AIO Color Laser Printers

[dd74]

Hi all - I'm interested in purchasing an AIO color laser printer. I've looked at the HP Color LaserJet CM 2320nf MFP, but at over $600, it's a little too pricey for me. Another I've looked at is the Samsung CLX-3175FN, which seems more reasonable between $300 and $400.

What I want is color printing, scanning, copying and faxing capability. Duplex printing is not as important, but would be nice.

So, does anyone have experience with either the HP or Samsung I mentioned? Or are there any other recommendations anyone might have?

Thanks.

 

[atlanticza]

Whatever printer you buy, make sure that it's fully Mac driver supported by the manufacturer "out of the box".

 

[Dreamail]

Especially on an AIO machine that you will use for photo copies and perhaps for receiving faxes, be sure that the cost of consumables is in line with your budget too.
Check the number of pages each cartridge can print versus the cartridge price to get a per page average cost.

You will likely find that the really cheap printers, where you think you get a good deal are actually very expensive in running costs. Which is not surprising because the manufacturer has to make money somewhere - they obviously didn't on the cheap printer, which they might even sell at or below cost to 'lure' people in.

What seems to be a growing trend is that cartridges get smaller and smaller, this perhaps so they're not actually that expensive and people assume running costs will be cheap. But when they only yield around 1000 pages, not the usual 2000-3000, things get expensive really fast.

 

[dd74]

Thanks much for the advice. Any suggestions as to what AIO works best with Leopard? Okidata seems fairly workable with 10.5.5.

 

[nanofrog]

Let me add more confusion to the issue.

You might want to take a look at the Brother MFC-9440CN.
It's available for $453.99 at Amazon.

Supplies are inexpensive per page, and they don't expire (HP). Works well with a Mac.

 

[IJ Reilly]

I almost bought one of the Brother multifunction printers, until I looked at it more carefully. Very cheaply made. Flimsy. And Samsung, unless they've cleaned up their act recently, offers mediocre Mac support at best. We owned one -- the color print quality was terrible. If you can afford to buy a printer with real Postscript, I'd recommend spending extra for it. We ended up with a Xerox and have been quite happy with this printer.

 

[Azagar]

Disregard this post, need to pay attention more at what I read.

I own this Kodak AiO http://www.kodak.com/eknec/PageQuerier.jhtml?pq-path=9/11921/10580/10581&pq-locale=en_US and would recommend it. Not only was it cheap but purchasing ink is only 10 for black and 15 for color. It is a bit bulky but does everything you want. This model have been upgraded recently into a whole new line as well. The software works flawlessly as I have yet to notice any problems.

 

[Moof1904]

Brother MFC-9440CN

I bought a Brother MFC-9440CN and returned it. It was an okay printer when it printed (like someone pointed out, though, it's a bit flimsy feeling), but there's an esoteric "issue" with the built-in networking. In some rare cases, the Brother printer refuses to wake from sleep in response to a print job. According to Brother's tech note this is due to a conflict with certain types of networking hardware. Their only suggestion was to replace all the routers and switches on the network and see if that fixes it. When I pointed out that my combination of AEBS and Netgear gigabit switch didn't cause a problem with my four Macs and my three PCs, all I got was silence. So, faced with a printer that wouldn't wake up to print (and sleep can't be turned off, only the interval before sleep can be changed), I returned it.

 

[nanofrog]

I almost bought one of the Brother multifunction printers, until I looked at it more carefully. Very cheaply made. Flimsy. And Samsung, unless they've cleaned up their act recently, offers mediocre Mac support at best. We owned one -- the color print quality was terrible. If you can afford to buy a printer with real Postscript, I'd recommend spending extra for it. We ended up with a Xerox and have been quite happy with this printer.

I've not had any problems with mine, and have been quite satisfied with it.
It's fairly new though, I bought it June or July. I just recently put a new toner cartridge in, and got plenty of usage out of it.

The only issue I'm aware of, is that the wireless units can be a little troublesome on a Mac.

 

[IJ Reilly]

The Brother may be fine, I don't really know from actual experience in use. We were right on the brink of buying one, but I had second thoughts after looking at it a second time. I was already on the fence about the Postscript emulation they use. The Xerox had the real thing.

 

[nanofrog]

The Brother may be fine, I don't really know from actual experience in use. We were right on the brink of buying one, but I had second thoughts after looking at it a second time. I was already on the fence about the Postscript emulation they use. The Xerox had the real thing.

I've not had a problem so far. (Fingers crossed).

 

[dd74]

Thanks for everyone's help. I ended up purchasing the Xerox Phaser 6110 MFP X, like this one: