Any recommendations for "Airprinter" compatible laser-colour printer?

[Cassady]

As per the title – any recommendations for a iOS/Mac Airpint compatible colour laser printer, preferably that will allow for printing straight from iOS to it?

Have a Samsung colour laser that worked well enough, but it was always a mission to keep it on speaking terms with our Macs. And iOS never worked. With Samsungn then being bought by HP(?), keeping the drivers alive was even more ridiculous.

Just unpacked it now from storage, and after 18 months of not being used, is telling us we need to replace toner.
Only I have seen this movie before – spend R1.5k/R2.5k on toner – only for the printer to then still not work, due to some other issue.

At the point where we don't want to throw more money after this – so rather would just take the plunge on something new that works with what we have.
Epson? Brother? Or something else? HP? Any suggestions?

 

[SauRoNZA]

Surely there doesn’t exist a printer without AirPrint any more? Surely?

And anything that says it supports AirPrint will print straight from iOS, that’s pretty much the point.

It’s a driverless and installationless solution for all Apple operating systems.

There are no drivers for AirPrint, it is the driver so I can only imagine you actually never used AirPrint before because it doesn’t work like that.

 

[SauRoNZA]

As for the brand, my advice is ignore that and rather look at the cost of toners and ultimately the cost per page then device based on the features from there.

Also, you don’t have to go laser, it will always be more expensive up front and more expensive at replenishment but will be cheaper per page ultimately.

 

[Cassady]

Surely there doesn’t exist a printer without AirPrint any more? Surely?

And anything that says it supports AirPrint will print straight from iOS, that’s pretty much the point.

It’s a driverless and installationless solution for all Apple operating systems.

There are no drivers for AirPrint, it is the driver so I can only imagine you actually never used AirPrint before because it doesn’t work like that.

When we bought the Samsung laser printer, years back – Airprint was certainly not common, at least – very few printers actually listed it as a feature, and those were typically the pricier, high-end machines (more for office use, not really home use).

My reference to drivers etc., were in relation to the Samsung. It certainly didn't support Airprint, and required driver installation to get it speaking properly to our Macs to have its scanning software work, and send the scans through. Eventually, it was such a pain to get it work properly, as the macOS updates kept happening, that I just connected it to a cheap Windows machine, that was basically only used for printing/scanning. All that effort just because the alternative (of navigating Samsung – then HP legacy pages – to try and find updated driver software) was just not worth it.
Did eventually find pricey (but totally worth it) Mac software that took care of the scanner side of things (VueScan) – but printing remained a PITA, with the printer more-often-than-not simply not receiving the message to print, from our Mac laptops.

So that's the reason for my query – I haven't ever used an Airprint printer, but really would prefer to – if it works as intended. And therein lies the rub! Just because a printer says it is Airprint "compatible" doesn't necessarily mean that it actually works as intended.

Some of the ones I am looking at now, do have Airprint listed – but still hoping someone here might have gone this route recently, and can confirm it really does allow for seamless printing direct from an iPhone.

 

[SauRoNZA]

No if it says it’s AirPrint then it’s universally the same, it’s an Apple approved system and there is no variance to it.

There is no printer that does AirPrint better or worse than another, it’s all the same and works exactly the same.

Short of a shitty network card or some such it literally just works.

It works so well I’ve stopped bothering with any other method in enterprise even and simply enable AirPrint and call it a day.

Ironically this change came about because the industrial size Konica Minoltas we have stopped working properly with Big Sur and nobody could provide a driver that worked. Many firmware updates and days of troubleshooting and crap later figured we’d try AirPrint as a failover since it uses its own driver and low and behold problem was gone.

Haven’t reverted to the prehistoric way of doing things since.

So find comfort in knowing that if it says AirPrint it has to work as Apple expects it to work, otherwise it wouldn’t have the label.

I have used it on a number of printers from all brands over the years. As long as it’s on the same network and nobody is doing weird stuff blocking ports (Bonjour specially) etc it simply shows up on your iOS/MacOS device and you press print and off you go.

Literally takes seconds and job done.

 

[SauRoNZA]

My mom has an older version of that very same HP.

Does the job and is a solid machine and does AirPrint happily.

Ironically it’s a pain in the ass on Windows as with most things printer, but once it works it also keeps working.

Prices have certainly gone up though, I recall it being about R7500 some five years ago.