John wrote:

Anyone tried a £100 laser yet?

Yes, HP CP1215 colour printer. Print quality is OK but lower resolution
than even modest inkjets. The same rip-off model is applied to the toner
cartridges as to inkjet cartridges, it costs £200 at discount prices to
replace the cartridges - instore at Staples they cost £320. It makes no
sense to me to save money on the printer when the cartidges cost three
times the amount paid for it. Also the cartridges are pathetic, offering
1,400 pages at 5% coverage.

I do a lot of high volume colour printing for my job, and had to think
carefully about which printers to buy. I used to get Xerox Phaser 850s
which cost a couple of thousand pounds each, but they came with free
black refills for life. Then Xerox dropped the free ink offer and
reduced the price of the printers to a few hundred quid. I currently
have a mix of 850s and 8200s. I still get the free ink for the 850
making them the economical workhorse printers. The 8200s are higher
resolution and better quality print so I use those for the magazine
quality output.

These printers aren't lasers they are solid-ink printers which melt wax
blocks then apply them from an inkjet type head. The inks are sprayed
onto a drum then pressed onto the page which makes the effective
resolution higher than a laser since all inks are overprinted and mixed
on the drum. The basic resolution is 1200dpi, enhanced photo quality is
2400dpi but CMYK inks are all printed on top of each other leading to an
effective resolution of 7200dpi compared to the 300-600 dpi of a cheap
laser printer. Best of all is the price. A set of refills capable of
printing 20,000 pages at full coverage costs me £185.

The printers can be bought for between £50 and £200 secondhand, with a
long life left on them. Service manuals are available on the web and I
found it cheaper to buy another printer from eBay and cannibalise it for
spares than to pay Xerox to make repairs. In the time I've used the
printers (the last six years) I've needed to replace one print head, one
wax-melting unit and one drum heater. All simple jobs for anyone with a
Torx driver set.