Color Laser Printer for small business of 11,000 -13,500 ppm

i've gone thru 3 generations of Okidata printers, about 2 printers of each gen in my business. I generally get 25,000 to 30,000 pages before having to replace a drum, and 55,000 to 60,000 pages a printer. Current gen we're using is a Oki C331dn

Only negative or complaint, and i suspect it's similiar with all the brands, but i wasn't aware of it on any - the paper jammed one time, and i lifted the lid but did not turn the printer off. While lifting the tray of toner cartridges out (nice feature btw, all 4 come out in one tray for access to the drums or jams) - but i bumped the rear LED strip at the back on the underside of the lid, and the damn thing was only spring loaded into it's position, with weak springs at that. It fell and went down to the motherboard and shorted something out. Got an error msg that when i called into OKI svc, they told me motherboard was fried and the cost to repair would be more than a new printer.

Last time i checked, the C331dn was still a current model, and pricing was about $250 shipped on amazon. But the above negative didn't stop me from staying with Oki - and that model will print duplex (on both sides of a page).

We printed color owner's manuals for one of our products, and would do about 500 at a time (8 pages printed duplex). Only warning the tech gave me was to keep the number of pages printed at 100 to 200 at a time then let the printer cool down for a short bit, so that's what we did. That printer would also handle fairly heavy stock, the covers for the manuals were printed on 80 lb glossy paper.

We use aftermarket toner (in bottles) and have for years with no consequences to the printer or drums. One thing though, you'll need to buy at least one set of replacement cartridges, as the first set that comes wtih the printer are "starter" cartridges and do not have a little PCB board "thingee" that tells the printer how much toner has been used. Those starter cartridges cannot be refilled - the outfits selling the bottled toner also sell replacement PCB board "thingees'.

and fwiw, Oki svc techs are available 24/7 on an 800 number - that convenience helped a couple of times when i got an error message during late night printing session. Another tip was to stay with 24 lb paper for general printing, we'd experience fewer paper jams over the long run - when he told me i remembered an HP printer tech had told me the same thing. I've experienced maybe 2 paper jams in the past year.

At 11,000 to 13,000 ppm, if you want a more durable unit, if you download the owner's manuals for the higher priced OKi manuals, they'll show the service life for drums, transfer belts etc. At $250, the C331dn just seemed to be the best bang for buck, so i went with it, but i don't print 4-5,000 ppm