I'm in need of a new office printer and considering a cheap mono laser printer. There are a few on the market:
HP, samsung, canon 600x 600 dpi and 1200 x 600 dpi

I'll only be using it for printing text and word documents etc...doubt I need colour.

Are there any disadvantages of a laser printer compared to a cheap £40 inkjet?

The cartridges are almost the same price, but was wondering would a 600 dpi laser be sharper than a basic inkjet which I believe the 4800x1200 models only print black text at 600dpi anyway!

In my experience, my 12 year old HP 5L, which was a low-end laser printer, produced cleaner text than my new HP B9180 photo quality inkjet, unless I use the inkjet at very high resolution (i.e., with both at 600 dpi, the laser was sharper), but the inkjet at high resolution is much slower than even a 12 year old laser printer. I tossed the HP 5L, because after 12 years, it was getting streaky and jamming more often, but 12 years is a pretty good life span for a printer.

On the other hand, in draft mode (150 dpi bidirectional, I think) and normal mode (300 dpi), the inkjet is faster, but the HP B9180 is a fairly high quality inkjet printer, and a cheap inkjet printer won't be as fast or have as many options.

Cost per page is pretty much always cheaper with a laser printer. The toner cartridges last much longer.

In general, I print a lot more drafts than final copy, and draft mode uses less ink, and I can use this printer for things that aren't discussed on APUG, so I'll probably stick with just the HP B9180 for a while, but if I need to be printing a lot of high quality text at some point, I'll probably get another HP laser printer just for text.

I would allways use laser printer for only text/simple vector graphics printing over inkjet. Price of HP1050 (or 1005, I dont know exactly) here is about 75 Euros (A4 format).

I agree with David, but with some caveats. Laser output has traditionally been cheaper than inkjet output. This is because laser printers have traditionally cost more up-front and the manufacturers have priced the laser printer toner cartridges at sane levels; they make profit on both, but not obscene profit. Inkjet printers have traditionally been priced low (at or below cost) and manufacturers have made their profits -- huge profits -- on the ink cartridges. This ultimately nets them (and costs you!) more. My caveat is that printer manufacturers have been slowly shifting their laser printer pricing model to more closely resemble the inkjet pricing model. I haven't researched the details lately, though, so I don't know how far down that road they've gone. I recommend you look up the official numbers on the number of pages you can print from a single cartridge and do the math. (Remember that those figures will be a bit optimistic, but AFAIK they're equally optimistic for laser and inkjet printers.)

As to print quality, laser beats inkjet hands-down, at least for black text on plain paper. Inks tend to soak into the paper, which slightly blurs the result. No amount of increased resolution in dots per inch will stop that. Subjectively, I'd say the result is a print that looks similar to a laser print in the 300-450 dpi range, even when it was nominally printed at much higher resolutions. The only way to minimize this effect is to give the paper a special coat, as in "photo-quality" inkjet papers. Using those will of course increase your costs even more, and photo-quality papers have their own unique look and feel that you probably don't want to use on everyday correspondence. What's more, inkjet nozzles tend to clog up and go out of alignment, especially if the printer is used intermittently. In my experience, the output looks great for the first month or so and then drops a notch or two and never recovers. (Most inkjets have nozzle alignment tools, but they don't seem to help all that much.) OTOH, I tend to be a light inkjet user (I've got an old HP4000 laser printer that I use for most mono printing); perhaps with heavier use the clogged nozzle/banding and alignment problems would diminish. On the laser side, the main problem is when the toner cartridge runs low; that produces unevenness in the toner coating, which looks like light and streaky prints. This can be temporarily corrected by gently shaking the cartridge to redistribute the toner, but ultimately the cartridge will need replacement. Once that's done, quality returns to the original high level.

If it's for business use, get a Laser. Inkjets look soft when printed on regular paper and not at all professional.

I'm in need of a new office printer and considering a cheap mono laser printer. There are a few on the market:
HP, samsung, canon 600x 600 dpi and 1200 x 600 dpi

I'll only be using it for printing text and word documents etc...doubt I need colour.

Are there any disadvantages of a laser printer compared to a cheap £40 inkjet?

The cartridges are almost the same price, but was wondering would a 600 dpi laser be sharper than a basic inkjet which I believe the 4800x1200 models only print black text at 600dpi anyway!

If you need or will someday want to print color, look into the HP Officejet Pro 7500,7600,7700 series. They use 88 and 88xl cart. The XL will give you about 2500 pages black, 1700 pages color. The cost is about 75.00 for the XL cart for a complete set. I think the cost of a toner cart is for the monochrome is about the same price and yields about the same number of pages. Cost of the machine ranges from 200-700.00 US depending on the model.

Actually HP designed this series to be a step between Laser and Inkjet. The quality of this series if near laser.

Since you asked for disadvantages. A laser normally needs a little time to warm up before the first print. If you are only printing one sheet, then a laser takes longer overall than an inkjet.

I have a Samsung 3051ND and a HP 1522nf multifunction do it all.

I doubt if anything matches the Samsung for cost per page. The 8000 [A4 I think] page toner is about 100 Euros. Or was it less? The whole printer with the 4000 page included toner was less then 200 Euros. I want to say 160 but it's been months. That got me 20+ ppm A4. Duplex. Ethernet,USB and maybe even LP connection. I think it's got a 4000 page monthly duty cycle. They have a heavier duty line to but for a home office this one is good enough.

The HP is more expensive for toner but does everything. Fax/print/scan/copy.

I don't think you'll find any inkjet with a cost per page close to either.

I've had an HP 5L since the late 1990s and only had to replace the print engine cartridge once, at a cost of ~$80. Not bad compared to inkjet systems.

Finally the rollers began to dry-rot and crack, causing numerous feeding problems, so I've recently replaced it with a Samsung model. The quality of the Samsung printout is pretty equivalent to the HP, and the Samsung prints multiple copies faster than did the HP.

Obviously B/W laser printing is not for printing photos (unless you want them to look like halftone newsprint photos) but my printing needs are almost exclusively text and simple graphics. You can't compare (in my opinion) the quality of B/W laser to inkjet in this regard. Letters just come out better, looking very much like professional quality printing. And considering my consumables cost of my original HP (~$80 over ~12 years) I've paid for my new Samsung in the cost of inkjet cartridges I didn't have to buy.

For snapshot color photos, I copy them onto a memory stick, go down to Walgreens, and have them printed on real RA4 photo paper for 15 cents per print, usually done while I shop (no waiting.) Hence, the reason why I've tossed my el-cheapo color inkjet printer.

~Joe

I have a brother HL-2040 at my dorm. Cheap laser printers will beat inkjets in terms of print quality hands down. My parents have a Samsung ML-2571N. Having a network printer is much less hassle than trying to hook up a printer to a computer and share it with the network. Also, the laser printer won't clog up like an inkjet. Inkjet printers can be a real pita, and laser printers are a great relief.

The disadvantage to a laser printer is that it takes up more space.

I purchased a Canon budget laser printer after reading a few reviews. It has a very quick start up time and was the only printer in that price range to print 5pt text clearly which was more important than running costs for me. The Samsung printers are a lot more cost effective and easier to refill with replacement toner bottles selling for £10.

The price of these laser printers are incredible these days...cheaper than a replacement drum and cartridge. Expect to see them soon, piled up at a landfill site near you!

Has anyone tried a lazer printer for diginegs?

Has anyone tried a lazer printer for diginegs?

I sometimes use my laser printer to print an "index print" from scans of a B&W roll. It's okay as an aid to organization, if I don't have a contact sheet available.

It looks a lot like a course grained half tone - think an old style local newspaper.

Matt

Laser: for all the reasons above but mainly because it's far cheaper to run and quality is higher. Only downside I have seen is that some fancy labels are not usable with lasers, only inkjets, but that's a minor problem you are unlikely to encounter.

You might look at colour Laserjets which have fallen in price over the last few years. Only downside of that is that they tend to print in grey (using all the colours) unless you tell them not to... You can usually configure the printer's Properties to use black only, reserving colour for when you actually want it. Black ink is usually quite a bit cheaper than coloured.

If you want an inkjet for occasional use, your local Tesco should currently have an Epson DX4400 all-in-one job for 30 quid... No idea how good/bad it is.

Cheers, Bob.

Yeah saw someone buying that Tesco printer tonight. I'm sure it is crap at everything it tries to do.

I bought a $50 Epson when I needed a printer for two months one summer while we were away from home. It was fine for that purpose, and afterward I gave it to my brother-in-law, and it's still working fine a couple of years later.

When you see those cheap printers, remember what I wrote in my first post in this thread: Those cheap printers are priced at or below cost; the manufacturers take a loss on the printer so that they can make money on the ink cartridges. A printer priced at $50 may be perfectly OK (by modern inkjet printer standards). It could cost the manufacturer $100 to make the thing (pulling a number out of thin air), but when each ink cartridge sells for $30 and costs $5 to make, the manufacturer then breaks even after just two ink cartridge purchases. (This ignores retailer and distributor profits, but the principle still holds.) Given that pricing model, in fact, the manufacturer wants the printer to last.

I have a brother HL-2040 at my dorm. Cheap laser printers will beat inkjets in terms of print quality hands down. My parents have a Samsung ML-2571N. Having a network printer is much less hassle than trying to hook up a printer to a computer and share it with the network. Also, the laser printer won't clog up like an inkjet. Inkjet printers can be a real pita, and laser printers are a great relief.

The disadvantage to a laser printer is that it takes up more space.

The Brother and the Samsung XL series (HL, ML, etc) are both made by Samsung. They are sturdy, cheap laser printers with excellent output and very low cost to operate. I have two Samsung ML-1710s that have been cranking out the pages for about four years. If you're really cheap, like me, you don't even buy the refill cartridge ($40) but instead buy a refill kit ($12) on ebay.