Compare the 10 Best Laser PrintersAugust 2017
Every week we analyse the technical specs, reviews and prices of every laser printer on the market in the UK to determine our top 10 list. In total we compared over 562 laser printers, 2,070 reviews and 9,830 prices. Last updated 18 August 2017.
OKI C332dn
|
92
|
2 Awards |
|
97
|
Excellent |
|
78
|
Good Features |
|
88
|
10 Months Old |
|
81
|
£32 / 10 Years |
|
88
|
Excellent |
Kyocera ECOSYS P5021cdw
|
90
|
1 Award |
|
93
|
Excellent |
|
83
|
Fully-Featured |
|
88
|
10 Months Old |
|
80
|
£33 / 10 Years |
|
88
|
Excellent |
| eBay | £173.78 |
| BT Shop | £178.20 |
| BT Business Direct | £178.20 |
HP 352dw
|
83
|
4 Reviews |
|
97
|
Excellent |
|
74
|
Good Features |
|
83
|
1 Year Old |
|
97
|
£7 / 10 Years |
|
85
|
Excellent |
| Amazon UK | £107.00 |
| PC World Business | £209.10 |
| Misco | £223.14 |
HP M553
|
96
|
3 Awards |
|
94
|
Excellent |
|
73
|
Good Features |
|
76
|
2 Years Old |
|
50
|
£716 / 10 Years |
|
84
|
Excellent |
| Misco | £148.74 |
| Flubit Deals | £246.68 |
| Amazon UK | £260.82 |
Canon LBP6230
|
93
|
1 Award |
|
96
|
Excellent |
|
67
|
Good Features |
|
74
|
2 Years Old |
|
63
|
£62 / 10 Years |
|
82
|
Excellent |
| Amazon UK | £92.00 |
| Ebuyer Business | £93.99 |
| Ebuyer | £118.84 |
Lexmark CS720de
|
43
|
Mediocre |
|
85
|
Fully-Featured |
|
78
|
1 Year Old |
|
82
|
£27 / 10 Years |
|
66
|
Good |
Xerox 6700
|
97
|
Excellent |
|
73
|
Good Features |
|
74
|
2 Years Old |
|
82
|
£27 / 10 Years |
|
82
|
Excellent |
| Amazon UK | £61.14 |
| BT Shop | £72.86 |
| BT Business Direct | £72.86 |
Lexmark CS510de
|
96
|
Excellent |
|
74
|
Good Features |
|
89
|
5 Months Old |
|
90
|
£24 / 10 Years |
|
80
|
Excellent |
Lexmark CS820dtfe
|
96
|
Excellent |
|
84
|
Fully-Featured |
|
78
|
2 Years Old |
|
75
|
£33 / 10 Years |
|
81
|
Excellent |
OKI C831
|
81
|
1 Award |
|
21
|
Mediocre |
|
65
|
Good Features |
|
67
|
2 Years Old |
|
21
|
£2,083 / 10 Years |
|
55
|
Average |
| Amazon UK | £91.89 |
| Ebuyer Business | £927.04 |
No matching products found.
Laser Printer Brands
Find out how laser printer brands compare. The average rating for each brand is based on the rating of all of their laser printers. Click on a link to compare all laser printers made by your favourite brand.
| Logo | Brand | Number of Laser Printers | Price Range | Average Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
HP Laser Printers | 95 | £17 - £1,478 | 71% |
 |
Lexmark Laser Printers | 74 | £18 - £2,318 | 69% |
 |
Canon Laser Printers | 58 | £38 - £1,325 | 69% |
 |
Brother Laser Printers | 55 | £37 - £790 | 72% |
 |
OKI Laser Printers | 35 | £35 - £3,900 | 66% |
 |
Samsung Laser Printers | 31 | £30 - £840 | 75% |
 |
Kyocera Laser Printers | 31 | £138 - £1,319 | 75% |
 |
Ricoh Laser Printers | 25 | £25 - £880 | 73% |
 |
Xerox Laser Printers | 20 | £61 - £1,404 | 77% |
 |
Other Laser Printer Brands | 12 | £79 - £1,186 |
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Laser Printer Buying Guide
There are 2 main types of printers available on the consumer market - inkjet and laser printers. Both have strengths and weaknesses, and your choice will largely depend on what you plan on using your printer for. This guide will concentrate on information about laser/LED printers - for a detailed rundown of laser printers, please see the guide under the inkjet printer category.
Laser printers work by using a very fine laser to help minuscule particles of powdered ink (toner) ‘stick’ to the page in the shape of the letters and numbers to be printed. The page is then passed through between 2 heated rollers (a ‘fusing unit’), ‘burning’ the toner onto the page. Because the laser can move very fast, a laser printer can print at a very fast rate - far faster than any inkjet printer. Also, because the laser is extremely accurate, it allows for extremely crisp prints, with little chance of smudging or blotting.
However while laser printers are very good for black & white printing, they are very weak at anything involving colour. Many laser printers are simply incapable of printing in colour, since the toner they use only comes in one colour. Colour laser printers do exist, but have nowhere near the quality of inkjet or photo printers.
Cost
Compared to inkjet printers, laser printers are far more expensive - sometimes double or more the cost of an equivalent inkjet model. However while the initial cost is high, the day-to-day running costs are far lower: toner cartridges last far longer than ink cartridges, and are cheaper to replace. Both these factors mean that if you routinely print large amounts of documents, a laser printer will be far more economical over time compared to an inkjet.
Types of Laser Printer
There are 2 main types of laser printer on the market at the moment - laser and LED printers. Both work by the same process - using focussed light to trace a path for toner particles on a page. However while a laser has to track across the page from one side of a line to the other, an LED printer can use a static bank of LEDs to ‘flash’ an entire line in one go. This means that LED printers are far faster than laser printers which achieving the same high-quality prints. However since LED printers are a new technology, you can expect to pay more for an LED-enabled printer. If you find yourself regularly printing a lot of documents, the saving in time may well be worth the expenditure.
Black & White vs. Colour
Laser printers are primarily monochromatic, since they only use a single colour of toner. However colour laser printers do exist - they work by having 4 separate cartridges and drums (black, yellow, magenta and cyan) so the paper is passed through each colour of toner in turn, building up a fully-coloured print as it goes.
Because they involve far more hardware, colour laser printers are far more expensive than their monochromatic cousins. Moreover, the quality of the printing is nowhere near as good as inkjet or photo printers - you won’t be able to get professional-quality colour depth or detail from a laser printer. Therefore if high-quality colour printing is important for you, you may wish to look into buying an inkjet printer.
Print Speed
Laser printers are far faster than inkjet printers, and are capable of a very high rate of pages printed per minute. That said, there is a large variety in printing speed within laser printers, with some models capable of printing pages twice as fast as other devices. This is especially true of LED printers, which are capable of an extremely high page-per-minute rate. All of our printers have detailed stats on the number of pages they can print a minute, broken down into monochrome and colour, as well as by quality (draft, normal, high-quality). This will allow you to make the best decision as to the laser printer that best suits your needs.
Connectivity
Most newer models of laser printers have an array of network connectivity options to make printing easier and more efficient. Ethernet connectivity is now a common feature in modern laser printers - so data can be transferred over a network without having to plug your computer into the printer directly. This makes it far easier to share printers with groups: the printer can be placed in a central area and used freely by everyone around.
Additionally, many models of laser and LED printer also have wifi and/or bluetooth connectivity. These options mean that you do not even have to use a cable to use the printer - data can be transferred over wireless connection.
Finally, the newest models of these printers have support for cloud or app printing. These options allow you to send a document to print from anywhere in the world - from a browser over the cloud, or from an app on your smartphone. While you will pay more money for these options, the convenience they provide may be worth the extra expenditure.
Laser Printer Retailers, Prices and Features
Laser Printer Prices
We currently list 438 laser printers ranging from £16 to £3,900. The average price of a new laser printer is £365 and 80% of laser printers are priced between £78 and £764. The HP 4650hdn is the cheapest laser printer at only £17, and OKI Pro9431dn is the most expensive at £3,900.
Laser Printer Brands - Price Range
OKI laser printers range in price from £35 to £3,900, and the highest average laser printer price out of all brands is OKI laser printers with an average price of £664.
Kyocera laser printers range in price from £138 to £1,317, and the second highest average laser printer price out of all brands is Kyocera laser printers with an average price of £471.
The average price of Lexmark laser printers is £458 which is the third highest average price of all laser printer brands. Lexmark laser printers range in price from £18 to £2,318.
Laser Printer Brands - Average Ratings
We have checked 316 expert reviews and 603 user reviews for laser printers from across the internet and used this data to evaluate the average rating for each brand of laser printer. The top rated laser printer brand is Ricoh with an average rating of 87%. The second best brand is HP with 83% and the third best brand is Brother with 83%.
Biggest Laser Printer Retailers
The biggest laser printer retailer by number of products currently for sale is Amazon UK. We found 337 current laser printer offers from Amazon UK. The second biggest laser printer retailer is eBay with 231 offers. That means Amazon UK is significantly bigger than eBay when it comes to laser printers. Misco is the third biggest retailer with 221 current offers.
When Are Most New Laser Printers Released?
Over the last 3 years we couldn't see any evident pattern in the release month for new laser printers. Last year most new laser printers were released in February, with 38 new laser printers released that month. September was the biggest month in 2015 for new laser printers, with 166 new laser printers released that month. Also the biggest month in 2014 for new laser printer releases was September, with 45 new laser printers released that month.
How Fast Do Laser Printer Prices Drop After Release?
New laser printers drop in price by an average of 1% in the first 6 months after they wer first released. That means a saving of £5 on a typical £365 new laser printer if you wait 6 months before buying.
Maximum Resolutions
This denotes the largest resolution that the laser printer is capable of printing at.
Amongst new laser printers, the most frequently found maximum resolution is 1200 x 1200 DPI. We found 251 laser printers that are 1200 x 1200 DPI laser printers. We found 83 laser printers that are 600 x 600 DPI laser printers, making 600 x 600 DPI the second most common maximum resolution amongst new laser printers.
A larger resolution means that the print-out is comprised of more pixels, meaning greater detail and a higher-quality print.
Colours
This denotes whether the laser printer has the ability to print in colour, or whether it's limited to black & white.
The number of new laser printers that do and are laser printers which do not support colour is roughly the same. 45% of laser printers do are laser printers which support colour and 279 laser printers (52%) are laser printers which do not support colour.
Print Speeds (black, Normal Quality, A4/US Letter)
This measures how long it takes the laser printer to print a single black & white A4 page at normal quality.
Comparing all laser printers, the print speeds (black, normal quality, A4/US Letter) range from 8ppm to 71ppm. The print speeds (black, normal quality, A4/US Letter) of most laser printers range from 27ppm to 33ppm. The laser printer with the fastest print speed (black, normal quality, A4/US Letter) is the HPM609, which is a 71ppm print speed laser printer and can be purchased for £724.06. The HPM609 has the slowest print speed (black, normal quality, A4/US Letter). This laser printer is a 14ppm print speed laser printer and can be purchased for £234.99.
A faster print speed means the laser printer is more efficient and can manage larger print jobs faster.
Biggest Laser Printer Retailers
The biggest laser printer retailer by number of products currently for sale is Amazon UK. We found 337 current laser printer offers from Amazon UK. The second biggest laser printer retailer is eBay with 231 offers. That means Amazon UK is significantly bigger than eBay when it comes to laser printers. Misco is the third biggest retailer with 221 current offers.
Which Are the Cheapest Retailers for Laser Printers?
The retailer that most frequently offered the cheapest price on laser printers is Amazon UK and offers the cheapest price on 113 laser printers.
Proportion of Laser Printers for Which Each Retailer is Cheapest?
With the cheapest price on 33.5% of its laser printers, Amazon UK is most frequently the cheapest laser printer shop.