Affordable Laser Color Printer for Home?

[Dynamic_Gravity]

Eventually, every laser printers needs to have the drum replaced. There is no ballpark here as it can range from 10k to 35k copies before it craps out. Highly depends on if you got a business grade or el cheapo printer.

From my experience HP drums were a bear to replace; but then again that’s the only drum I’ve needed to replace. So YMMR.

[HK-47]

I only print black. It wants grey, then yellow, then cyan. I only use black! It was a huge pain in the ass, BUT you could bypass it, and get a set of all the 3rd party cartridges on eBay for pennies on the dollar.

Good to know, but nonetheless fails to explain why cyan, yellow, and magenta all run out more often than black.

It was probably using the other colors for “cleaning/maintenance.”

[Positron]

The only true way to use just black is to have a mono printer that only has black cartridges.

Or one can tell the printer to only use black ink.
As designer we usually spec True Black for the richest black = (C20% Y20% M20% K100%).