A Crazy Printer Dilema

[Cyclezee]

A few months ago I was looking around for a budget colour laser printer with WiFi and for various reasons, cost and performance, I decided to get a Brother HL3140cw as shown here Brother HL-3140CW - Colour Printer - Brother UK.

At the time the best price I could find was £126 with free delivery from Germany.

The printer arrived quickly and so far, performance has been excellent.

It gets a lot of use and sooner rather than later, I am going to need new toner cartridges or I get a DIY kit and refill the existing ones myself.

However the easiest and most cost effective solution, crazy as it sounds, would be much cheaper to simply buy a new printer and dump the existing one.

Today I could get a new one from this supplier inc. del. for £116.40 Brother HL3140CW Compact Colour Printer with Wi-Fi

If I bought a set of 4 genuine Brother toner cartridges for my current printer it would cost a wacking £222 almost as much as 2 new printers.

Taking the non genuine remanufactured route would cost £131.04.

Getting a new one may seem a 'no brainer', but it just does not seem right

 

[Geebee]

Most printers come with starter cartridges, meaning lower than normal yeild or that the printer start up will use a large amount on the initial content.
This is the spec for what comes with your printer: 1 Set of Starter Toner Cartridges (BK/C/M/Y) (1,000 pages each. Approximate toner cartridge yield in accordance with ISO/IEC 19798 [letter/A4])

The toners you buy are rated much higher (note the black) especially the high yeild ones, if you look at the chart on your linked page the yeilds are shown.

Not quite as straight forward as first appears

 

[Cyclezee]

Agreed GeeBee,

I understand what you say about the starter cartridges.
The total page count to date is 1371 with approximately 30% of the BK remaining and the figures for the C,Y, and M approximately 60% remaining, so it seems to be doing well for starter cartridges.

 

[billadie]

I run a small computer business. We have long since given up selling cheaper (less than £200) printers as there is no profit in them. The money is made, especially by the manufacturers, on the consumables. This is even more the case with inkjets where £30/40 will get an extremely good printer or about a tenth of a litre of ink.

Bit like electric bikes really. £300 for the bike, £700 for the motor and battery.

 

[flecc]

Yes, it's that old Hoover marketing method again, vacuum cleaner cheap, stuck with buying bags for evermore.

Bagless cleaners put paid to that, but to date computer printers and particularly consumer models are stuck with that one marketing method which does nothing for the environment.

 

[Scimitar]

I recently unearthed an old laser printer that had been retired after many years service because it needed an expensive drum. I found that New Old Stock drums were being sold for peanuts as the demand for them at their outrageous prices had plummeted and many were being put out of use - a self-fulfilling situation, really. Upshot is, I bought a drum for peanuts, got 10,000 sheets of new life in it, and the toner is dirt cheap, too.
I spit in the eye of dirty capitalism

 

[peerjay56]

I recently unearthed an old laser printer that had been retired after many years service because it needed an expensive drum. I found that New Old Stock drums were being sold for peanuts as the demand for them at their outrageous prices had plummeted and many were being put out of use - a self-fulfilling situation, really. Upshot is, I bought a drum for peanuts, got 10,000 sheets of new life in it, and the toner is dirt cheap, too.
I spit in the eye of dirty capitalism

And upon its father, who smells of elderberries

 

[AvaAllan15a]

You can check these models, theyare nice: Highly Rated. HP OfficeJet Pro 9015. HP
For Photos. Canon Pixma TS9120. Canon
Laser Printer. Brother HL-L2395DW. Brother