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Black & White Laser Printer VS Inkjet

W

WabeWalker

macrumors member
Original poster
May 20, 2006
85
0
When I bought my MacBook I was given a reciept for a free Canon Pixma ip 1600 printer.

When I went in a couple of days later to pick up the printer I asked the guy at the counter if the pixma was any good, and he rolled his eyeballs and said, yeah, give this printer to your worst enemy.

Why is that, I asked?

Because, he said, you'll end up spending a fortune on ink.

My only desire is to print out black and white documents. I want the text on these documents to be as sharp as possible. Yes, I already own the Pixma, but I see in the newspaper now that Samsung is selling a laser printer for about one hundred dollars.

Should I buy the Samsung?

Specifically, 1) will the print quality be as good on the Samsung laser printer as it is on the Pixma inkjet printer, and 2) will I save money on ink in the long run? (I do A LOT of printing, by the way).
 
I'm not 100% sure which Samsung printer you're talking about, but I'll take a guess & say it's their introductory-level laser printer, the ML-2010.
I have this printer & think it's great! The text quality is excellent. I, too, use it primarily for only text printing.

Toner costs ~$70 for a cartridge & Samsung claims 3,000 pages/cartridge, which equates to 2.3 cents/page. The only problem is, Samsung claims 3,000 pages, assuming you are using their "toner-saving" feature. Unfortunately, this feature is not available for Macs. So I'm not 100% sure of exactly how many pages you'll get, but even if it's only 1,500, you're still talking < 5 cents/page.

I believe that price is very competitive, if not better, than what you can get with basic inkjets. As far as quality, I think it's no contest, but that's ultimately in the eye of the beholder. Go to your local Microcenter or CompUSA to check out the print qualities & decide for yourself.

Good luck!
 
hello, I use a laser printer, have been for more than 10 years, in my experience, if you only want black and white, a laser printer is the much better choice for you, in 1995 my family purchased an HP LaserJet 4L, it's a big clunky printer almost as big as a medium sized CPU, 4 people used that printer regularly, we had to change the toner sometime after 5 years, the text comes out sharp, and black, very black, not a light black like an ink jet, plus, it doesn't fade, the toner for the LaserJet 4L cost around $90 when I bought the replacement.

Since I have moved out, I knew I needed a printer and it had to be a laser, so I purchased the HP LaserJet 1012, it's smaller than the 4L my family owned, and the paper comes out much faster, the 1012 produces sharper images (eventhough in black and white) I print a lot of papers for school, and I'm lazy, I never jot down anything, I usually type it up on text edit then print, so I'm printing a lot!! to give you an idea, I purchased this printer a few days after purchasing my PowerBook, that's three years ago, and I just started noticing the pages I print are fading so I need to go purchase a new toner.

so if you're only printing text, go for a laser over an ink jet. hope that helps
 
I have obtained samples from that Samsung printer and think the output is very good. I may buy it when I get my new computer.
 
I also have the Samsung ML and think it is wonderful. It's small, fast, and cheap to print. I have not come even close to regeting the purchase. You can often find them on sale as well. NEVER EVER BUY INKJET!!! Those things'll get you counting how many pages you printed and if you could have cut a few out, not to mention the fact that they just are so awfully slow!!
 
YoYoMa said:
NEVER EVER BUY INKJET!!! Those things'll get you counting how many pages you printed and if you could have cut a few out, not to mention the fact that they just are so awfully slow!!
Click to expand...

this is exactly how I felt with an ink jet, well said :D
 
I own an HP LaserJet 1012 and a Canon i960. My wife and I use the laser printer all of the time. Rarely do we need to print in color. I bought the inkjet for those times when I only want to print a few color photos and save myself a trip to a photoprint store. For black and white printing a laser printer is the way to go. It is cheap and the text is sharper than an inkjet. Only buy an inkjet if you absolutely need to print in color. Inkjet cartidges are super expensive compared to how many pages they produce.
 
Get the laser!

The laser printer will be MUCH cheaper in the long run.

I have an old Laserwriter Pro (circa 1995) that I use to print out all my documents. Sure, it takes forever (new ones don't, though) but new toner is 20 bucks every six months...

Just take any files you need to be color printed to a print/copy shop.
 
GET THE LASER PRINTER!!! They are much faster and a lot less expensive.

As far as the Samsung goes, when I bought my laser printer I first looked at the Samsung because of the low price. I then checked how the replacement cartridge would cost in comparison to others, and the Samsung was significantly more expensive. I eventually bought the Brother HL1440, and I have been very happy with it. I don't know if the same situation for price of cartridges still exists with the Samsung, but make sure you look at that before you buy.
 
jne381 said:
I eventually bought the Brother HL1440, and I have been very happy with it.
Click to expand...

I like Brother products also, but the times I checked the HL1440 I noticed it had a very prominent paper curling issue. Has that ever been a problem for you?
 
appleretailguy said:
The laser printer will be MUCH cheaper in the long run.

I have an old Laserwriter Pro (circa 1995) that I use to print out all my documents. Sure, it takes forever (new ones don't, though) but new toner is 20 bucks every six months...

Just take any files you need to be color printed to a print/copy shop.
Click to expand...

I love my Laserwriter Pro 630 as well! I have only changed the toner three times in 8 years - in a classroom setting with scores of networked users. Best Freebee I ever got. To this day, I still do not know why Apple stopped making the laserwriter. Works great with Tiger too (over the network, sometimes its the only printer to pop up, out of 30-40 networked printers on line).

120px-Apple_LaserWriter_Pro_630.jpg
 
For monochrome printing, laser is absolutely preferable over ink jet. But I am going to warn against any of the cheapo laser printers, especially from Samsung. None of these printers have Postscript, real or emulated. It makes a huge difference to print quality, for both text and graphics. Personally, I would buy a used HP LaserJet over any of the low-end laser printers I've seen. They may not be quite as fast but the results will be better and the consumables less expensive.

As for Samsung, I own one of their color lasers and it is the bane of my existence. Not only is the image quality mediocre at best, their Mac support is absolutely terrible.
 
i own 3 different printers for my business and if you're just printing black and white...get the laser..or any laser for that matter. you will save on ink right from the get go. my 2 colour inkjets are ink hogs. my colour laser has lasted a long, long time (and I don't print alot of colour) so a bw laser is the way to go imho from my experiences.

good luck,
keebler
 
The OP mentionned a Samsung printer. I don't know what model he is talking about, but my bro, my sis and I have the ML-1710 and, well mine, has been working wonderfully. Even if I want to print a 100 pages long text, the printer won't choke, which is very good :D.
 
Certainly if all you want is black text, a laser printer is your best bet. Cheap printers, though, are just cheap. Spend the money to get a good printer. I would suggest either HP or Lexmark, though I wouldn't suggest either companies' ink jet printers.
 
WabeWalker said:
Should I buy the Samsung?

Specifically, 1) will the print quality be as good on the Samsung laser printer as it is on the Pixma inkjet printer, and 2) will I save money on ink in the long run? (I do A LOT of printing, by the way).
Click to expand...

I bought a Samsung ML-1210 about two years ago for £50. The printer itself came with a half full cartridge, that lasted up to a few months ago (supposed to do 1500 pages). After that I had the choice between buying a toner cartridge for 3000 pages for £50 or buy toner for £15 and refill it myself. Since the risk was minimal (if it didn't work I would have bought another printer for £50), but it works perfectly fine.

With a laser printer, you go to the menu, choose print, and it prints. Obviously that is what it is supposed to do. But an inkjet printer doesn't work like that. Don't use it for two days, and the ink is dried up. You print, and only half of your stuff is on the paper. So you clean the cartridge. That costs about as much ink as printing 50 pages, then you print again, this time three quarters of your documents are on the paper, so you clean again. Half an hour later, five pounds worth of ink wasted, and you got your paper.

The final straw that made me dump my ink jet printer was when I wanted to print a black and white document, I had a full black cartridge in the printer, two more besides the printer, and I couldn't print because the color cartridge was empty and the **** printer didn't let me print a black and white document because I didn't have any color ink!

Buy a cheap laser printer; you will save tons of money.
 
Deepdale said:
I like Brother products also, but the times I checked the HL1440 I noticed it had a very prominent paper curling issue. Has that ever been a problem for you?
Click to expand...

If this tells you anything, I had never even heard of paper curling before you asked.

Most everything I print ends up being double sided, just because the articles I print out are so long and I want to at least get a staple trough the article. I have only had the paper jam once in three years. I guess it could have been a result of paper curl, but it has not been a problem that I have needed to worry about.
 
IJ Reilly said:
For monochrome printing, laser is absolutely preferable over ink jet. But I am going to warn against any of the cheapo laser printers, especially from Samsung. None of these printers have Postscript, real or emulated. It makes a huge difference to print quality, for both text and graphics. Personally, I would buy a used HP LaserJet over any of the low-end laser printers I've seen. They may not be quite as fast but the results will be better and the consumables less expensive.
Click to expand...

Quite to the contrary, I wouldn't bother with postscript printers at all. MacOS X will scale any text nicely to the resolution of the printer at full quality, and the quality even of a cheap Samsung printer is excellent.
 
gnasher729 said:
Quite to the contrary, I wouldn't bother with postscript printers at all. MacOS X will scale any text nicely to the resolution of the printer at full quality, and the quality even of a cheap Samsung printer is excellent.
Click to expand...

No, sorry, this is quite misleading. Of course the text will be scaled -- if it didn't the printer would be worthless! The text quality on my non-Postscript Samsung printer is substantially and noticeably inferior to my far older and lower-resolution HP LaserJet. The line weight on the Samsung is much thicker to the point where the character shapes are muddied. It is so much worse that I've kept our old LaserJet and use it for all of our monochrome text printing. I hope it never dies.

Further, non-Postscript printers cannot create halftones for graphics. They use a dither pattern which is really quite ugly in comparison to a Postscript halftone. If you use the printer for any kind of images, or use OSX Quartz effects like drop-shadows on text, then the difference in printing them on a Postscript and a non-Postscript printer will be obvious. Maybe not if you're coming from ink jet, but if you're used to Postscript laser results, you'll notice.

I've been living with the color Samsung for over a year now. It's the first non-Postscript laser printer I've owned, which I bought because it was inexpensive. What a mistake! It will be the last.

And don't get me started on Samsung's clueless Mac support.
 
Three things to consider when buying a laser printer for use with your Mac OS computer:

1) price of replacement toner cartridge
2) Mac OS support
3) I would buy a flat input tray style printer. Less chance of paper feed and jam problems. Stay away from the vertical input paper feed printers.

The LaserJet 1012 (or whatever the current model is) series is an excellent fit.
 
until about 2 months ago, i've always had an inkjet printer and printed what... all of 5 coloured pages. i love my cheapo brother lazer (can't remeber the number, but i think its either the cheapest or the second cheapest one).

its fast, and it prints good quality bw stuff. granted re people above said, the paper don't come out exactly flat (if you are really anal, you'll want to iron them)

just don't go getting any cheap bw printer. my sister got a cheapo cannon laser printer just before i got my mb thinking it will be compatible and its not! a few of them arn't so don't be stupid like my family and end up spending double the amount of money. (if i recall, that is the case be the cheapest samsung and konica model as well, but don't quote me on that)

(PS if the dude at the shop tell you that the printer carteridge that comes with the printer is a tester and only last 100 pages, its bull! don't buy a cartridge just because they trick you to!)

And i had a cheap lexmark and it was the s***iest thing i've ever own. and the ink is expensive. don't get lexmark!
 
I have a HP Black and White laserjet. Its the absolute best! Sometimes I wish it could print in colour but printing out assignments/lecture notes is a breeze with this. Mega fast!
 
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