Printers (slightly OT)

Pissed off with Ebuyer and Lexmark. At the beginning of December my cheap Brother mono laser had a toner leak inside. Changed the cartridge but still making messy prints, I was too busy to grovel around inside so I picked up a similar looking £100 Lexmark from Ebuyer (showing reasonable reviews on Amazon, but faster delivery from eBuyer).

Six weeks on, the low capacity cartridge is out, at which point I find it seems to have a "chip" like inkjet ones, nothing third party available, and cartridge prices vary from £50 for 1300 pages to over £200 for 6k. And nothing with fast delivery.

Seems to me Lexmark are taking the piss, Ebuyer too. I have had a Lexmark colour laser for a couple of years and that has been fine. I must have put about ten cartridges at less than £20 a time through the Brother. And a couple of replacement "drums".

I've had various HP and Dell lasers over the past 20 years or so, and never had this sort of problem before.

So be careful out there if you are in the market!

Reply to
newshound
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Depending on the model, there are bottles of CMYK toner together with a "reset chip" on ebay ...

Reply to
Andy Burns

Try

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offer same day shipping if ordered before 4pm. (possibly not at weekends)

Reply to
alan_m

Buy an office printer, not one made for small office/home office/john lewis/currys. The clue is in the tray capacity and number of prints in the largest cartridge, and probably slightly more costly.

Brother printers have small trays, small carts - and IME costly to replace consumables. Compatible carts made a mess of one of my friend's printer, we gave up even after changing the drum.

My Samsung ML-3710ND will do 10,000 5% pages before needing a change. Compatible cart cost £25, last changed Jan 2017. Printer bought in 2012 from printerland.co.uk

Not a colour one though.

Used to install loads of Lexmarks in Hotel reception desks. Never impressed by any of them, plastic covers too floppy - or maybe made that way to bounce when the staff trash them.

Do we have a printer section in the uk.d-i-y FAQ?

Reply to
Adrian Caspersz

I have an OKI C712 which cost very little to run.

Bill

Reply to
williamwright

I always checked consumable costs, before committing to a purchase.

You cannot beat a used ex-office laser, they sell for peanuts, are built for hard work and the consumables are silly cheap.

Reply to
Harry Bloomfield, Esq.

My old hp bw laser still works countless years on with recycled carts. The integral drums do not seem to be any issue, and never had to clean the high voltage bits as you do in some of the Brothers who use a platinum wire I think. Brian

Reply to
Brian Gaff (Sofa

One word of warning though, its awfully tempting, I am told to vacuum the spilled toner inside the printer to clean up printouts. DON'T!. Toner is low melting point plastic with a conductive additive and very very small particles. The vacuum used for this needs a special filter to stop it getting into the and seizing it and shorting it out! Brian

Reply to
Brian Gaff (Sofa

electricity is not however

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Also beware firmware upgrades. I have a Samsung laser printer (SoHo) which I can use toner refills with, but only because I shorted out a couple of pins on a counter chip on the main board ,/and/ didn't download a firmware upgrade. That upgrade would have negated the possibility o using the pin shorting method on the chip. I happened to have a couple of old, but full, Brother toner cartridges , and have slowly been using the toner in them to refill the Samsung cartridge.

Reply to
Jeff Layman

Horses for courses. I have a Brother laser purchased because it has a very small footprint and fits in a small space. The toner cartridge only lasts for 1000 sheets but is £15 for a compatible replacement. I've had no problems with compatible cartridge nor with compatible inks for my Epson. My usage of the printer(s) is light.

With the Brother laser I did check out the cost of consumables before purchase having been caught in the same situation as the OP 25 years ago with a beast of a HP laser

Reply to
alan_m

But do you print anything? :-)

Actually I too have an OKI, it's an MC342n "do everything" laser and works very well. It is quite big though.

Reply to
Chris Green

Depends on the printer. I have an ex-office A3 colour laser - it's a wonderful workhorse, but toner s nearly £200 per colour

Reply to
charles

I agree. But on a point of detail, check the weight: 'er indoors can't carry our (admittedly ancient) HP.

Reply to
Robin

You didn't check that third party ink cartridges were available before you bought a printer? That is *the* way to get royally ripped off.

Though I confess I have done it once with the colour Dell laser printer because of its for the time almost photoreal colour reproduction.

Fortunately for me the thing was so hard to assemble correctly without breaking it that huge numbers of damaged ones were available from Morgan with 3 sets of OEM cartridges for the same price as a new one. So I bought a second one from them just to get the toner cartridges. By the time they ran out aftermarket compatible toner cartridges were available. I had the original from new. I have just had to swap to the other one after the original print engine finally gave up the ghost.

Colour reproduction is now nothing special by comparison with the latest generation of lasers (especially on cheap toner at £20 a set CMYK).

They all do it to some extent on their newest printers. They make most of their money from selling the consumables. Aftermarket toner/ink suppliers generally crack the chips within 12 a year or so.

It was ever thus.

Reply to
Martin Brown

I think you're okay if your vacuum is something like a Henry or Karcher which has separate air streams for the dirty dust suction and the clean motor cooling.

Owain

Reply to
Owain Lastname

The Natural Philosopher formulated the question :

All modern printers go into very low power standby, besides mine is tucked away in an upstairs bedroom and only powered up when needed via a Smart Plug.

Reply to
Harry Bloomfield, Esq.

HP4000 A4 printer, with network interface. It cost me £20 many years ago. The toner finally ran low a couple of years ago, the replacement cost me £25.

Reply to
Harry Bloomfield, Esq.

Robin was thinking very hard :

Carry it, why would you want to carry it? Mine is on my network and I just print to it from any device, providing the device is somewhere on my property in range of wifi.

Reply to
Harry Bloomfield, Esq.

on 08/01/2021, Brian Gaff (Sofa) supposed :

Yep, same here HP4000n

Reply to
Harry Bloomfield, Esq.

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