laser or inkjet printer

[minamon]

Anyone with experience of home laser printers?

I'm about to replace broken inkjet printer... thinking I'll go for a low price colour laser printer.

It seems that although the colour laser printer will cost slightly more than an inkjet printer, and colour toner is more expensive than inkjet cartridges, the laser will be cheaper in the longer term, because toners can be used for many years. (Inkjet cartridges need replacement more than once a year, even if you dont do much printing).

Anyone have comments on using laser printer -- either colour or b/w?
Anyone using both colour and b/w toners, switching as necessary (both seem to be possible in a color laser printer)?

thnx.

[edin日本]

Anyone with experience of home laser printers?

I'm about to replace broken inkjet printer... thinking I'll go for a low price colour laser printer.

It seems that although the colour laser printer will cost slightly more than an inkjet printer, and colour toner is more expensive than inkjet cartridges, the laser will be cheaper in the longer term, because toners can be used for many years. (Inkjet cartridges need replacement more than once a year, even if you dont do much printing).

Anyone have comments on using laser printer -- either colour or b/w?
Anyone using both colour and b/w toners, switching as necessary (both seem to be possible in a color laser printer)?

thnx.

I believe we covered that in an earlier thread at the start of the year. The end result involved my checking out Kakau.com and purchasing one of these http://kakaku.com/item/K0000284565/

[mr.sumo.snr]

Anyone with experience of home laser printers?

I'm about to replace broken inkjet printer... thinking I'll go for a low price colour laser printer.

It seems that although the colour laser printer will cost slightly more than an inkjet printer, and colour toner is more expensive than inkjet cartridges, the laser will be cheaper in the longer term, because toners can be used for many years. (Inkjet cartridges need replacement more than once a year, even if you dont do much printing).

Anyone have comments on using laser printer -- either colour or b/w?
Anyone using both colour and b/w toners, switching as necessary (both seem to be possible in a color laser printer)?

thnx.

Your printing requirements please? Paper size requirements too. Makes a big difference.

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[ericson]

It is true that at times in the long run you may think that the laser printer is cheaper, however, at this stage, I do believe that inkjets are better for home. A cheap laser printer will be either monochrome or crap at printing colours. So forget about high rez images. You should also remember that even though it does work out cheaper considering toner and paper only, you have to watch out for the roller and belt replacement costs. Depending on the printer you get, service intervals may be closer than you think, so in that case if you don't print a lot forget about the laser.

[twelvedown]

Inkjet!? Joke?!
Just get the most expensive (canon) printer you can find.
I have a friend who is upper designer of that shite and she freaks daily that the green or blue isn't quite right
As to the point of wailing. All the time.

[Andun]

Inkjets are best for photos. I've always used Epson. Good natural colors. Canons are good too. For home printing no bigger than A4 you don't need the most expensive printer, a medium priced printer will do. The printers themselves don't cost much anyway, only about 10,000 plus. It's the ink that costs.

[edin日本]

It is true that at times in the long run you may think that the laser printer is cheaper, however, at this stage, I do believe that inkjets are better for home. A cheap laser printer will be either monochrome or crap at printing colours. So forget about high rez images. You should also remember that even though it does work out cheaper considering toner and paper only, you have to watch out for the roller and belt replacement costs. Depending on the printer you get, service intervals may be closer than you think, so in that case if you don't print a lot forget about the laser.

If you don't use an inkjet on a daily basis the heads will dry out and become clogged and then you'll either have to replace them or get them cleaned. There's also the startup sequence that an inkjet goes through, it wastes a lot of ink. Prices on printers have gone down a lot, a cheap CMYK A4 colour inkjet printer can be had for around 4,000円, a reasonably priced colour A4 paper laser printer can be had for around 20,000円.

[ericson]

[QUOTE=twelvedown;1241706]Inkjet!? Joke?!
Just get the most expensive (canon) printer you can find.
I have a friend who is upper designer of that shite and she freaks daily that the green or blue isn't quite right
As to the point of wailing. All the time.[/QUOTTE]

With colour matching many people do not do things right. For example many people use LCD monitors but get the cheaper ones that does not display the true colour at all angles. Then, the brightness and contrast are not always set up perfectly and or compensated for under current light conditions. Then The monitor displays RGB and the printer does CMYK, so colour profiles become of major importance. Then just because you buy the most expensive printer from Deodeo, doesn't mean it is actually worth the price that you are paying in terms of resolution and supported profiles.

Then we start getting into the actual paper quality etc etc etc...

With profiles many people think you should set the printer and software and monitor to the same profile... This is not always the case depending on the type of end product you want to have. Many people then end up working in RGB mode on their canvases because they forget to set it to CMYK and that is another issue.

Point is don't always blame the printer. I normally complain about colours on my inkjet as well, but that is normally after I export vectors to another program. Even though they have the same loaded profiles, it just doesn't always work "automagically" that is why they invented proof prints. It may be expensive for home use, but it surely does save money if you are printing for distribution.

If you are really into printing perfect CMYK then it is better to invest in a printer that uses colour plates and can over print and invest some more money to get standard colour palletes for matching. Then you will get those perfect prints so sought after. This ofcourse is not possible for home or SOHO application as it is just too expensive, so a little colour mismatch is not that bad.

Point is, there are a crap load that can go wrong in matching colours.

[minamon]

Your printing requirements please? Paper size requirements too.

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A few A4 sheets every couple of weeks (sometime longer gaps with no printing); maybe nengajo at newyear, (but for newyear it might be better to print high quality cards in a shop)

Anyone know what service intervals are for laser for a dozen or two sheets every 2 or 3 weeks, --every couple of years? or more frequently?

(there is an NEC laser printer *with toner* for 10,000 yen, so at that price it might be cheaper to throw away the printer each time the toner needs replacing!! :-)

[mr.sumo.snr]

A few A4 sheets every couple of weeks (sometime longer gaps with no printing); maybe nengajo at newyear, (but for newyear it might be better to print high quality cards in a shop)

Anyone know what service intervals are for laser for a dozen or two sheets every 2 or 3 weeks, --every couple of years? or more frequently?

(there is an NEC laser printer *with toner* for 10,000 yen, so at that price it might be cheaper to throw away the printer each time the toner needs replacing!! :-)

With that much time between print runs if you buy an inkjet printer you might run into the clogged head problem mentioned by others. If you can make do with a monochrome laser printer go for that. Get your nengajo printed at the photo shop and then use the laser printer for the addresses. I send out about 150 cards every year and it's great when it only takes 5 minutes to print them off.

The NEC printer sounds fine - but check on replacement toner costs (the single most expensive part of any laser printer).

I print about 500 pages/month mono/color worksheets and flyers. I use a networked DELL 3110n color laser printer which I paid 26,000 yen for as an outlet model from Yahoo Auctions about 6 years ago. I get toner refill kits from the US at about $150 for all four colors and they last for about 7000 pages. I get very dirty replacing the toner but since a single branded replacement cartridge would cost 11,000 yen I save big time.

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[Andun]

I haven't had any problem with clogging ink in between long stretches of no use, but then I don't use 3rd party ink. Epson for Epson seems to work fine apart from the occasional need to do some nozzle cleaning.