8 Color Laser Printers for Less

We took a close look at eight laser or LED multifunction devices. They cost between 400£ and 540£ and are all equipped with fax, automatic document feeder and network. Significant differences were again in the printing costs.

If you print more often, do not feel like dry inkjet heads or if you want absolutely smear-resistant prints, you should buy a laser or LED printer. But there are also devices in the ink fraction that can easily take on any laser printer – see for example our review of the HP Officejet Pro-X multifunction device.

A multifunction printer has the advantage over a device that can only print the scan, copy and usually also fax. This means less space for additional devices such as scanners or fax machines.

Who does not know that: In a warranty case you have to search the original invoice in the thick file folder. Anyone who archives his invoices or other documents digitally, finds them quickly and easily by keyword search in the PC: This puts his documents just above in the automatic document feeder (ADF) of the multifunction printer and sends the scanned data by pressing a button in a specific folder to the PC. The documents can be saved using an OCR software * 1 so that they can be searched – this makes research in the archive particularly easy.

We included eight current laser / LED multifunction devices in the comparison test, all of which are equipped with an ADF and all contain OCR software. All prices quoted are approximate UV prices * 2.

Conclusion

Once again, our test confirms that you should not buy any printers or multifunction devices without first having a detailed look at the maintenance costs. Even with the equipment and external link, we have found significant differences. Example: The whole 14 kilo light Samsung Xpress C460FW has everything you would want from a color laser multifunction device. He is outrageously expensive with the printing costs – but you will not notice that until you have to buy the next set of toner cartridges after a short while. Therefore, take a look at our pages in this comparison test.

In general, it is better to spend a bit more money on the hardware, instead of resorting to a cheap offer, which in retrospect becomes considerably more expensive, because the printing costs are exorbitantly high. Even the cheapest color laser from this review is still more than twice as expensive as good ink office printers. Our test winner, the HP Laserjet Pro 300 Color MFP M375nw, along with the equally commendable Brother MFC-9330CDW, offers the lowest cost in this comparison test.

Even the operation can rarely be tried before buying. Especially with multifunction devices, which are equipped with numerous, sometimes complex functions, a large display makes sense – here are the Brother MFC-9330CDW, the two HP LaserJet Pro devices and the Samsung CLX-4195FW lead by example and equip the All-rounder with a large touchscreen. For all four models, the operation is exemplary simple.

The HP Laserjet Pro 300, the Samsung CLX-4195FW, the Oki MC342dnw and the Brother MFC-9330CDW achieved a grade of “good” in this comparison of the color laser MFPs. The remaining devices in the test are either too expensive to maintain, too poorly equipped, can be complicated to use or just print too slow.

You will find the test winners from this comparison on the following page – there the devices are described again in detail and all important advantages and disadvantages mentioned.

A detailed description of consumables and printing costs provides information about toner and maintenance costs.

Everything about paper has been summarized on the page “paper specifications”. We also describe the device operation in detail and show how the devices can be operated via touchscreen or via numerous buttons.

If the print quality is important, take a look at page 7 and following. There we show scans and microscope images of text, graphics and photo prints. We also check the printing tempo with different test documents and different settings.

Overview of the eight laser multifunction devices for less than 500 £
	Price
Brother MFC-9330CDW	440 £
Canon i-Sensys MF8280Cw	400 £
Dell C1765nfw	380 £
HP Laserjet Pro 300 Color MFP M375nw	460 £
HP Laserjet Pro 200 Color MFP M276n	310 £
Oki MC342dnw	475 £
Samsung CLX-4195FW	460 £
Samsung Xpress C460FW	320 £
Prices may change according to the marketsplace offers