B&W only printers

[fitzpayne]

Anyone know of or recomend a printer that you only need b&w or drum cartridges for? Sick and tired of paying through the nose for those damn colour cartridges. Even if I print only in B&W the colour ones eventually dry out and the printer won't work unless I replace them. If you have any opinions or ideas please share.

 

[feakbeak]

I have the Brother HL 5140 - B&W Laser printer. Works great with my Mac and PC. I found it on sale for $150 at Staples early in the year. So it has been a great printer. I don't print too much though.

Looks like Brother is on the HL-5150 now, going for $214 on newegg.com right now.

 

[fitzpayne]

All the reviews I have read of Brother printer say that the Graphics and photo quality are both relatively low and that the output has a tendency to curl. Do you find that is true? I am not looking for photo quality, just a comfortable, clear read.

 

[trainguy77]

You will want to go with a laser printer. Do you need something fast? The "HL-5150D Laser Printer - Brother" is said to be good.

 

[feakbeak]

All the reviews I have read of Brother printer say that the Graphics and photo quality are both relatively low and that the output has a tendency to curl. Do you find that is true? I am not looking for photo quality, just a comfortable, clear read.

The paper curls slightly, but not bad at all - certainly no worse than any other laser printers I've used and I've used many - some rather expensive ones too.

I use my HL-5140 for text almost exclusively - it is very rare for me to print graphics or photos, so I cannot comment on the quality off the top of my head. I plan on buying a photo printer for that specific task sometime in the future. After work, I'll print a couple graphics and photos on it to check the quality and post back. If I happen to forget to get back to this thread just PM me about it.

 

[fitzpayne]

Thanks feakbeak, that is kind of you to check out the printing. I was reading that it might be if one is buying lesser quality paper and not the laser paper, that might be what is causing the curling.

So far the Brother printers I am seeing in my area for sale (Montreal) are as follows:

Brother HL 1435 Laser Printer $199.99 CDN
Brother HL2040 Mono Laser Printer $229.99 CDN
Brother HL-2070N Laser Printer $299.99 CDN
Brother HL 5150D Laser Printer $399.99 CDN
Brother HL-1870N Laser Printer $499.99 CDN

I wonder if any of these are good. Quite the price range, are the lower end ones super crappy?

 

[feakbeak]

I printed some photos and graphics to test it out. I printed two photos from my 5 MP Canon Powershot A95, each picture onto a full letter size sheet of paper. One of my pictures was colorful and had lots of contrast/details. That picture turned out quite well - crisp, no banding and no artifacts present. The second picture was of my cat that is a long hair with patches of light and dark brown hair. It seems when there is less detail and contrast in the picture - meaning large sections of same/similar color it tends to look a little blotchy,not unlike when you have your computer set to display with a limited number of colors - it is not terrible but easily noticeable. I also printed some clipart from MS Word which turned out surprisingly well, very crisp.

Another thing to mention is that both the photos and clip art printed out very quickly - nearly instantaneously. Since I've never really used my printer for these purposes I'd have to say I'm rather impressed. I didn't buy it for this type of use - I had expected it to do worse to be honest with you. I would scan the prints and post them, but my scanner is crap and wouldn't do the prints justice.

I realize my impressions are subjective, so take it for what it's worth. For the money, it's a great printer. I only paid $150 USD for the thing, I can't believe it is going for $400 CND - that's over twice what I paid at the current exchange rate. Are you sure you can't find a deal online or something?

Good luck with your purchase, whatever you decide to get. Let me know.