Glyphs guys and gals: I’m searching for recommendations on a high-quality monochrome (or color) laser printer to replace my dying Samsung. Would love a postscript 3 printer with 1200 dpi resolution. Looking to use this for font proofing and general use. It needs to be toner-based because I would also use it for gelli plate offset prints. Curious what everyone uses when hard-proofing their font designs… the goal being crisp, black type at all sizes. Do you have a printer you love? Cheers!
A number of years ago I did comparative tests on many printer models from many manufacturers. The best one by a very tiny margin was the OKI C844. It’s a 1200x1200 PPI CMYK printer. It was only barely sharper than my ancient HP P2015 monochrome 1200x1200 PPI printer so I didn’t purchase it.
Did I try the Xerox 2400x2400 PPI printers? Yes I did and they were less sharp than the OKI.
So. It almost doesn’t matter which one you get. I have no hopes that laser/LED printers will get any better in regard to the quality of the output of text. The quality has plateaued for decades.
The OKI C844 is an old design and feels ‘end of life’, and reading the tea leaves I’m not so sure there will ever be a replacement.
Yeah, a bit nervous about an EOL machine. I’m struggling to find something that is reasonably priced. I don’t need a multifunction printer with copying or scanning. Just a simple, high-quality monochrome printer. Preferably with postscript and preferably under 1K.
Maybe what I have done will be helpful. I used this site to print test pages using a file I set up to compare output from several laser printers before buying. TestDrive – they do not require that you buy the printer from them.
The results were surprising in that several allegedly “better” printers weren’t up to printing twelve point samples of fonts-in-progress in the quality I was looking for. The tests helped me to find one that did meet my requirements, a Ricoh Aficio CL4000DN, Adobe Postscript 3 – no longer available given that I bought it about fifteen years ago.
Like many, I am today faced with having to adapt to photopolymer plates. From the research I have done so far, lasers won’t print black enough on transparent films to make a decent negative regardless of the printer resolution. One option would be a pigment-ink based inkjet but the ink is very expensive compared to toner. I have not made a decision yet as to which way to go, for me.
Then there is the issue of Apple’s deprecation of Postscript in newer operating systems. I manually copied the old Ricoh driver to my Sonoma machine and it seems to work OK even though Apple only recognizes it as a Generic Postscript Printer. I don’t know if it uses the driver I installed.
I looked for my test file to post here but can’t find it.
That’s really helpful, thanks, George! There seems to be a serious lack of innovation in the printing industry when it comes to laser printers. I had an Epson 4800 Pro model and the inks clogged relentlessly. And yes, expensive! Epson claims to have solved those problems, but I’m not taking the risk.
I didn’t use a inkjet printer in 10 years but I saw advertisements for ink printers that claim to have costs per page that were comparable to laser. With actual bottles of ink instead of these tiny cartridges. Not sure what brand it was (might be Epson).
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I have been using a Xerox Versalink B400 B/W laser printer with satisfaction for several years until now. I recently bought a new Mac Mini G4 and am running the latest Sequoia OS. The new Mac won’t talk to the old Xerox printer. I was just online with Xerox tech support and they not only do not have a driver that works but have no plans to make one!
Therefore, I am looking for a new printer. I prefer Postscript level III B/W laser 1200 dpi lettersize. Does anyone out there know any options?
I was able to install my HP LaserJetP1102 that is not supported by Sequoia, with these drivers here: Gutenprint for Mac OS X
May be it helps.
Thanks for that, Giuseppe! I will take a look further at it!
Chris
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I know this is an older thread, but I’m adding this for anyone else who finds it while searching for proofing solutions. I got tired of those cheap inkjets drying out every time I didn’t use them for a week, so I switched to a rebuilt LaserJet to deal with it. It’s an older office model, not a plastic home version, but it’s been a lot more reliable for me. It’s a bit bigger than the household ones, but it actually prints every time I need it to.
I don’t think that the printer manufacturers care about those of us who want precise printing. We don’t represent a big enough market. After I posted to this thread, I purchased a Brother, higher end, 1200 dpi laser printer. It is adequate for normal printing but is nowhere near as good as the older printers I used to use. It is not good enough for type design proofing. It is just an office printer.
I now depend on screen resolution, which is far better than it ever was. Only when I am at the final stages, I use an outside source to print proofs.