Which laser colour printer to buy? One of the questions which people ask me most. The answer is not simple, with printer models changing all the time, companies using different ways to pursue you to use their printers and expensive toners and the not always clear claims by the manufacturers what their laser printers can do and how much that will cost you.

I will try to use as an example the experience which my friend and his small company had with purchasing one of those colour laser printers. They needed it mainly for printing colour web pages in order to choose the best web design as well as for printing Power Point presentations.

After they did their research on the internet and considering the price which they could afford they placed an order online for HP Color LaserJet 1600.
The new printer arrived and then the downfall of buying things online became obvious: the machine was huge, far bigger and heavier then any of the inkjets or the smaller black and white laser printers which they had till then. A special arrangement had to be made to fit the printer on its dedicated table. Of course, the printer did not arrive with a usb cable to connect it to the computer so there was some waist of time trying to get one.

The installation of the drivers for the HP Color LaserJet 1600 though slow went smooth enough. Alongside installing the drivers they got quite few free programs which you can use for some limited time and then purchase them if you wish. I must say, these programs are just clogging your computer and you should not install them at all or remove them once you see you are not actually interested in them.

The HP LaserJet proved itself popular in the office. It was easy to use and the prints were more than good for most of the people. Soon enough the toners which came with the printer and which were only about 50% full had to be replaced. Then a small shock, a set of four toner cartridges black, magenta, cyan and yellow costed as much as the printer itself.

That was expensive but they did find a way around buying recycled and refilled toners. There is a number of companies and places which sell recycled cartridges and toners for laser printers and so far by my experience they did prove to be a great value. Just to be warned, companies which make printers do not like that practice and they could claim that using the refilled cartridge invalidates your warranty. The cartridges don’t have to be the only expenses which you can face during the life span of your printer. Another significant cost to run can be the transfer belt, the photo cartridge, fuser, etc .

Back to my friend’s experience, his small company has been using happily theirHP Color LaserJet 1600 for the last 3 years and as he said it did handle well just about anything they threw on it. Interestingly he does complain that the colors are not realistic enough so he still uses for his designer projects ink jet printer to print them out.
As their business grew too they are looking now for a similar color laser printer but not anymore an entry model but something that can be connected directly to the office network, can print on both sides of the paper (duplex printing) and can crank pages out faster.

If you are looking to buy one, here are few recommendations:

• Be ready to do your research and do not necessarily believe in the numbers from the manufacturer and shopping web sites, try to find a really independent review of the printer.
• Check the size of the printer.
• Check its power consumption especially in standby mode as probably it will be on 0-24h and some models could cost you a fortune in electricity bills.
• Toner cartridges will be your biggest expense with the printer and I do mean big so check twice how much they cost and how many pages you can get out of them. Typically they are going in the range of 1500 to 5000 pages for 5% of page coverage. Consider using refurbished/remanufactured toners as they do work well and they will be very kind to your pocket.
• If under consumables for your chosen printer are listed any fusers, transfer belts, photo developer cartridges or something else, count that you will have probably at some point to replace them. They can be a real rip off and usually they last less than the manufacturer claims. My last photo developer cartridge on one of the color laser printer failed on 1/3 of the pages which the manufacturer claimed it can print out. And a replacement costs staggering £200 ~ 300$.
• Planning to print a lot? Check carefully what the recommended monthly page volume is. Do not confuse that with the maximum monthly duty cycle. The first one is important and it is hard to get it as most of the shops are listing the second one which gives better numbers but can be misleading.
• Do you think that more people will use it? Then do a favor to yourself and get a model with a network adapter included. These days they are cheap enough and simple to set up.
• Printing on both side of page, duplex printing? A huge majority of the users do not need that option and printers which are having it cost more money.
• The speed of printing also varies a lot from the numbers which companies are giving, if that is important to you do check independent reviews

To finish this long article – photocopying, scanning, faxing on your colour laser printer. Yes, you can have them too, these are the so called Multifunctional (MFC) colour laser printers but it will cost you more and printers with that many options can be a mixed bag of good and bad. We can maybe dedicate another article just to this multifunctional office machines but for now I hope this will be enough to help you choose your laser color printer.