Printer Regret

That's a good price. But I need LC406 cartridges.

I guess $68 a color isn't a horrible price when you get 5000 pages out of the cartridge. That's about 5.4 cents per page.

You should start a GoFundMe for a large format color laser!

I'm on my second HP CP5225DN. They aren't cheap ($1,900 new, about $1,000 for an almost-new used at B&H), but the print quality is unbeatable. It's actually a very old model without the newer bells and whistles like WiFi connectivity, but it's still made because it's HP's only large-format color LaserJet that will print reliably on thicker paper. When my old one was getting to end-of-life, I tried replacing it with a more modern color laser printer from Brother, but the small text on my album pages wasn't as crisp. The HP does such a good job at fine printing on thicker paper.

As with all lasers, the toner's expensive (about $1,000 for a full set), but it lasts a long time. I think I only replaced the toner cartridges on my old one twice in 10+ years of use printing almost nothing but album pages – once at about 6 years, and once when trying to fix issues I was having with it toward end-of-life (and I subsequently put the second replacement set in my new printer, so they're still being used).

If you ever think of taking the leap, let me know and I'll print the files of your choice on the paper of your choice to give you an idea of what the end product looks like without spending any real money.