So I mentioned previously that I was on the search for a new laser printer. Nothing fancy. Just has to meet a few select specifications:
- Must be a laser printer (color is optional, quality black and white print is not)
- Must be a work horse (ie. be capable of many many many prints per month)
- Must do automatic duplexing (meaning, it must print both sides of the paper without any help from me)
- Must be under $500 (under $300 or even $200 would be even better)
- Must have high-capacity toner cartridges available.
- Must be locally available (I would need it no later than Saturday night so it could be setup and usable for Sunday morning. Did I mention it was Wednesday and Thursday already when I started in depth research amongst the local office supply stores?)
I really didn’t think that this was too much to ask. You’d be surprised at the sheer range of prices and options when looking at laser printers. It can and will make your head spin. If you’re willing to pay for it, you can have anything you want. Our purchase was an emergency and certainly unplanned this quickly after spending as much as we did on the previous printer. I did not want to spend a lot on another printer that would just become an emotional bratty child after another 16 short months. I had a really bad taste in my mouth from the experience at hand.
So I had previously researched HP printers. They are quality printers. They are widely available, easy to find, fairly compatible with both Mac and PC (another important consideration). They are also expensive when you start talking about the features on them. Supposedly, you get what you pay for. Unfortunately, the previous Laserjet 2015 left a really disappointed feeling looming in my head. Researching other models was revealing a few repeat problems with the things just dying less than 18 months later. I was not sure what we were going to be doing because to get the quality and durability we wanted we were going to be going upscale, office quality printer at a much higher price than we wanted to pay. Well, I’ll be honest with you, we didn’t want to be making this purchase again in the first place. I mean, I’ve had multiple other HP printers and they are still running just fine. Shame on you HP!
Upon further research, I went and looked at all the locally available Brother laser printers. We had 2 options available to us. The prices were acceptable (even if it was an unwanted purchase). The reviews online were mixed, but they were leaning more to acceptable things for us. I mean, we could get the features we wanted at a price closer to what we wanted to pay…but…we’d have to put up with things like noisiness, largeness, and more page curl, etc. Not a big deal if you ask me. I mean, my concern is if it will hold up to the wear and tear that Ben and I would be putting on it. I look forward to more usage from the children in the years to come as well as they have to do more reports and things that need to be printed. We need a printer that was not going to break down as soon as it went out of warranty.
So we picked one out. We picked out the Brother HL-5370DW. It is a black and white laser printer that prints up to 32 pages per minute. It has automatic duplexing! I don’t have to turn the pages over and pray I got them stuck back in the tray the right way every single time. It has a 250 sheet paper tray that can handle letter and legal sized paper. If we’re willing to spend the cash, we can get an additional paper tray to put on it as well. It also allows for straight through printing for various media formats that just do better when they haven’t been rolled and heated in the process. It does have high-yield toner cartridges available directly from Brother which means we should be able to get them cheaper from other places. Best of all, however, is that it supports WIRELESS network printing! I can hit print while I am sitting on the couch in the living room and it will print without any other effort, hoop jumping, cord attaching, or laptop carrying around on my part.
Well, I decided that at $249.99 it could wait. I mean, I could have bought it right then last night when we decided that was the one we wanted. It wasn’t on sale. It was full price. I could have had a wonderfully helpful Staples employee load it into my cart with me after slapping the plastic on the counter. Ben and I decided that we’d just wait. I mean, we could hang onto our money day and an half if we wanted to. The price certainly wasn’t going to go up.
I got up this morning (Friday) and started looking at our options for purchasing this printer. We have a Staples, Office Depot, Office Max, Fry’s Electronics, Best Buy, Micro Center, and Wal-mart available to us to purchase said printer. We even had over night shipping from Amazon if we got desperate. Much to my pleasure I found it ON SALE at Office Max for $199! I also got $20 off the purchase of a cartridge if I bought one with the printer. Done! Score! A 15 minute drive and the printer would be ours. Woohoo!
Now keep in mind that I didn’t want to spend the money in the first place, but I suppose if the money must be spent it should meet all specifications. This printer met all of those and more for a reasonable price. So far we are happy with it. The quality is good. The speed is acceptable. The page curl is not too much to handle. The wireless connectivity is fabulous.
So remember, always sleep on a big purchase you might be able to find the item of your desires at a lower price.
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