Hardware

Printers

Toner prices for older Oki printers have climbed sharply — in some cases a set of toners now costs more than a brand-new printer. Here’s how we think about it, and why we’re recommending Brother again.

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The problem

Rising toner prices on older Oki printers

If you have an older Oki printer, you may have noticed that the prices of consumables like toners have had significant price increases. This is designed to encourage you to purchase a new printer.

Such dramatic price increases are unreasonable, and in some cases the current price of the toners is more than the cost of a new printer.

So do you pay higher prices, buy another Oki printer, or get a different brand? We like the quality of the Oki products, but we do not like the tactic above.

2011

We still use our very first Oki printer, purchased in 2011 — Oki quality has always been good.

3 yr

We originally moved to Oki because they came with a 3-year warranty and were high quality.

The catch: if you buy a new Oki printer now, who’s to say the price increases won’t happen again once your new printer is a few years old?

Our recommendation

We’re installing Brother printers again

Before we started installing Oki printers, we installed the Brother brand. The Oki colour print quality has always been good, so we spoke to Brother and they sent us samples of the quality of their printers — which also appeared to be quite good. Lately, we’ve been installing Brother printers again.

🖨️

Brother MFC-L8390CDW

A colour multi-function printer that has been popular with our clients — good print quality at a sensible running cost.

💡

When to replace

If you’re going through a reasonable amount of toner, it’s probably best to get a new printer rather than keep buying expensive consumables.