MFC Colour Printer That Can Do A3 Paper for Home Office

BigLeviathan on 10/09/2017 - 22:02

Hi,

I need to purchase a colour MFC printer for my partner that will be working from home for the next 4 months or so. After that period, this printer won't be used as much.
The thing is, I wanted to be a future proof printer for my kids too (especially if they need to print school projects and as far as I know school projects would require A3 printings, wouldn't it?)

Specs:

  • Ability to scan duplex with an Automatic Document feeder (so that it'll be faster)
  • Ability to print duplex paper
  • To accepts A3 paper (as per above)
  • Compact enough
  • Price less than $1000

I've seen Brother MFC-J5720DW will be the perfect fit for me, but this printer is an inkjet printer, not a laser printer.

As after 4 months, we are not going to print as much, surely the inkjet won't be the best option as it'll dry up faster than laser.

Any suggestions?

Computing

Comments

  • alexlim2000 on 10/09/2017 - 23:15
    +1

    You can always go to office works to print A3 , its reasonable price and that way you dont have to have the bulk for a less used feature.

  • keverns on 11/09/2017 - 00:12
    +1

    cheaper to get a standard A4 colour laser mfc. way more options to choose as well as reasonable pricing. to many variables, how many pages are you going to print in that 4 months for work? maybe they inkjet vs price wise is more suited. sadly most printers are buy and throw away these days.

    if you really need to do A3 just head on to officeworks. tedious but over the long run save a fortune. A3 duplex scan/print is more targeted for commercial usage.

    since its for work for me… it was wasting time going to officeworks everyday for me. i bought a kyocera FS-C8525MFP but cost wise was $2600 from memory after discount, $700 for extra media tray as i needed larger capacity trays.

    that was relatively the cheapest option of A3 coloured laser printer that i found and still wont duplex A3 scans, does duplex scan of A4 max. i use a a3 flatbed otherwise.

    -reasons to stay away, the toner cost. 4 toners @ 400-500 dollars a kit. generally also needed a extra black $100ish tried some aftermarket generic toner. and print quality was absolutely shit. probably best to research the consumables too. some other brand go upto $700 a kit.

    -how often A3 would be used? i use mine roughly 30% of the time. so needed another stack-able tray one for A4 and one for A3, you could get away with the multipurpose tray. in terms of school projects… hardly used, i think they'd use A1-2, but still theres office works for once off projects.
    yet otherwise they could generally print from either art/computer room.

    theres not many out there that would do duplex scan/print much on the lower range of the market of A3 colour laser mfc .
    they're also not compact either. weighs over easy 50kgs for most brands. mine weighed 90kgs

    A3 coloured laser: rough guesstimate when i was searching earlier in the year
    A3 with out all the mfc starts around a good $1000
    A3 mfc duplex print and A4 duplex scan mfc then start from $1500
    A3 mfc duplex scan and print from $4000 to a never ending price.

    hope that helps

  • havebeerbelywillsumo on 11/09/2017 - 04:04

    Yeah, wot keverns said phew! In a sense televisi I've been looking for what you want and for somewhat similar reasons……conclusion, it'll be a very long wait and will only be solved by a true out of the blue stonking bargain.

    IMHO, until there is strong consumer interest in the A3 colour laser format, prices will remain (artificially?) inflated compared to those for the A4 machines.

  • pjetson on 11/09/2017 - 09:06

    A3 laser is going to be tough, as other people have suggested. However, if the only reason you're wanting it is for school projects, don't bother. You can use an A4 colour printer and "cut and paste" (ie real cutting and real pasting) onto any size that you like. That'd look a lot more like the children did the work anyway!

  • BigLeviathan on 11/09/2017 - 12:27
    -1

    Thanks everyone! really useful information in relation to A3 home office printer market as well as how kids are using the printer for school projects

    I will talk with my partner to use A4 laser MFC printer for now…

  • hell0 on 11/09/2017 - 13:09

    Be careful of COLOUR laser printers for home use. They do a calibration routine that mono lasers do not, and this happens so often that unless your 2000-page cartridge will be lucky to last 500 pages, they are more for heavy-use.

    • BigLeviathan on 11/09/2017 - 13:54

      Sorry, I don't get it? do you have some sort of article about this? so that I understand it better…

      • hell0 on 11/09/2017 - 14:11

        I don't have a link but am a big fan of printers and geek-out over printer-tech, and have quite a collection that I buy from ebay/gumtree for cheap…

        With colour lasers, the laser printer goes through a calibration routine every time it is switched on or the printer comes out of hibernation. The big issue with this is that if you print a few documents here and there your toners will go down quick even if you don't use colour AT ALL so it becomes very expensive overall for home use. In a real-world example, my home colour lasers used sparingly will achieve only 20-25% of the rated page-count and I don't print photos/graphics. I have quickly realised that its much cheaper getting a mono-laser together with a colour laser/inket printer.

        An inkjet does a similar routine but wow do colour lasers eat toner faster than an ozbargainer buys absolutely ANYTHING at 95% off or higher.

        • ATD on 12/09/2017 - 08:49
          +1

          I had this problem with 2 different Samsung colour printers EVERYTIME they came out of hibernation and power on - low toner warning and had only printed about 50 pages text (MFC used mainly for scanning and faxs). Now use 2 Brother colour lasers and don't have this problem, however they will go through the calibration routine on power on, however this only happens with power outages. I will never buy a Samsung printer again.

  • BigLeviathan on 11/09/2017 - 23:21

    What the?! this Brother laser colour printers draws 0.05W when it is switched off…

    • pjetson on 12/09/2017 - 08:26

      Some printers don't have physical power switches any more.

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