What printer would you recommend for graphics department for printing color ads and proofs of magazine and newspaper pages?

December 10, 2007 2:23 PM

What office printer would you recommend for a graphics department for printing color ads and proofs of magazine and newspaper pages? NEED Postscript level 3 compatibility , Ethernet, good type output and a nice chunk of RAM (256mb or more). We previously had phaser 8200DP, but it's slowly dying. 11x17 and duplexing would be nice, but not required.
posted by Brandon Blatcher to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

i have the phaser 8520 or...something from freecolorprinters.com. I do about 3000 copies a month with it and I love it.
posted by TomMelee at 5:48 PM on December 10, 2007

The Phasers I used in the 90s used to really suck but I hear so many good things about them now.

I have an HP Colorjet that I love. Got it on sale at Amazon and it was one of the best buys I've made in ages. Great quality prints. The toner ain't cheap tho.
posted by miss lynnster at 5:58 PM on December 10, 2007

Where I work, we switched from the Phaser line to HP Color Laserjets two years ago. The output quality is superior, the print speed is far faster. I like the Color Laserjet CP3505 in particular.
posted by BigLankyBastard at 6:37 AM on December 11, 2007

We just got new Konica Minolta Bizhub 353s in our office. They're really freakin' good. Seriously.
posted by General Malaise at 8:43 AM on December 11, 2007

Response by poster: freecolorprinters.com sounds awesome, but we don't do more than 1000 pages a month. The Bizhubs don't seem appealing because we just need a printer, not all the other stuff.

Anybody got links to a page/site or blog that investigates color office printers for a small graphics department. Google is producing a lot of fluff, such as color questions to ask a printer, or color ideas, etc, etc, but little in the way of designers talking about the printers they love.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:04 PM on December 11, 2007

FWIW---FreeColorPrinters is a pretty good program. We signed up for 1475 pages a month and they approved me. Be advised that double sided prints count as 2 copies, AND it isn't smart enough to tell the difference between 500 sheets printed with nothing but a period in a margin and a full sheet. Your ink usage will show this kind of abuse eventually though. I've been printing closer to 3000, as it's a network printer and we can now do EVERYTHING in house from mailings (does envelopes well too) to pictures to flyers to whatever. It's pretty easy to hit 1500 imprints a month.

I like it because it's so smart...it hibernates daily at 5, wakes up daily at about 8:30, completely on its own. It's learned our usage schedule. The solid ink loading process is officially badass, and it's crazy fast and super high quality. I get about 20-25 double sided color flyers a minute with it.

Should you possibly elect to sign up, since we're an NPO, I'd love the referral credit--but I'm not really worried about it.
posted by TomMelee at 6:16 PM on December 12, 2007