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gotta get a new printer
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this post was submitted on 30 Mar 2024
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I have the Brother HL-L3270CDW, which prints in color. Ran me about $300 (it’s $270 directly from Brother now) plus the cost of the high yield toner cartridges I bought with it, but you can probably get away with the included toner for a while - with my B&W Brother the included toner lasted me over a year. It says the starters are supposed to last 1000 pages and the high yield 2300, but I’m pretty sure those numbers are very low based on my own usage estimates. I definitely went through more than two 500 page packs of paper in that first year.
It doesn’t have a built-in scanner but it does have:
It says it doesn’t support printing card stock but I’ve printed small amounts (30 or so sheets) at a time, largely without issues. That said, the only times I’ve had the printer jam, I was printing card stock, so maybe there’s some truth to that recommendation.
I haven’t used third party toner but my understanding is that as long as it’s good quality the printer will work fine. It doesn’t force you to only use first party toner.
The color quality has been good enough for my purposes - substantially better than the consumer inkjet printers I used like 20 years ago, but worse than current inkjets. That said, if photo quality color is the main thing your parents print and they print regularly, my recommendation - based on research, not personal experience - is an Epson EcoTank. From their site the entry-level model (the ET-2800) is $200 and comes with about 3k pages worth of ink (and replacement ink bottles have even more capacity). Other commenters have covered it in depth.
I have an HL-2270DW and the toner low light comes on well before prints start washing out. Fortunately the toner life is tracked by a plastic gear on the cartridge, and it takes just a minute to roll it back. When it does run out, good third party replacements are under $20.
Ah, in that case I probably could have gotten even more life out of the starter toner - I ordered a replacement as soon as I got the warning about it being low but my prints weren’t washed out at all by the time I replaced it.
It feels really silly to say, but they mostly just want to print their tax and insurance documents in color, since it "looks more official" and "the ones in the letters do it too!" . i primarily just want to replace the HP bastard to reuse its guts for a 3d printer. the scanning might be an issue though since thats its primary use. know if brother also has a color one with scanner? In the worst case scenario i could hook up an old a3 scanner we have laying around.
They do, but they’re a bit more expensive. They have a list at https://www.brother-usa.com/color-laser-all-in-ones (that includes printers without scanners but you can add a filter).