I am a graphic designer who is setting up a home studio. I'm researching for a quality colour laser printer up to $2000 but the more I read the more confused I get. Having been spoilt in the past working in agencies with large image runners, I am wary of the colour quality of the smaller units.

Does anyone have any advice on a good quality network unit (Mac compatible of course). Colour quality and ability to manage graphic files is more important than speed. Any recommendations or advise would be gratefully appreciated.

Rather than spending beucoup bucks on a high quality laser, buy two printers -- buy a small, slow and almost-perfectly-accurate colour laser (the Samsung CLP-350N or its gruntier sibling the CLP-660ND) and an A3 precison inkjet from Canon as a final proofing device.

The Samsung CLP range are all true Adobe Level 3 PostScript, too; all but the baby is networkable, and as the units talk PostScript, they talk OSX straight out of the box, no need for specific drivers ... but the software Samsung do provide, is excellent and totally transparent.

I know personally two designers (one one-man and one three-man shop) who use such a setup with their Macs, and they absolutely love their little Samsungs, they just crank out the print jobs and the toner is actually affordable (less cost-per-page than most domestic inkjets). The three-man shop swears on the colour output of his Samsung (a 600N I think, the 660's ancestor) as he's done a full colour calibration of his whole rig, and just uses the Canon for generating the very high quality final outputs.

Off Topic:

Brains, I have the CLP-350N and it's excellent, the only problem I have is that it doesn't scan via network, is that normal ? The only function I could do is printing through the network.

Yah, you can't use multifunction over a network unless you're prepared to pay some biiiig bucks for the privilege (and you won't find that from people like Sansung or HP). Adding network smarts for a printing device is easy and cheap. Adding network smarts for a scanner, now that gets expensive.

Lovely, thanks

I'm a management consultant who produces colour work for clients and had the same dilemma a couple of years ago. I solved it by buying HP LaserJet 4650 with all the bells and whistles (large hard-drive, extra trays etc) on Ebay from a repossessed company . . . . only $1000. RRP was about $5000 and mine had done less than a full month of printing in its whole 2 year life. A full set of toners (originals), again on Ebay, costs about $600, as opposed to $1200 retail. They last about 7000 pages.

All works seamlessly - and wirelessly - on a network in my office with 4 Macs.

Cheers,

Andrew

Thank you everyone for your input. I have decided on the Konica Minolta Magicolor 4650DN. I'll let you know how it goes.

I was going to suggest looking at something Konica Minolta, believing that they come with
huge toner cartridges, but looking at their site it doesn't seem the case, at least in Oz.

Anyone have any knowledge about this?


mutters

I love my OKI.
The price is pleasing these days.

Yes you can, and Brother do it for under $200 in their products such as the MFC-440CN. Their software for the Mac works seamlessly. The printer self-installs via Bonjour, and the scanner software is a small download.

I paid $179 for it and it scans beautifully over the network. I'm contemplating one of these Samsung colour network laser printers in addition to the MFC-440CN.

Ah? That's good to know that someone's finally bothered to get that working.

They've had it working with OS X for about 5 years... Brother were one of the first printer manufacturers to support Bonjour I know, and their network scanning feature is just great.