Printer reviews

My husband deals with printers, inks and cartridges. I have a business which generates on average 300-400 printed pages a week. I have had a HP Laserjet for about 12 years, it is still going strong, even though it passed its expected life of 100,000 pages long ago. He considers HP to be the most reliable brand. We have updated to an updated multifunction HP Laserjet in the last year, but use the old machine when the wireless system breaks down, and its better with printing envelopes. It seems to me at home that the only reason for changing our home printer has been to get a model with extra functions. We always use what he calls “after market” cartridges.

6 Likes

Imagine buying a brand new car that required you to buy petrol from only BP outlets and wouldn’t run on Shell.

6 Likes

If the business plan was like printers, eg give cars away or sell them at or below cost to make the money on the fuel, it would probably be a go’er in our modern world. We would expect a full tank of fuel with the car, but might only get a starter amount :laughing:

5 Likes

I have a Brother HL-2140 black and white printer that is still going strong, and have used brother toners and generic toners in the printer without noticing any difference.

7 Likes

Snap - I’d suggest out Brother HL-2270DW has been our best purchase. It too works great with after market toner and refills.

It’s sole companion is a newish Brother Inkjet with scanner, doc feeder and as needed up to A3 used mainly for the occassional colour, large size or scanning work.

Brother’s software support has been the equal of HP’s solutions and perhaps a little more reliable to install. Brother unlike Epson or HP does not try to take over your picture library or editing software.

6 Likes

May I suggest that the availability of reasonably priced replacement print heads be included as part of the inkjet evaluations? These seem to be a frequent point of failure (as discussed a while back Premature inkjet failures).

I have have had a number of printers’ heads fail, and if they are available, the replacement heads cost near as much as a new printer!

As a consequence of these print head failures, we still possess multiple new and unopened ink cartridges that cost a fortune to buy, but can’t be used for anything because the newer printers (even from the same manufacturer) always have different cartridges.

6 Likes

Thanks @meltam, with flag this product testing :+1:

4 Likes

Some 6 weeks later and I still have not replaced the cartridge.
No point in changing them until the printer stops working or the print quality is unacceptable.

3 Likes

If you have 3rd party carts they usually come with a satisfaction guarantee return period if they do not work.I only had one with a bad chip over 20 years, but it does happen, and once had a ‘part-filled’ cart. While getting the last few drops out is satisfying it can be counter-productive. If you have 4 carts that use at slightly different rates (common) you end up having to buy singles or store certain colours that might or might not work one day.

A 4-set of my compatibles w/extra capacity is around $38 delivered and when the first gets low I order a new set and replace the lot of them at once. It is roughly once a year. Why all at once? If I have a bad one I still have a usable original to put in while it gets sorted. It is cheap and if I maximised each I might be saving $4-5 p.a. at best. My methodology also removes having to argue the merits of the ACL after the satisfaction guarantee period, plus when there is a problem it is usually within 2 minutes of closing on Sat or Sun night when you have to wait until Mon to get the printer going again. If you order carts like I do, it is 1-2 business days to have a new one in your hand, metro.

4 Likes

The print quality finally became poor today as the yellow ink was at critical so I replaced it, the magenta, and the cyan cartridges which it wanted for the past 6 months.

After throwing the old cartridges and the packaging in the bin, I noticed that I had a lot of blue and some red ink over my hand.

The cyan cartridge was obviously not empty despite it carrying on for 6 months

3 Likes

I swore I would never buy a Canon laser printer again when Canon left me with a fully functioning colour printer with no Win 7 driver. They were leaving that for a third party to create (think unpaid enthusiast). Silly me - I bought another Canon colour laser to replace it, partly on the Choice review, and held my breath when I updated to Win 10 - pleasant surprise that it didn’t need a new driver.

I have had lots of annoying faults with the Canon LPB 5050N. The last straw was my refill store telling me they no longer stocked the toner cartridges and could not refill my own. After some ringing around, another store told them the HP was compatible and I took one home - it worked. But the other faults that continue to stack up will be consigning this to e-waste.

It (like the one before it) throws Cyan all over the innards. It has constant paper jams - unless the tray is over half full, but less than full - meaning big print jobs have to be done in 30 page lots. It goes through periods of printing the first page, then paper jamming the second. It was continuously stopping requesting I run the “Out of Color Registration” which I did over & over. Internet search reveals Canon’s advice to replace with genuine toner does nothing to remedy the problem. In the end I determined that the magenta was not aligning (after doing all the Workshop Manual fixes). I put a HP toner in. It works for general documents, but any pictures - it leaves the magenta out - greenish / yellow pictures.

Thinking of going to HP laser to continue using the pile of Canon Toner cartridges I have bought to “fix” the Canon problem. Anyone had experience with HP in Canon?

5 Likes

I had Canon, then had HP, then Canon printers, and most recently moved to HP because I was fed up with all the problems I was encountering with the Canon drivers not being updated and the printers becoming useless.

Currently I have a HP Laserjet 200 colour MFP (M276) which I think was one of the Choice recommendations.

And guess what? I am having issues with it, as the scanner stopped responding. It turns out that with one of the Win10 updates some of the HP printers stopped working with USB 2 cables, and only work with USB 3. This is fine at the computer end, but the printer only has a USB 2! No point putting on a USB 3 cable. :angry:

Fortunately, this MFP has wi-fi, so I am now using that to do scanning and printing via a Windows “smart app” that came with the printer. (Does it need to be said that was only after uninstalling & reinstalling a few times?)

It seems that almost every time there is an update for Win10, there is a new issue. The drivers & the app keep failing, and have to be manually uninstalled and reinstalled.

Needless to say that HP haven’t been updating the drivers.

I also have issues with the colour toners like you do, with smearing along the pages, even when I am not using them.

My conclusion is that these sorts of printer problems are now just par for the course due to the constant Windows updating, regardless of which brand you go with.

3 Likes

More generally the issue of updates to Windows breaking printer software and scanner support goes back to XP by our experience. Win 10 was touted to bring an end to driver and update problems? The comments here are not a good look for Microsoft or the printer brands involved.

Many printers appear to have two options for drivers and software. Generic MS or OEM. Trouble shooting to separate between a printer physical fault or software/driver/configuration fault is frustrating and time consuming. Having an older Win7 system which does not change has proven useful. Any fault not replicated on a printer when doing a trial print from it points to a software issue for the every day laptops. If the fault is replicated it is a physical printer issue.

Wisely or foolishly we are still on Win 8.1 with a desktop still on Win 7. That may have helped keep our older Brother laser printer working. The minimal security updates for 8.1 seem not to be a problem. The desktop is next to be replaced and has limited use on line.

I’m not advocating anyone go back. There are many reasons for Win 10 as a better option. It may be useful to know whether similar printer or scanner issues occur as often in a MAC or Linux world. My previous experience with Linux and printing is limited and generally unsuccessful. Mac second hand seemed to work well but on a limited range of printer models.

4 Likes

Very limited input, as we tend to hang onto printers for a long time. We have a 6yr old Mac Pro desktop, and 3yr old Mac Mini. Both run the latest applicable supported version of MacOS. Both these computers replaced earlier iterations of Mac hardware.

We currently use a Fuji Xerox colour laser connected via USB - equipped with 3rd party toner cartridges. We used to have a monochrome HP A3 laser connected via ethernet, and a monochrome Lexmark via USB. All of these (have) worked for years on end with no issues.

The one peripheral that we have had numerous issues with is a small Canon LiDE scanner. It has been a bit of a nightmare during a few OS upgrades. A large Epson Perfection scanner has been no problem.

Having boasted about the printers, I’ve probably jinxed myself now, and will need to replace the Fuji :sweat_smile:

3 Likes

I find the Brother Laser printers to be reliable, Canon and HP have been abandoned by us some time ago (in the consumer range). Others I have found to be good are Lexmark (business range and they often have High Capacity toners available), Epson (though often expensive refills), Xerox, Samsung & Oki.

Most have what I think are expensive OEM toner refills but some certainly have great after market toner support. Perhaps the after market refills for Lasers could be an included reference in the printer tests or even a separate review in themselves.

4 Likes

Great idea. I like your tone…r

4 Likes

I was scanning the reviews of monochrome laser standard printers when I was surprised to see that many models had the same listed fault: they are unable to print when the black toner runs out. It seemed a waste of time to me to mark them down for this but I looked a little further.

I was amazed to find that some models do not have the flaw! So my question is, how do they do it?

3 Likes

I don’t know about mono ones but some colour ones combine the 3 colour toners to make a pseudo black similar to how some ink jets do this. It is toner costly to do it but in a pinch it can get something printed if needed.

2 Likes

Wanting to buy a new colour laser MFP, I had a look at the choice review. The top rated HP printer is showing as unavailable from the stores and at HP.

More worrying, I was looking at laser printers, including the top HP recommendation, and found the following on several of the newer ones I looked at:
Dynamic security enabled printer. Only intended to be used with cartridges using an HP original chip. Cartridges using a non-HP chip may not work, and those that work today may not work in the future.

I know that HP have been trying hard to disuade users from purchasing after-market inks and toners, but is this a portent that they intend to head down the path of stopping their printers from functioning if after-market inks or toners are inserted?

Is this a threat or a warning?

4 Likes

No. It is a message to give HP the great one- finger Aussie salute.

image