Reviewing the best laserjet printers for under $500: Family and Home Office Printers, Small Workgroup Printers

Best Laser Printers Under $500

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Below is a list of the best LaserJet Printers you can buy for under $500. All offer highly impressive print quality and speed, outstanding flexibility and control of print media, with extensive features for such necessities as duplex, wireless and multi-job printing.

Dell 1320c

Price at time of review - $280 (4 out of 5)

The Good

• With a simple yet professional ‘box’ design. Quite bulky but solid and a good all round performer.
• Setup is simple via an automatic wizard CD. A no frills, no fuss operation.
• Easy to maintain, minimal manual intervention or re-calibration.
• Consumables (apart from some toners) are very reasonably priced; this is a very cost effective printer to run over time.
• Best in class photo quality, highly vibrant and as sharp as many of the best color photo printers on the market.
• Textual printing is crisp, with no lack of depth to darker colors, including blacks.
• For a laser printer that doesn’t have the running costs or speed issues of a color inkjet this printer produces very similar quality. It is the perfect printer for the small office, or home (provided you have the room).

The Bad 

• The menu panel could be easier to operate and drill-down’s more intuitive.
• Additional components such as trays and top of the range toners are expensive.
• Not ideal for a business environment that needs a workhorse printer for constant throughput as the printer itself lacks extendible paper capacity.
• Has a rather large footprint and is quite heavy. Thus it needs space and a solid structure to be situated correctly.

HP Color LaserJet 2605dtn

Price at time of review - $499 (4 out of 5)

The Good 

• A robust and professional looking printer for the small office.
• Simple to setup and maintain, additional slots for direct camera printing work seamlessly.
• Superb set of features and easy navigation control panel.
• Minimal running costs, the only parts that need replacing are toner cartridges which are reasonably priced.
• Outstanding print quality in both b/w and color. Minimal distortion of color prints, perfect b/w prints with no fading of black ink projection.
• Can hold extensively more capacity than others in this range, with two 250 sheet trays.
• Works perfectly with HP or other branded papers, envelopes, alternative media, etc.

The Bad

• Requires HP’s Glossy Paper for optimum color photograph printing results.
• Cartridges could last longer, do not have the lifespan of others in this range when run continuously, for example in the nine to five work environment.
• Not the fastest printer in this group.

OKI C5650n

Price at time of review - $499 (4 out of 5)

The Good

• Elegant design, compact and professional, will appeal to more end users than the ‘box’ look of others reviewed here.
• Setup is simple, this is the best in class ‘plug and play’ color laser printer with outstanding reference manuals and support.
• Excellent paper capacity, solid trays and feeder mechanism requires no manual intervention during or after long print jobs.
• Best in class print speed for text and all b/w printing. Color printing is vibrant and bright, if not on a par with the Dell 1320c or HP 2605dtn.
• Consumable prices are reasonable, toner cartridges are durable and withstand heavy use.

The Bad

• Printer control panels which use the ‘+’ key to drill down and the ‘menu’ button to exit are renowned for being easier to misinterpret and misleading to navigate through.
• Needs OKI’s glossy print media for top notch graphic printouts.
• The photoconductor will need replacing after an extended run of around 25,000 pages.
• Slows considerably during color image print processing.

Xerox Phaser 6180dn

Price at time of review - $499 (4 out of 5)

The Good

• Elegant design, simple yet professional, works well and leaves only a small footprint.
• Excellent paper capacity and feeding of all types of media.
• Outstanding running cost to print ratio. Best in class for speed of all round printing.
• Sharp and crisp b/w printing, no discernible graininess or loss of focus, very impressive. Good saturation of color but lacking clear focus on standard paper.
• LCD backlit control panel is superior to all in this range. Highly informative and easy to setup/re-configure.
• Text prints are on a par with the OKI C5650 and color printing (of non graphics based content) is also top drawer.
• Excellent documentation and troubleshooting guides, almost every question answered.
• Perfect printer for the office as it delivers quick prints, handles jobs without fuss and has a high quality that has not been seen on many laser printers, certainly not in this price range.

The Bad

• Color photo printing is not as good as that produced by others in this review. Still it is more than adequate for the snapshot photo user.
• Duplex printing would require a further $200 investment.
• Takes a while to warm up/auto-calibrate following hibernation.

Lexmark C530dn

Price at time of review - $420 (3 out of 5)

The Good 

• The tower design leaves small footprint. Slick looking printer for a static location, Brilliant design for ease of use, replacing components, re-filling trays, aligning feeders.
• LED control panel is vibrant and easy to use. Configuring the device is a breeze.
• Additional print administration settings that can be applied are highly impressive, restricting users over the network.
• Best in class duplex print quality and speed. Color is impressive on both sides of media.
• One page print speed is adequate, but quality is exceptional. Text is faultless, graphics hold color well with minimal distortion or graininess.
• An all round brilliant office based printer, can withstand heavy use and duplex printing of such quality saves on paper tray capacity and media throughput.

The Bad

• Toner could last longer, but is reasonably priced.
• The photoconductor will need replacing after around 20,000 pages of print.
• Re-calibrates itself after every large job, or if inactive after 2 to 3 hours. Can become an annoying, time consuming and noisy outage period.

…and a special mention to…

Brother HL-4070CDW

Price at time of review - $450 (5 out of 5)

The Good

• With a simple ‘box’ design, robust and supremely reliable.
• Simple setup and configuration. Works seamlessly over wired or wireless networking.
• Considerably lower price than others offering this level of features and print quality.
• Advanced settings to tweak brightness, contrast, color. A great snapshot photo printer with no discernible lack of quality.
• Quick to print all kinds of output media, color or b/w, duplex, heavy duty copy, etc.
• Fantastic total cost of ownership, not expensive on consumables.
• Outstanding text quality, supreme for b/w printing.
• A truly professional color laser printer. Will not disappoint, perfect for the small business or workgroup. It also comes with a high energy efficiency rating.

The Bad

• Instructions could be simpler. Not overly intuitive for the novice user.
• Do not believe the printer can produce 20 ppm during duplex printing. It is only able to deliver around half that mark.
• Can take a while to warm up/calibrate and is slightly noisier than others in this range.
• Not a photo quality printer (to Photo lab standards) but it is minimally different.

Looking for a quality LaserJet on a budget. Review of Best Laser Printers (under $250)

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