Budget Laser Printer

[Sushubh]

I currently have a Ricoh SP111. I have refilled the toner two times using the official pack provided by the company. Company recommends replacing the toner cartridge after two refills, so I have been looking for it for a while now. The company products seem to have disappeared from all online stores. I plan to check if toner cartridge is available through my hardware guy when the lockdown is over. But I am also considering getting a new model with AIO features. Brother is a recommended brand on reddit when it comes to laser printers, so I looked into their models. I also got pricing from my hardware guy before the lockdown, but I guess those prices might change by the time lockdown is over.

Here are the models I got details of…

Brother HL-L2321D Single-Function Monochrome Laser Printer with Auto Duplex Printing
Rs. 7850

Brother DCP-L2520D Multi-Function Monochrome Laser Printer with Auto-Duplex Printing
Rs. 12000

Brother DCP-B7535DW Wireless Multi-Function Centre with Automatic 2-Sided Printing
Rs. 17300

Brother DCP-L2541DW Multi-Function Wireless Monochrome Laser Printer with Network & Auto Duplex Printing
Rs. 17900

Brother DCP-L2531DW Mono Laser Multi-Function Printer
Rs. 13900

Amazon pricing was around the same at that time so both options are available. I would probably pick from the base two models as my requirements are rather simple. Was just wondering if anyone here has any experience with Brother laser models or has recommendations to go for something else.

 

[Sai]

Brother had horrible service and reliability record in this part of country. We had one of their big AIO here (forgot model). Sticking with Epson ink tank these days. If I were you, I would avoid Brother. If laser was specifically required, I would look at mass market brands i.e HP & Canon.

 

[socrates]

Any particular reason why you want to change your printer? Non functional, noisy, orginal cartridge not available or too expensive? If the problem is the cartridge then you could try a third party cartridge!!! I have a 15 yr old HP 1020 laser printer. When I purchased it there was an offer of extended warranty or spare cartridge. I opted for cartridge & I used these till last year . Then I purchased a third party cartridge from Amazon & it's v good so far. Like you my requirements are simple & quantities of print v modest. In such cases laser is better than inkjet as inkjet tends to dry if not used regularly. For laser you remove the cartridge & give it a rolling movement (in the air) to 'churn' the powder inside

 

[igloo]

Take the old printer to local guy who refill cartridges n all. He ll service it to new in less than 1k.

 

[Sushubh]

Would first check if Ricoh SP111 cartridges (original or third party) are available locally. If i were to consider an ink tank printer... which model to go for? Wireless printing is not required in this case.

 

[socrates]

HP has some tank laser printer, you can check if it fit your needs.

 

[Sushubh]

not going for HP this time around. bought an aio inkjet recently and it is already struggling to print from phone.

 

[socrates]

Ok

 

[anubhav11]

From my past experience Brother printers are by far superior than any other brand in same price point, BUT the only major issue was that refilling and cartridges were very hard to find, had to buy in bulk from delhi but after that my stock finished, i couldn't find it anywhere. Currently using HP M1005 and its been almost 2 years and still going strong, easily refillable and new cartridges are readily available and the other one used for billing is my Epson LX300 (4yrs and still going strong) that replaced my wipro and tvs dot matrix which couldn't work for more than 2 years whatsoever. Service and parts availablity of Epson is good too. Choose between HP and Epson for laser as well as inkjet tank.

 

[Sushubh]

What exactly is superior about Brother ? Reddit recommends it over other brands so much.

I am baffled how the HP aio printer I have is struggling to print simple pdfs from phone. With every update of the printer firmware and HP smart app, things have gotten worse. Today, I was trying to print dad's bank statement. Simple five page document. It got stuck on second page. Waited for a few minutes. Ended up canceling the print job. Used the email address to send the document and that printed just fine. I am sure it would work great on wired interface. So annoying.