Color printer for the office: laser or inkjet?

Question

Iron

Actually the question: you need a printer to print all sorts of promotional materials and other crap in a restaurant. No special features - just high-quality A4 printing. The initial price is not very important, but the cost of the page should be as low as possible, provided that the quality is good (if not photographic, but as close as possible to it).

Question: what to take? A cheap laser printer like some HP Pro, an expensive laser printer a la HP Enterprise, a cheap inkjet or an expensive inkjet? ~1000 sheets per month will be printed.

Answer 1

In fact, we order such print runs (about 1,000 advertising booklets, etc., etc.) at a printing house, which is many times cheaper than inkjet printing and many times better in quality than laser printing.
Especially if you conclude an agreement with them for monthly printing, the cost of one piece of paper will be minimal.

Answer 2

1. The print quality will depend on the cartridges. Both laser and inkjet printers will need to use original cartridges, which are quite expensive. Take compatible or refillable ones, there will be very poor color reproduction.
2. Laser printers are more economical than inkjet printers and print many times faster.
3. There is a lot of crap with inkjet nozzles: nozzles get clogged, dry up, sometimes paint drips, etc. Those. if you don’t print on it for a week, then before printing it is guaranteed that you will have to run a cleaning, and sometimes 2-3 cleanings in a row. Cleaning at a time "eats" from 10% to 30% of the cartridges, depending on the printer.
There is much more to say, but if funds allow, I would take a good laser.
In general, I advise you to work with a printing house, and not print advertising on an office printer.

Answer 3

The Xerox solid ink laser printer is the lowest cost, it seems the 8200 model, but it costs like an airplane.

Answer 4

Get an HP OfficeJet series inkjet. Either OfficeJet 8500 or OfficeJet 7500. And high-capacity cartridges, or CISS, if they have already been adjusted (this is a new series).
On my own, I recommend the 7500 - A3 MFP (!), With full-color inkjet printing at the speeds of a small laser machine and quality approaching a photo.
We print drawings on A3 and posters on A4, sometimes several photos.
For photos, of course, you need special paper. Then the effect is great. Posters and drawings go on the usual.
The text spits at 20 pages per minute, really "laser" speed. Cartridges (especially black) - only XL, high capacity. Black is enough for 1500 pages.
Yes, network functions and printing via WiFi are very nice. The printer is a print server for itself, serving the entire network.
And the price … They took it for 8 sput when they just appeared. Now on 7500 go.

Answer 5

I recommend this set:
Epson B-310 - 15000 rubles.
Refillable cartridges — 3500 r.
Waste ink cartridge chip - 800 rub.
4 liters of compatible pigment ink — 2400 r.
Enough to print 20,000 pages
The cost of printing is about 1 ruble.
The next 20 thousand pages is the cost of ink, that is, about 10 kopecks per A4 page.
The printer is indestructible.
But there will be two drawbacks:
1. Low print speed - in photo quality 1-2 pages per minute.
2. For good printing, you will have to buy Lomond matte photo papers.
Well, the A4 format, for posters you need at least A3.
Plus, you have to buy a cutter, then a laminator, and for you it will be a bunch of manual work.
Therefore, I recommend not creating problems for yourself and printing in an inexpensive digital printing house, where there is a Xerox DC 12, 250, 700 and higher.
In Moscow they print 7 rubles. per A3 sheet in the highest quality.

Answer 6

I definitely recommend a laser color printer. Maybe even LED.
Also would replace with it all printers in the organization within one office.
Based on my experience: the cost of "maintenance + consumables" is much lower than that of an inkjet. With your print volume, you can estimate that one refill will last for six months.
But do not flatter yourself, because. after the advent of the printer, people will start to play around and print everything. So for the first time, stock up on a couple of sets of cartridges.
Copiers continue to rise in price, so look the other way. But pay attention to the print resolution (>=600dpi is better for booklets).
The calculation method is absolutely simple: find your favorite inkjet and laser printer. Find consumables for them, their cost and their resource (!), divide, compare the cost of one print. For an inkjet, these are: cartridges for each print limit, maintenance at least once a year. For a laser printer, these are: 4 color cartridges for each limit, a print cartridge (photo-drum) for each limit (from 10 to 40 thousand prints), recommended service once a year or once a month (depending on the device).
Previously, we had a bunch of different printers in our office (about 20 pcs.), I was tormented by buying toner cartridges and print cartridges from them. Now we have two Xerox WorkCentre 7232 and 7328 machines for the whole office. The average cost is 260t.r. each, but I fill one once a year, the other 2 times on average. Despite the fact that the printouts are mostly in color. Not only are they fast: they can scan over the network, send e-mail and faxes, recognize texts, copy in batches, including in duplex mode. In general, beauty.

Answer 7

if it is constantly around 1000 per month, it may be worth ordering from the pros, and keeping the printer for previews and emergencies.
I was highly praised in the store for the epson L800, it has a factory-made CISS, the colors are quite good) in the reviews they write that the colors of profiling are required, but in 99% of cases the quality is enough, the main thing is to choose a good paper for ink, not even necessarily the original)

Answer 8

I would take a black and white laser printer, and I would order color layouts of prices and menus (without content) at a printing house, then I would simply put the layout in the printer and print the information on it. So I think it will be the cheapest.

Answer 9

If the quality is photographic or close, laser solutions are out of the question. Office series of inkjet devices (Epson WorkForce, HP Officejet) too, the quality of photo printing on them is good if average. These machines are not meant for that.
You need to look at the Epson Stylus Photo or HP Photosmart series. But the originals are expensive for them, so the PZK / CISS, compatible ink, profiling.

Answer 10

Bought a Canon LBP5050n. The print quality is excellent, the printer itself costs around 5k, the cartridges are a little more than 1k. The only downside is the print speed.

Answer 11

I have 2
xerox 7328 color laser printers at work - an A3 dope machine, we print 100k sheets a year, it takes 100-150k rubles a year for consumables and repairs. figure out the cost yourself.
there is also a small A4 from HP, but the print speed is important there, more precisely the speed of the first sheet. (this one is in the ultrasound room and prints the result in color)
About streaks, about 5 years ago, when color lasers (A3) cost unreasonable, instead of the aforementioned xerox we have Epson R1800 (I can be wrong) - I bought it for 25k rubles then I remember
he worked for a little over a year, the heads clogged up, he worked from CISS with expensive paints, we are still repairing it, it turned out that it was more expedient to buy a new printer + constant crap with cleaning nozzles with drying paint, maybe the CISS model was a fig, maybe paints like that , I don’t know, and I don’t want to remember those moments ...
if for ordinary printing I’m for a laser printer (in 10-12k it will come out, moreover, you can choose a model that they can refuel or are not sensitive to chips)
If you need the quality of photos, then yes, you need an inkjet, but I will say that I printed both on glossy and matte photos on the shaitan machine that is indicated above, often excellent, if you just hammer specifically into the picture, you can see that it was not the inkjet that did it , and if, like an ublet, stands on a table or hangs on a wall, then in general ...

Answer 12

IMHO, of course, but a black-and-white budget one with such print volumes will be more advantageous.

Answer 13

If a thousand sheets a month are the same, we immediately go to an offset printing house.
If they are different and with a circulation of 20 or more, go digital.
And only after that we start thinking about the printer. It's cheaper - weigh paper + ink / toner + service + spare parts.

Answer 14

We have a similar problem in our store, we solve it with the help of a cheap Epson XP-207 inkjet MFP . Often, one print run is about 100 leaflets, and in the printing house it turns out to be more expensive than on non-original ink and CISS, and most importantly, it is faster and you can immediately test the layout on paper. In terms of color reproduction on a compatible card, it is quite decent for leaflets. We print regularly, so nothing has time to dry.
A color laser MFP would cost us more in every sense, and the speed of an inkjet is enough for us if we need to print no more than 100 sheets per day (and I think it will print a thousand a day). In terms of the complexity of the operation, even female employees can cope with a penny refueling of the CISS.