Popular cheap printer often rebated and on sale

This printer is very popular due to the fact it was often deeply discounted with rebates and posted on deal sites as low as $29. That's very cheap for even a basic laser printer like this. The last year or so, the frequent deep sales discounts have largely disappeared. I wouldn't pay a lot for this printer, it's OK if you get it cheap. I paid $40 for it, a long time ago for it.

The reason I got it was due to the expense and hassle of feeding inkjet printers new cartridges. I went from the insanely expensive HP and Epson, to the much cheaper Canon which doesn't have the print head on the cartridges, so you can easily refill them or buy generic ink. You can do that with HP and Epson too, but it's a hassle.

With lasers, they can print thousands of pages before the toner needs refilling. And you don't have the problem of the ink drying up and clogging the heads and other inkjet problems.

You can refill the toner cartridge yourself by buying bottles of toner for about $10 each on Ebay. You can also buy remanufactured toner cartridges, but they are often $30-50. If you can get another cheap deal on a laser printer, you might as well just buy another new one with the cartridge for that price.

The print quality is adequate, though the graphics quality is a bit poor. It's mainly just a basic laser printer, a workhorse for cranking out text.

What's bad about this printer? Unlike some of the others here, Ive had a fair amount of severe paper jams. If the paper is slightly bent then it can really jam up the printer. In fact it was so bad 4-5 times I thought I would break the printer trying to pull the paper out. If you make sure the paper loaded is flat then you generally won't have problems.

Another thing I don't like about it is the paper tray has two flimsy little pegs that are the sole support of the tray. There are two very small pegs that slide along a slot. These two little nubs are what support the tray when it's extended to take paper. The pressure on the tray while loading it with paper and with the weight of the paper itself, can crack the little, flimsy nubs after a few months.

Be sure to have the printer on some surface so that the tray that swings out has support beneath it. I had it sitting on something, raised a bit so that there was no support and after putting reams of paper on it for a few months the pegs broke off. I tried gluing them back with epoxy, but that was useless. It's unnecessarily flimsy if you compare it the trays that pop out for Canons and other ink jets that have far more massive plastic supports.

A minor complaint is the long lag it seems to have before it begins printing and how loud it is when powering up. The sound reminds me of a huge particle beam weapon powering up to fire a deadly burst, each time you send a printing command to it.

Would I buy it again? For $50 or less, yes. If it was higher than that, I would look at some other options.