thinking of another when a friend pointed me in the direction of cheap colour laser printers and Samsung in specific. I did my research and now have one of these at home - cost me just £119 from Amazon.

      Certainly a worthy option to those reviewed.

  3. Jacqui

    Samsung

    Also the samsung unlike most of the overpriced tat under review costs less to run and will talk to linux boxen without the owner having to jump thorugh hoops.

  4. ZedroS
    Go

    Good... and what about printer + scanner ?

    I would love to see a group test on scanner + printer all in one devices !

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    The Xerox

    I have have the 6130 in my office which is essentially a slightly enhanced 6125. It's a fantastic printer and when I had some problems with it Xerox came to my office and provided me with new toners and an imaging unit under warranty. I couldn't have asked for more!

    As someone who probably only prints 20-25 pages per week, the printer is fantastic and I don't have to put up with all the horrible inkjet problems I used to suffer like clogged heads.

    Prior to the Xerox i had an older version of the Samsung. Was cheap and looked neat but the convoluted paper feeding mechanism was a nightmare and it packed up within a year. Samsungs warranty policy was the exact opposite of the friendly hassle free approach of Xerox so I cut my losses.

    Highly reccomended.

  6. Antony King
    Thumb Up

    laser vs inkjet

    I got through about 4 ink jet printers before getting the HP CP1215N - it's shocking how much better it is, compared with fishing damp bits of paper out the out tray, endless cleaning cycles, nasty drivers, ink cartridges that last for, oh dozens of of pages. I tend to print 50 pages, once every 6 weeks or so, so inkjet printers tend to dry out and you end up with a crappy first page. I plugged it into my network, and all my (linux) boxes just popped up a little box to say they had found it and would I like it to be my default printer. Still barely a quarter through the 'demo' toner cartridges after 1000 pages or so.

    Photos are OK; agreed ink jets on coated paper do a better job for that, but it's good enough and besides, not what I bought the printer for.

    1. Il Midga di Macaroni
      Thumb Up

      Spot on, wet ink is a dumb technology

      Wet ink is stupid. It takes ages to dry (so you have to print pages individually and lay them out to dry somewhere), and it dries out in the cartridge if you don't use it up fast enough. And on top of that, per page it costs about five times as much (depending on the brand of course).

      If you want to print photos, there's self-serve kiosks in supermarkets that can do it for 15c a pop, and it doesn't even take that long. Unless you're printing photos pretty much every day, you'll spend as much time and effort printing out duds and cleaning the print head as it would take you to get in the car and go to the shops to get them done.

      Long live laser printers.

  7. BristolBachelor Gold badge

    Got one

    I've got a HP, but the one with built-in ethernet.

    My reasoning was simple. After having had many ink-jets, I was fed up with them. The Colour laser just starts and prints, every time. Apart from loading it with paper, there is nothing to do. No cleaning, no ink tanks every 20 pages, no missing lines or blotchy bits.

    As for photo printing, it's as good or better on plain paper as a good quality photo printer in "quick" mode (without the smudges).

    To be honest, when I want photos I send them to a lab, I've never found a printer that can match them except dye-subs, and they aren't cheap unless you put a lot through them, and there are questions about how long the prints survive.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Colour Space

    Colour Laser printers have no where near the same colour space as an inkjet printer. A quality inkjet will be several times larger colour space than the best lase printers.

    Check up on ICM colour profiling. You have to downgrade the output of the inkjet to match a laser printer. ICM profiling in simple terms makes the output of your better devices 'dumb' down to the best quality of your weakest device. If it didn't you couldn't colour match outputs.

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