Help me choose a colour laser printer?

May 14, 2007 6:06 AM

Looking for recommendations for a colour laser printer, specifically for printing colour text.

So, I am setting up a small business doing wedding invitations, and need to be able to print crisp, sharp, colour text. Most of the reviews I have read focus on the 'photo real' aspect of printers, which I don't think is relevant to my situation.

Does anyone have recommendations/experience with colour laser printers that would suit?

posted by MarvinJ to technology (6 answers total)

The HP 2605 is a pretty cheap one, but it works well.
posted by chuckdarwin at 6:15 AM on May 14, 2007

I've been very happy with my Oki 3200 CN which I got on sale for $299. I found the HPs to be cheapy and have had bad inkjet experiences with Epson's mechanical reliability.

Looks like the Oki 3200 may has been superseded by the 3400
posted by drinkspiller at 7:04 AM on May 14, 2007

I have an Okidata C5150N that has worked well. It has been discontinued but it seems Oki products have some satisfied customers. The toner cartridges are not cheap, but for my printer they last for 5000 pages or so.
posted by TedW at 8:48 AM on May 14, 2007

I have always loved the output I've gotten from these Phaser models. They used to be made by Tektronix, but their quality seems to be unchanged after Xerox took over.
posted by Thorzdad at 8:53 AM on May 14, 2007

I'll second the HP 2605 series for color text printing. We recently purchased the HP 2605dn printer (around $375). It is working great for us and we're really pleased with the color text printing. We're using it for home use, so I'm not sure how well it'll hold up for business use. The printer itself, though, seems marketed as an entry-level, small business color laser.

But, I will say it doesn't print the best photo images. I know you're wanting it for color text, but if you might use it for pamphlets and you have a photo or two, it'll look just ok. Like you, we didn't buy it to print photos/images either, but mainly for color text. It's demo page with the monkey on it looks awesome, but I think they're really saturating the colors in that demo, because images we have printed aren't the best and don't look nearly as sharp and colorful. Also, I generally feel any color laser isn't going to print the best images...
posted by JibberJabber at 12:08 PM on May 14, 2007

3rd the recommendation for the HP 2605. We bought one to do our own wedding invitations (prior question here) and were very happy with the results on a few different paper stocks - including silk-thread handmade paper.

The only thing it struggled with was some shiny cardstock - about 30% of the time the three layers of colour didn't line up.
posted by cwhitfcd at 10:14 PM on May 14, 2007