I want to buy a black and white laser jet with scanner and could really do with advice! I read HP no longer great. I don’t use printers a lot but it’s essential I can scan documents some times. Thanks in advance!
Budget?
For a laser, I would look at Brother (my last one did 13 years service), or obviously HP who’ve been making them since the Stone Age. Or Xerox - my current one is a Xerox B230dni which does double-sided printing and cost £100.
The only thing I don’t like about it is that you have to hold down the power button for a few seconds to turn it off, which seems an annoying design choice.
I would suggest keeping the scanner separate - I am suspicious of "all in one " machines as I think they are built down to a price and if one bit goes wrong you’ve got to replace the whole thing, or do without your printer while the scanner bit gets repaired and vice versa.
For the scanner, assuming you want it mainly for documents, I would get a Canon LIDE model - £55 to £75 on Amazon, and because they use an LED light they run off USB power not mains it’s a single cable connection to your computer, which is great for laptop use.
I have had mine for 15 years and it’s still going, though Canon have stopped updating the drivers for it I can still use it with Photoshop.
I bought a Brother HL-L2400DW to replace the old Samsung. It’s good, prints via wifi, and so far (2 years in) has been reliable.
Questions! Do you live in France?
And do you want the scanner/laser printer just for general stuff?
If so I’d recommend a simple, inexpensive c.€100 HP combo from somewhere conveniently local like E.Leclerc. No delivery costs and easy to return if there’s a problem, also takes up less space than a separate scanner printer set-up and is perfectly adequate. We’ve had the same one for eight years, it’s super reliable and takes much cheaper than HP generic cartridges.
I think laser printers are essential for generating the sheaves of copies required by French bureaucracy .
2 Likes
Actually, having recommended the Brother printer, I’ve remembered how hard it was to find a scanner here in France. (I had to buy one on Amazon.) I’d still prefer to have two separate devices, but ymmv.
It’s not essential to keep the scanner set up all the time. 
Mine sleeps in its box.
Our wifi scanner / printer rests in the lower regions of an elaborately carved, C19th credenza.
1 Like
Which will come as no surprise to any of us!
Though it does sound like you’re describing the location of a murder weapon.
3 Likes
I tug my forelock in your general direction, your Worship. 
1 Like
Yes in France!
Don’t want to spend more than €200 ideally and I rather have one machine to both print and scan. Actually I didn’t know you could even buy a separate scanner!
All multi purpose devises are a compromise 
from printers to washer dryers to SUV or bifocals.
To get good advice I think you should start off with your printing and scanning requirements, not with the solution, “black and white laser jet with scanner”. If that sort of device is your unshakeable choice then there are many comparison websites.
Long ago, in the previous century, scanners were very separate and very, very expensive, while earlier still, pre-Photoshop and the like, getting an image onto a computer was a rather elaborate procedure.
OTOH, today if you don’t have any high end specialist needs, an all in one laser printer / scanner will be sufficient, but also cheaper and more convenient.
1 Like
IMO stand alone scanners still have a role Mark. When I had a shedload of photos to scan I bought this workhorse even before it was available in Europe, a pal brought it back for me on a business trip. Expensive at the time (not much less now) but worth every penny. It’ll last me out a stunning 10/10 piece of kit, and I’m a hard marker. I’ve also an Epson flat bed that’s even older but the specs of the latest models are the same as mine. Another workhorse. But, as you say, really only required for special duties.
From a printer perspective, having lived for so long with rip off cartridges, buying a tank printer has been brilliant. Back to the days when one could print a document for buttons.
I’m quite an Epson man but for desktop logistical reasons, rear paper loading, I moved my Epson printer to another location…
and replaced it with a
My subjective opinion is the Epson is the superior machine, and the autofeed on the HP is of no value to me. So I would recommend @mcmayhem the Epson
Now is also the time to buy - I’m sure you will find a good price during the black friday sales…
Another vote for Brother.
About eight years ago I was in the market for a new printer. I was originally enthusiastic about HP which was a colour inkjet model. I have never been one to print very much and while it lasted it was good but it seemed to be using a lot of expensive ink cartridges. I discovered it was switching itself on every so often and doing a print head maintenance cleaning cycle. This is where a lot of the ink was going. To avoid this I always unplugged it after use. Then I tried non-original cartridges. About a third of the cost but the HP wouldn’t accept some of them. I dumped the HP and tried Epson and Canon but found they were not great performers and like all the rest, were getting fussy about what cartridges they would accept. I tried refilling my own cartridges but that was too fiddly and risky. Most home users were complaining on forums and were not enjoying being ripped off for OEM ones. Those with deep pockets suggested switching to laser printers and the brand of choice was Brother. It seemed like most of their output was for business use where they had a good reputation so I took the plunge. I found a model that was a monochrome printer/scanner that connects to any computer in the house wirelessly. A smidge over €200 at the time. I have only had to replace the toner cartidge once in all this time and it was happy with a non-Brother one. It doesn’t care if it isn’t used for months because there are no inkjet heads to clog up or dry out. If it ever fails I will search out a good deal on a colour one and certainly not be tempted by anything by HP, Epson, or Canon. There have even been class action lawsuits levelled against those other players for their attitude.
Your experience mirrors my own.
Inkjet printers have always been pushed as being the best option for home use, when really they’re not, unless you are using them regularly (so they don’t clog) and really need to print in colour all the time.
For printing most documents a laser is more reliable and far cheaper to run.
I have the Xerox laser mentioned above which always gets used when I need a paper copy of a PDF or whatever, and a Canon Pixma ip8750 which is purely for printing photos, and to be honest is hardly worth me keeping it. I probably shan’t replace it when it dies.
Domestic laser printers aren’t expensive to buy and run. Most immigrants to France have a greater ongoing need to print lots more b/w documents rather than small colour prints. We print several A3 colour photos a month at our local graphics shop - €1 a copy on 200gsm paper.
They certainly were expensive eight years ago when I made the change. They are more reasonable now, and my pension has increased (a bit).