The best cheap color laser printer around is built like a tank

(Image credit: brother)

Competition among color laser printers is intense and many resort to cashback schemes in order to lure potential customers to buy their gear. This is pretty common in the UK and in the US and popular printer vendor Brother has managed to discount its equally popular HL-L8260CDW to a mere £85.99 ($113, AU$162) after a whopping £100 ($131, AU$188) cashback at Amazon. This deal is not available in the US where it costs $249.99 at Amazon.

There are color laser printers that are slightly cheaper (like this Lexmark C3326DW) but this one is well worth the extra spend. It comes with a three year warranty for a start and does automatic duplex printing plus wireless connectivity and a built quality that rivals much dearer models. 

Brother HL-L8260CDW colour laser printer - £185.99 £85.99

Brother HL-L8260CDW colour laser printer - £185.99 £85.99

A spectacularly good deal for a printer. It weighs 22kg and is built to last unlike some of its competitors. It has a generous amount of toner out of the box, is a fast printer and has a three-year warranty. Sure it can’t copy or scan but for less than £100, it is hard, nay, near impossible to beat. Buy the HL-L8260CDW while stock lasts!

Speedy

As well as being wallet-friendly, the HL-L8260CDW is no slouch - being able to print at up to 31 pages per minute, and it has a 300-sheet capacity which can be tripled if needed. Add-in advanced security and administrative features and you get a pretty convincing small business printer, what looks like a genuine bargain.

The icing on the cake though has to be the consumables; out of the box, you get a black toner cartridge that can do 3,000 pages with CMY toners each rated at 1,800 pages. Brother is one of the very few printer vendors that still tolerate compatible toners and refilling.

You can easily get compatibles for a third or a quarter of the genuine original consumables. What it means is that the total cost of ownership and cost of print is actually quite low compared to the rest of the competition.

Desire Athow
Managing Editor, TechRadar Pro

Désiré has been musing and writing about technology during a career spanning four decades. He dabbled in website builders and web hosting when DHTML and frames were in vogue and started narrating about the impact of technology on society just before the start of the Y2K hysteria at the turn of the last millennium.