On 07/01/2021 22:33, newshound wrote:
****ed off with Ebuyer and Lexmark. At the beginning of December my
cheap Brother mono laser had a toner leak inside. Changed the cartridge
but still making messy prints, I was too busy to grovel around inside so
I picked up a similar looking £100 Lexmark from Ebuyer (showing
reasonable reviews on Amazon, but faster delivery from eBuyer).

Six weeks on, the low capacity cartridge is out, at which point I find
it seems to have a "chip" like inkjet ones, nothing third party
available, and cartridge prices vary from £50 for 1300 pages to over
£200 for 6k. And nothing with fast delivery.

Seems to me Lexmark are taking the ****, Ebuyer too. I have had a
Lexmark colour laser for a couple of years and that has been fine. I
must have put about ten cartridges at less than £20 a time through the
Brother. And a couple of replacement "drums".

I've had various HP and Dell lasers over the past 20 years or so, and
never had this sort of problem before.

So be careful out there if you are in the market!

Buy an office printer, not one made for small office/home office/john
lewis/currys. The clue is in the tray capacity and number of prints in
the largest cartridge, and probably slightly more costly.

Brother printers have small trays, small carts - and IME costly to
replace consumables. Compatible carts made a mess of one of my friend's
printer, we gave up even after changing the drum.

My Samsung ML-3710ND will do 10,000 5% pages before needing a change.
Compatible cart cost £25, last changed Jan 2017. Printer bought in 2012
from printerland.co.uk

Not a colour one though.

Used to install loads of Lexmarks in Hotel reception desks. Never
impressed by any of them, plastic covers too floppy - or maybe made that
way to bounce when the staff trash them.

Do we have a printer section in the uk.d-i-y FAQ?

--
Adrian C