Office printers that dont suck?

I've got this konica / minolta printer that needs 4 different toners, 4 different imager drums, and a waste toner bin that seem to always need replacing. In 4 years we've printed 15k pages (lightweight) but have put probably $2k in supplies into this thing.

IT guys / office peeps - what do you use? I need a color printer that is networked, can scan / fax / print. Duplex would be nice. Fast would be nice. Cheap supplies? Long runs between service? I've got 5 people using this thing, maybe a ream a month.

The internets are all over on printer reviews, not sure which ones are ads (and most are several years old).

Let me know your go to brands or your stay away brands.

thanks!

At my office we've had good reliability (and low running costs) from 2 Kyoceras so far, right now we have a 3550ci. If we didn't need to be able to occasionally print magazine-quality stuff in-house, we could get rid of this achey-breaky Xerox.

This Xerox, like the last one (also a high-end model), is like the F1 car of printers. Great results, but an expensive bitch to keep running.

All black and white here, ours EATS toner. Seems really expensive for the quantity of printing we do.

Our Xerox uses solid ink blocks which are cheaper and last longer than old-school toner cartridges, it's just too bad that it didn't do anything for the printer's reliability.

We have an OKI 9600 color laser that has been an absolute beast. It does need multiple drums, etc. but it is really reliable for high-volume, heavy-duty stuff. We have had pretty good luck with our Canon 9300 for lighter-duty work, too.

Both will duplex, but the Canon is also copier/scanner/fax too.

Thanks all. My IT dept say they are looking at leasing(!) a printer for this location. Totally unnecessary IMHO. I'm assuming HP is still the devil in regards to printers? I recall their software was more like a virus.

I have had really good luck with Brother MFC multifunction printers. I just retired a black-and-white MFC-8840 that cost me $330.00 five years and 90,000 pages ago.

In that time, I probably spent %1,500.00 on toner and drums. Granted, it only has one toner cartridge and one drum. It's finally giving up the ghost. ADF jams are more frequent, paper doesn't always like to feed, and the printing is spotty.

I just set up (like today) the replacement, which is a Brother MFC-9330cdw. Wireless, color, one-pass duplex printing (but NOT duplex scan/fax), seems to be well made. Consumables appear to be between average price and slightly cheaper than average from what I can tell. It was $330.00 on Amazon. There are bigger ones in the family that will duplex scan/fax.

Couple thoughts:

Toner and drums WILL exceed the purchase price of the printer, no matter what. Buying reputable off-brand stuff will save you some money and shouldn't affect the product that much.

I have had bad luck with Canon lasers (not laser cannons).

Oce and Kyocera all the way. I've got an older oce fx1000 black and white printet/scanner/fax that does Around 4 cases of paper a year in my home office. Still haven't had to use any supplies in three years, and it was used when I got it. In a mental health facility. As a copier/printer for the whole facility.

I've had good luck with ricoh if you go the rent route

I have a brother B+W laser at home and its been great.

We recently replaced some on contract Konica bizhubs at the office. They brought out Samsungs for us to try that I really liked. Unfortunately there was some ridiculous limitation with batch scanning of different sized paper and we ended up with some Sharp machines.

Samsung has some new stuff coming out in the coming months that looks to be awesome. Android powered+cloud connected.

Funny that we bought bigger machines in order to print LESS. Our contract with the company is based on toner/pages printed. Our monthly cost went WAY down with the better scanning/filing software.

Brother MFCs are great for home use. HP's software problem is that their full driver install drops a E36 M3load of crapware on your system. You can go on their website to get the "driver only package."

I've always been a fan of HP B&W lasers.

what percentage do you need in color? It might be better to look at a small volume color laser to supplement a better B&W unit.

Kendall_Jones wrote: Thanks all. My IT dept say they are looking at leasing(!) a printer for this location. Totally unnecessary IMHO. I'm assuming HP is still the devil in regards to printers? I recall their software was more like a virus.

That is a decision for IT to make IMO.

Seriously, having a berkeleyed printer is the worst. At my company (large, 800+ people), all of our printers are leased and for good reason. If E36 M3 goes south, they come and fix it. Toner and crap is provided, and the costs aren't outrageous since you don't own the equipment.

We have a bizhub c364/c284/c224 Konica Minolta. Only problem I have with it is that it requires you to use their software to print, so you go to print a document, go through whatever's software you are using to print, and THEN it opens a new window that you have to re-enter everything again. Its bullE36 M3.

But the scan and email feature is wicked easy, and we have no service issues with it.

Leasing isn't necessarily a bad idea, I wouldn't rule it out. Depending on how often you upgrade printers (or how long you might need one), it can be cheaper than owning.

In reply to HiTempguy:

I second the notion of leasing. Most of the printers at my workplace are leased Canon multi-function. Toner and servicing are included in the lease. When they go obsolete (about every 3-4 years) they are replaced with the latest model.

Whether or not leasing printers is a good idea is mostly up to the accountants, not the IT staff.

Were a office of 5 (or less) printing 500 pages / month (25% color). I don't think leasing will work for us but it depends on the cost. It would be nice but I imagine we could get a $1k printer with $1k/year in consumables and treat it as disposable when it breaks (and still be cheaper than a lease). I see some of these newer printers auto order consumables (which would be fine with us).

I just want to see if there was a "go to" printer and it sounds like there's several

thanks!