Anyone had any experience with these printers? (Samsung, Xerox, Lexmark, HP, Brother)

[gerardsweeney]

Hello, all..

 

The powers that be are looking to invest in some new printers, and have asked for our 2p worth.

 

We'll obviously be looking at the tech specs, but I'd be very interested in any reports "from the field", as it were - since tech specs have been known to be "absolute best case scenario"

 

They've shortlisted the following - one will be a smaller workhorse spec, and one a larger one.

 

Does anyone have any good/bad experience with any of these?

 

 

Samsung ML-3750ND

Samsung ML-6510ND

 

Xerox Phaser 3250DN

Xerox Phaser 4620DT

 

Lexmark MS410dn A4

Lexmark MS812dtn

 

HP Laserjet P3015dn

HP Laserjet Enterprise 600 M603xh

 

Brother Printer HL6180DWTv

Brother HL-2270DW

 

I'm not particularly fussed if one is 1 ppm quicker or anything like that - we're more interested in trying to establish "proper" technical things like the drivers:

 

Proper X86/X64 driver support - no Universal bobbins, thanks - the HP universal put me off for life

No background services needed to work the things!

 

We'll be setting some up as shared printers on (most likely) 2008 R2, hence the driver concerns.

 

The Xerox phasers already have me concerned, courtesy of Mr AT's blog about how much toner the colour ones were retaining while saying they were empty.

 

Also the cost of the toners is likely to be a factor.

 

And - of course - reliability.

 

Any feedback gratefully appreciated!!

 

Gerard

[crt404]

The only one I've had experience of is the Brother HL series. They used to be built like the the proverbial brick house, but in recent years quality of their parts has declined. They're ok for staff use, but throw in students and you have broken parts all over the shop.

 

With regards to Xerox's, I've only had experience of the solid ink block printers [not a good word to say about them] and not their toner models so can't overly comment on those models.

[rich_tech]

from my site, I personally would not touch another Brother printer, they work great for a year or two then its an uphill battle as pretty much everything inside needs replacing on the devices, (we have 5170DN, HL 1250s, 2700CNs and several 4040s).

 

I am moving our personal printers over to HP slowly, largely for reliability, we have only just gotten rid of some Laserjet 4L, that were still going strong after 10+ years of printing, drivers can be a pain, I tend to avoid the universal one too, its a lot of hassle at times. Reliability I would rather here, things breaking down just generates work for me in the long run.

[markwilfan]

Never thought I'd say this but... I'm a Lexmark fan

 

We've previously had Xerox, hp, brother dell and everything in between. Majority of our old printer stock was dell which is rebranded Lexmark. Some had done over 300000 pages with not a care in the world. Whilst most of our other printers were complete pitas

 

Currently have in the region of 38 Lexmark 3150 and about 7 Lexmark 748 and they have been roxck solid for the last 10 weeks, all leased, so the tiniest sneeze and we'd call in an engineer.

 

Driver wise there is a gen driver but also proper 32bit and 64bit drivers for both and both work with our win 7 and win 8 clients fine

 

Hope this helps

[synaesthesia]

Xerox - solid ink printers (old ones, 8860 backwards) best running costs of *all* printers bar none. Recent ones, cack. Laser models unknown however the big down point here is Xerox's support and customer service. It's terrible.

 

We've had a few Samsungs of varying sizes. Smaller ones jam like Bob Marley in a crash recording session. Larger ones have been OK.

We stay clear of Brother and HP for running cost reasons, and less said about Lexmark the better. We are going towards Kyoceras to replace the Xerox's we have and service from them has been good so far.

[localzuk]

from my site, I personally would not touch another Brother printer, they work great for a year or two then its an uphill battle as pretty much everything inside needs replacing on the devices, (we have 5170DN, HL 1250s, 2700CNs and several 4040s).

 

Interesting. We've got a 1250 in my office and it just works. Never had an issue with it in the 7 years I've been using it.

 

We also have a 4040 and it works solidly, and has done for the 2 or 3 years we've had that.

 

And in our suites we have the HL-5250DNs which, again, just work.

 

Personally, I'd say go for Brother based on experience.

 

Samsung aren't too bad but seem to be plagued by issues at times. (We have 2 6260NDs)

[Tall_Paul]

We're pretty much all HP here. They have been excellent but (in common with other brands) the build quality of the new models is nothing like the older models we have (which are built like tanks).

[gerardsweeney]

Thanks for the feedback, folks.

 

Like others above, we've also had Brother HL series printers about 12 years ago - nice for the cost. I was a bit wary of the newer ones and the comments above have sort of confirmed my fears

 

The HP Laserjet P3015dn only comes with the dreaded Universal driver, so that's bumped.

The Phaser 4620 is nearly 300-400 more expensive than the other "larger" format printers, so it's bumped.

There were comments about the noise level and sheer size of the ML-6510. I've not exactly compared the dimensions to the others, but it's not encouraging.

 

So I think it's going to be the 2 Lexmarks, the HP M600 and the 3750 that are higher up the "maybe" list... I suspect it may come down to toner costs - we've had Lexmarks before and they're excellent workhorses, but the toners were slightly scarily priced.

 

Cheers,

Gerard