Got a $2800 color laser copier for half price (video)

I've been wanting the HP Color LaserJet CM3530 for a while to replace my cheap Canon color laser copier and as luck would have it one was listed used on eBay in my city so I jumped on it! It had to be local as it weighs over 100 lbs and would cost like $500 just to ship from USA.

It's much more efficient when doing double sided printing because while it flips the page over to print the other side, it prints the first side of the next page, so there's no wasted time and it's as fast printing double sided as single sided. With my cheap Canon machine it didn't print while flipping pages to print the other side so it was much slower printing double sided.

Here's a video of my new HP CM3530 scanning and printing double sided:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCQFXeTZ0f4

My Photosmart inkjet flips and prints double sided nicely, but it sure isn't a speed demon like yours. But I've always thought I might want a color laser one day just because I always liked the print quality of lasers.

Really though I've never seriously investigated purchasing one.

What is the cost to print a full color page versus a typical inkjet?

What is the max resolution for photo printing versus a typical inkjeet?

Actually even a $100 inkjet printer can make FAR better print quality than this $2800 color laser printer. If your inkjet print quality isn't good it's just because it's a cheap inkjet or not one made for photo quality. To get the best print quality, get an inkjet that uses at least 6 colors (cyan, light cyan, magenta, light magenta, yellow and black) and it will be able to make lab quality photos. There's no such thing as a photo quality laser printer because laser technology can't produce as high resolution as inkjets (this high end laser printer is 1200 DPI while even cheap inkjets are 4800 DPI or more, not to mention 6 color inkjets that can make true photo lab quality prints, cheaper color laser printers are no more than 600 dpi). There's no such thing as a 6 color laser printer which is another reason why they aren't as good print quality. Back when I had a 6 color inkjet, I had shown a photo to a friend I printed on glossy paper and he said "Well that's the original photo, where's the one you printed?", there's no way a laser printer can fool someone into thinking it's an original photo. That's why professional photographers all print their photos on inkjet printers because inkjet has by far the highest resolution and widest color range by using 6 or more color inks.

If you use refills in both cases, inkjet can end up costing 100 times less per page than almost any laser printer, the reason is that toner costs infinitely more than liquid ink plus the parts in a laser printer wear out every 5000-10000 pages or so while on an inkjet printer the only part that needs replacing, the printhead, lasts at least 50 000 prints. Also, HP Officejet Pro series inkjets, even with genuine cartridges, cost half the cost per page of a laser printer, but those aren't available in photo quality models, so you need to decide between low cost per page or photo quality.

For this laser machine a color page at 5% coverage using genuine cartridges (which cost $1130 and they do 7000 color pages/10500 black pages) costs 16 cents, but you can get compatible cartridges for $200 which is what I do which brings the cost down to 2.9 cents per color page at 5% coverage. Multiply those costs by 20 for the price of a full page photo. My previous business inkjet would cost me about 0.5 cents for a full color page or under 0.1 cent for a regular color page, about 100 times cheaper. My HP inkjet did 250 000 prints before having problems, and I'm 99% sure the problem is related to a modification I did on it so it can feed itself from 1 liter ink bottles and not with the printer itself, it's having symptoms of air bubbles getting through the ink pump.

The reason I went with laser despite lower print quality and much higher cost per pages is that newer business inkjets aren't built as well as they used to be and aren't as "refill friendly" either. I also print documents I want to be smudge/water proof, and while new inkjets do make waterproof prints, they aren't 100% smudge proof.

So unless you absolutely need smudge proof prints and don't mind higher costs per page I'd stay with inkjet. For me it's worth the higher cost per page because it's for business use, but compared to my previous cheap Canon laser copier, this HP is half the cost per page so in my case it will save me money compared to the cheaper laser copier I had before.

So if you want low cost per page, get an HP Officejet Pro series printer, if you want photo quality, find an HP that uses 6 or more color inks and you'll be blown away by the print quality. The reason 6 colors make such a huge difference is that with only 4 colors to make light shades like light blue, it has no choice but to spread out cyan dots which will be visible to the naked eye, but a 6 color printer has light cyan and light magenta, so it can directly print light colors without spreading dots, which ensures the dots are completely invisible to the naked eye.


Edited by aab 2012-04-12 5:46 PM

Kinda what I thought. I use a continuous ink refill system myself. My HP D5460 has 5 ink colors, and does a very decent job, and does double-sided printing as well. I've no complaints with it other than I wish I could get rid of that annoying low-ink warning that I get. But it certainly has made printing a very cheap proposition.

And the ability to print directly on a CD/DVD is very important to me.

But I always wanted a color laser...just not the expenses that go with them.

5 color printers only have an added black which doesn't really improve photo quality, a 6 color printer adds light cyan and light magenta, the addition of those 2 light colors make a night and day difference. They don't add light yellow because yellow is already a light color.

I had gotten an Epson printer that could print directly on CDs, not only did the printer fail in 2 weeks, but simply touching a printed CD caused the ink to wipe right off (and yes, I did get printable CDs). Do you not have that problem with printed CDs? It's for that reason that I print CD labels and then stick them on the CD, that way you don't wipe the print right off just by touching the CD.

BTW I also refill my laser cartridges though it's more complex than inkjet refills, you can refill all 4 cartridges for around $80, compared to a new genuine set which is $1130, or a compatible set at $200. But because laser printer parts wear out fast, the cartridges are only good for 1-2 refills on average before the print quality degrades.

About the low ink warning, my HPs had always only said something like "Original HP ink has been depleted, damages caused by a refilled supply will not be covered by warranty. Press OK to continue" and then it never, ever bothered me again about it, except maybe when I rebooted the printer but I left it on almost all the time.

This new laser printer lets you choose between:
-Stop printing when supplies are low (and you can specify what % is considered low)
-Stop printing when supplies are empty
-Continue printing when supplies are empty (and you can specify how many pages to allow it to print after reaching "empty", between 0 and 100000)
-Continue printing when supplies are empty and waste toner bin is full (may damage device)


Edited by aab 2012-04-12 5:58 PM

I used to have an HP D5360. It used the standard ink cartridge that had the cyan/magneta/yellow combo and the black cartridge. It worked fine until a thunderstorm one day with lightning...anyways it died. When I went to replace it, they no longer made it, instead came out with the D5460 which uses the 5 ink color system.

I don't really print photos at all, and don't care to normally. So while you are correct about the added benefits of the additional inks for photo printing, it is not an issue with me.

I do like the separate ink cartridges though, which is what got me started with the bulk ink system. It has been fantastic and worked perfectly.

I have zero problem with ink rubbing off my CDs/DVDs. And they look so much better (and faster) than my old lightscribe DVD/CD printing which is only gray tones...and for me, those fade.

I haven't turned off my printer in months, yet I still get the warning on occasion about the ink...I'm not sure what initiates it...but I click the "OK" and it goes away for a while...and then later reappears.

But overall I have no complaints...I mean I'm an old guy who used to be happy with a C-Itoh C310 which used a 4 color ribbon, and an Okimate-10 which used some plastic colored thermal transfer...and I paid hundreds and hundreds for those printers back then versus just $90 for for this D5460.

I certainly can't complain about the color quality on the inkjets I've had, most of which were low-end Lexmark models. And they were virtually maintenance-free. By contrast, the laser behemoths in my office are constantly in need of repair, even with the vast majority of print jobs in black only (though, admittedly, they do have to churn out a lot of paper since, after all, I work for the government ).

This HP has all "wear-out-able" parts (sorry I'm sure there's a proper word, oh right, consumable) in the print cartridges themselves, much like very cheap inkjets have the printhead on the cartridges, so each time you replace a cartridge the printer is brought back to new condition. That's also why the cartridges cost $1130, but I get compatibles for $200 that work just as well. There are also 1-2 other parts with a life of well over 100 000 prints and these are also in cartridge form that can be user replaced.

My previous HP business line inkjet copier did 250 000 prints and the only maintenance it required in that time was replacing the printheads (they are not part of the cartridges) about every 60 000 pages printed and lubricating the print carriage track every few months. Oh yea, and I replaced the print carriage motor once.

New HP business inkjets aren't built like they used to be and in about 8 years went from $1300 to $450 which is why they're so poorly made now. In fact I had bought the highest end model 2 weeks ago and returned it within days because it can't even feed any paper that's thicker than plain paper even though the specs say it can take up to 110 lbs, it can't even feed 50 lbs paper! I need to be able to print on thick paper for my business which is why I already had a lower end Canon color laser copier but it was extremely non user friendly and only did 2800 prints per cartridge with double the cost per page of this new HP.


Edited by aab 2012-04-14 12:29 AM

CEGeek, talk about government work. When I worked in the Federal Building in Richmond, VA, GSA used to provide laser copiers for every floor in the building, all under a blanket purchase order agreement. When they purchased these lasers, they offered them to the GSA employees at the same price, so you could have your own laser at home if you wanted. Anyway, maintenance and supply was contracted through some office supply company locally.

The copiers were the small personal size ones like you would use at a small business and were located everywhere. We had over 20 of them on our floor alone.

Seems after about a year they started locking up the laser printers. Actually put a hasp on the printer with a padlock. Only the supervisors had a key. I was in charge of the copiers in my area which was about 6 of them. Some of the printers in the building would go through a crazy number of toner cartridges for only a few thousand copies.

An investigation showed employees taking full cartridges and inserting near empty ones in their place. Seems they didn't want to pay for toner. We went from spending hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars in toner in a year to just a single hundred grand.

aab, imagine if they had been color lasers instead!