Just ordered a new printer after spending several hours researching them. Our old inkjet has packed up. Here's a quick brain dump of what I figured out.
I decided to go for a mono laser printer because it should be more reliable and cheaper to run. Colour is nice but it's expensive. Inkjets tend to dry up and get clogged unless you use them regularly. I think the ideal is to have both - a mono laser printer for your workhorse printing and a photo inkjet printer when you really want colour.
I also wanted duplex and networking abilities. Printers with networking usually have an N in the model number and those with duplexing have a D. I was hoping to get ND in the model number. Without these features, mono laser printers are dirt cheap. Add those features and the price rockets! The networking would be nice because then I wouldn't have to hang the printer off the server. But printers with networking are aimed at business workgroups so the price goes up. I gave up on networking but not duplexing.
My short list became the HP LaserJet P2055D, Kyocera FS-1300D, Lexmark E250D, E260D, E350D and the Samsung ML-3470D. I also took a look at the Brother HL-5340.
Next concern was running costs. The features sets are similiar and I assumed output quality would be roughly the same too. There might be big differences in how they dither and render a picture but it's beyond what I could find out. Reviews of printers are a bit slim around the Internet. Too many different models and it's not a very sexy chunk of technology.
HP LaserJet started as the favourite but it's the most expensive to buy and run. Between £27 and £19 per 1000 pages for the toner cartridge. Lexmark was also poor at between £26 and £17. Despite their popularity and rock solid drivers, they dropped to the bottom of my short list.
Brother is a bit odd since you have to replace the drum at 25,000 pages. If you run the printer until the drum is finished, it probably makes sense to replace the entire printer rather than buy another drum. But if you do add the drum cost, it's still only about £14 per 1000 pages. If I bought a Brother, I'm sure I'd just end up chucking the printer when the drum was dead so I struck them off the short list.
Kyocera has the cheapest running costs since they use a ceramic drum that doesn't need to be replaced. However, the brand is a bit obscure and the printer is on the expensive side. Looks well built. Doesn't have an LCD so you have to interpret flashing lights. Read the manual and wasn't overly impressed. The driver UI looked a bit clunky and lean. One nice thing is that you can find the optional network card on ebay for £10. Tempting. I'm a sucker for superior but obscure technology.
As you might have guessed, I went for the Samsung ML-3470. A big factor was that printerbase.co.uk had a great deal on selling it for only £160 whereas ebuyer was selling it for £284. Running costs are good - between £18 and £12 per 1000 pages. The manual read well and I liked the features of the printer driver. Samsung isn't a big player in the printer market they seem to be coming up.
While calculating running costs, I came to realise that those personal mono laser printers are very expensive to run because they use such small toner cartridges. No wonder they're so cheap! You can easily end up paying £25 and more per 1000 pages. You need to buy a laser printer than takes high capacity toner cartridges to get the running costs down.
Will update this post when it arrives and I test the print quality.
UPDATE 24 SEPT 2009
Been using this printer for a few months now and can confirm I'm very happy with it. It prints tonal shades in pictures very well. It's very reliable; had a jam only once when the paper tray got really low. The print driver is very nicely designed with excellent diagnostics. Speed is good as I'm nevery waiting by the printer. I'm very glad I got a duplex printer; wouldn't go back to a non-duplex printer.