Best printer for cheap, high quality, black/white printing?

[NicolasB]

Looking for a reasonably cheap printer to print text documents - black text on a white background. May sometimes need to print diagrams and pictures, but colour won't be necessary. Print quality of text is very important. It would be nice if the running costs were fairly low, and reliability good. Printing speed isn't crucial. Under £200, definitely. If there's anything worth getting for nearer (or even under) £100, so much the better.

My first instinct would be to go for a monochrome laser of some sort, but I'm happy to have mind changed if there's a good reason.

A very rapid scan of some online reviews suggests the HP LaserJet 1020 or the Dell 1100 as cheap options, but it's difficult to find up-to-date reviews in a hurry. Recommendations for a specific model would be nice. Would also appreciate any pointers to reasonably unbiased online reviews, preferably large group tests. Ta.

[scouse]

pc pro magazine just out have just done a mammoth inkject printer review and include the wastefulness that a surprising number of printers have. if you are looking to spend money soon i'd definitely look at that magazine... even if it is in the newsagent

edit: two printers they recommend are:

hp photosmart 8250 £130
hp photosmart 8750 £270

would recommend looking at the reviews though

[clockworks]

A laser is definately the way to go. They're cheaper to run, faster, and the print doesn't smear if the paper gets wet.

I used to use an HP laserjet 4 - excellent printer (got it free!), but big and noisy. A couple of years ago I bought a Samsung ML 1510 for £50 from PC World (special offer). This has proved to be a very reliable printer, with very good print quality. It's never jammed, and is still using the original toner/drum.

If you do go for a laser, get one with a proper paper tray, not a top loader.

[shezzy2k]

Another vote for laser if you only need black and white. Much better quality than inkjet and cheaper too.

Have used the samsungs before...they are very good.

[BenC]

This looks like a good deal:
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...duct_uid=90377

[willsy2]

I've got a Samsung ML1200 Laser bought it for £50 about two years ago, brilliant prints and only just refilled the toner (refill from http://www.consumablecafe.co.uk for £7.99) You can generally refill the toner 3 times, then just chuck the printer away and get a new one.
Just had a look, the ML1610 BenC linked to's refill is £7.99
I'd definitely reccomend the Samsungs

[donkeymagic]

Another thumbs up for the Samsung ML 1510. Cheap and reliable.

[meansizzler]

People say Laser printers are cheap to run but has anyone taken a look at the power requirements, i've looked at the specs of a few laser printers and they take between 300-400W...now that's alot...

[clockworks]

Originally Posted by meansizzler

People say Laser printers are cheap to run but has anyone taken a look at the power requirements, i've looked at the specs of a few laser printers and they take between 300-400W...now that's alot...

Most of the power consumed by a laser is used by the fuser, the hot roller that melts the toner onto the paper. During use, a 200 watt halogen lamp is switching on and off to keep the roller hot.

All modern laser printers will turn off the fuser lamp when the printer is idle, drastically reducing power consumption.
The motors use power too. These only run when paper is moving through the printer, or for a few seconds during warm up.

When idle, a laser will use very little power. You can save even more by turning it off.

With an inkjet, switching it on and off wastes ink, as many printers calibrate and clean the head when they are turned on. Lasers just warm up, they don't waste toner.

[NicolasB]

Thanks for the suggestions, everybody. Any more will be equally welcome.

[rdhir]

I'm not sure how much you plan to use it but I would make the following comments.
Laser printers are still sold a bit on the razor blades principle, but less so than than inkjets. At the cheap end of the market, you may find that toners are expensive for the number of pages. To really compare the cost of ownership, add the cost of the printer and say toner for 5,000-10,000 sheets (10-20 packs of paper). Don't forget some models come with high capacity and low capacity options.

Personally around 3 years ago I got a Brother HL1650. Its fabulous and very cheap. It has now been replaced, but the new model still uses the same toner and drums.

Cheers

Rajiv

[NicolasB]

Thanks for all your advice. In the end I changed my mind completely and decided that actually I did want a printer that could print in colour as well.

So, after deciding that colour laser printers are still a little bit too expensive for me, and not that great at printing in colour anyway, I came back to inkjets.

The HP 8250 gets some rave reviews but it and a number of similar devices are obviously designed primarily for printing photos, and (according to the detailed review over at www.pcmag.com) it's not actually that well suited to printing black text - slow, and the definition isn't the very best.

Black text was still going to be the main thing, so I looked for a colour inkjet with really good black-text ability, and, after ploughing through countless reviews, narrowed it down to just two possibilities:

1) HP Business Inkjet 1200.
2) HP OfficeJet Pro K550.

The PC Mag review rates these as:

1200

Text: 5 out 5.
Graphics: 3.5 out of 5.
Photos: 4 out of 5.

K550

Text: 4.5 out of 5.
Graphics: 4.5 out of 5.
Photos: 4 out of 5.

I decided I could live with the slight loss of text quality in exchange for better colour logos, etc, plus, while the 1200 is both very quick and cheap to run (by inkjet standards) the K550 is supposedly even cheaper, and certainly even faster - 12 pages per minute (monochrome) in "Normal" mode and 37ppm in "Draft" mode. So I decided on that (although I'm sure the 1200 would have been a great choice too).

I managed to get a reasonably good deal (I hope! ) on an ex-demo K550 (that has so far printed only 5 pages) on eBay: £79 + £7.50 shipping. (Normally retails for £128 + shipping). So, fingers crossed, it will do what I want!

Of course HP don't supply a cable with it but I managed to get one on eBay for £1.50 so that's not too bad.