Recommendations for high volume laser printer?

[evilsatan]

I tend to buy Dell lasers as they are supposed to be rebranded Xerox machines, they are reasonably priced and third party toner is readily available for decent prices. However one of my clients prints out their own brochures of up to 50 pages and when they print a long run there are problems with messed up printing.

I have read up and it seems leases are a bad economy unless you have one of those giant printers, I was wondering what peoples experience was of other workgroup laser printers? I have used muratec, Konica Minolta and oki in other offices which seem to do the job.

Requirements:
Must be able to cope with high volume runs without affecting printing, this won't be printing high volumes every day but when it does it needs to work well.
Must have reasonably priced toner available so the running costs aren't astronomical.
Should be easy to service with replacement parts readily available now and in the future, preferably with good support online to help diagnose issues I.e. a popular printer for this purpose.
Interested in all in one or just print devices as I can add a desktop scanner if needs be but must be full colour.

Cheers

[MHP]

I can recommend the OKI C610. It has great print quality and good support. It can handle heavy GSM paper and the N variant has built in Ethernet.

A full genuine toner set is about £400-£450. Non genuine £150 (I've had good results with these)

[Over Carl]

I can't remember what the issue was, but I remember one of those OKI's (n version) giving me grief.

Edit: I lie - it was an 810 that gave me headache, never used a 610 myself.

[burner1]

I worked as a Field Engineer on printers and general digital imaging gear mate, and in my experience you are better off looking at a dedicated printer as opposed to an AIO. From what I learned, there are occasions when something goes wrong with the scanner assembly (as an example) the things can go into shutdown mode, stopping people from using the print facility even though the problem isn't with that element. Used to piss off end users something rotten when they have a back log of print jobs to get done.

[evilsatan]

That was what I was thinking mate, they don't mind investing in the right gear for the job so I suggested a Fujitsu desktop scanner and a dedicated printer. Do you have any recommendations Burner? Maybe a particular brand or line? I am strongly considering that Oki but it's a fair bit of money so want to make sure I choose the best one.

[burner1]

That was what I was thinking mate, they don't mind investing in the right gear for the job so I suggested a Fujitsu desktop scanner and a dedicated printer. Do you have any recommendations Burner? Maybe a particular brand or line? I am strongly considering that Oki but it's a fair bit of money so want to make sure I choose the best one.

I generally worked on the more high volume, high end stuff mate but Fuji scanners in general were excellent so can't see the lower cost range being much different. If you do opt for them, try and go for the flatbed scanners and not so much the paper feed through short foot print ones (less electro mechanics to go wrong and less chance of muppets feeding through paper with a paper clip on, that can chew the shit out of the roller mech). As for printers, I found OKI's to be ok for occasional medium volume work but did struggle on constant high volumes but they have a place if their needs are a mix of these, the key to any printer longevity is basic maintenance as in roller, fuser and paper path cleaning to get rid of toner residue, main suspects on print quality deterioration.

As for Printers, HP were probably the best ones I know of and that's due to lack of call out problems with them but the higher volume ones (and toners) aren't cheap. One thing that bugged me with them is they would sometimes stop working with a menu message saying 'Maintenance required' but there are (or at least were) ways around that. Mind you, the usual maintenance count was 250,000 copies.

If you go for compatible toners, shop around before deciding to set up any sort of longer term supply contract: I've seen the mess some awful cheap clones can do to a printer but also seen some as good a quality as the originals that are twice or more the price.

[evilsatan]

I always find printers a minefield and my general experience was canon for inkjet, dell for laser (due to price of printer and cheap toners available). From now on I will have to enquired about print volume as this is only a small office but they seem to print a lot more than I expected. I will look into oki and HP and compare with reviews online

[reverend]

Some of the old HP LaserJets were bulletproof mate - it really is a minefield now as some just do all the rasterising in software and can be a complete ball ache - they're just cheap at PC World so lots of folks buy them.

I've personally got a Samsung colour laser which I like - I originally had one of the smaller ones that was crap and went back due to fuser issues but then got one of these CLP-415NWs from Amazon:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B008NJWIM...5151_M3T1_dp_1

I can't personally fault it as it's been great so far - it's got ethernet and wifi and does all the Apple AirPrint bollocks so it's been great for me. Bizarrely it seems to print photos better from my phone than from on the Mac via Photoshop - more than likely user error and the wrong colour profile there though tbh. Size wise it's a bit of a beast though - probably a good thing when it comes to laser printers though! For long term use the HPs would probably be much cheaper.

At work we're moving from Xerox to Kyocera as it was massively cheaper - which amused me as a large Government department in all of your towns rolled out 16,000 Xerox MFDs!

[evilsatan]

Struggling here, so many to choose from and there are varying reviews. The Oki C610n is said to be expensive to run and it is expensive to buy but they have 3 year warranty at the moment, the Samsung CLP-620ND gets good overall reviews but some say expensive to run. The CLP-680ND has some shocking reviews and that is just the refresh model of the 620 so worries me.

I might quote the Oki and the Samsung 620 and let them make the final decision as the Samsung is a lot cheaper than the Oki.

[evilsatan]

The 620 is discontinued and the newer model has bad reviews so I have recommended the Oki 610n as it comes with a 3 year on-site warranty and third party toners are cheaper than the Samsung with a higher yield rating. I hope I don't live to regret this decision...

[burner1]

Make your client aware that the quality of paper used can play a part in print quality deterioration and/ or general faults as in paper jams etc. If the paper is the real cheap nasty crap, it can and usually does, cause issues after a while - you've probably seen that white paper dust inside printer paths, causes jams once it builds up too much. By telling them about this possible 'problem' you could take a little heat off yourself for printer choice. I've seen many a company lease a solid printer with a service contract and moan like shit because it keeps jamming etc. and some take a while to realise that when I say it's down to shite paper, they should change the quality to something a little more suitable.

[evilsatan]

Just noticed this from the Oki T&C about the 3 years warranty, can they tell if third party is used? Is it legal for them to specify using their own consumables for the 2 year EU warranty?

The warranty extension becomes invalid if non-OKI Original consumables are being used.