Cost to print 5,000 B&W pages on my Brother laser: $25 ($12.50 per 2600-page generic toner).
Inkjets make no sense if you can put up the extra $50-100 up front for a laser printer. B&W is at least 10x cheaper, color is at least 5x cheaper, per page.
I have a Brother HL-2270DW for B&W printing, and an HP M251nw for color. Both are wireless, easy to set up.
Bonuses: Print 5 reams of paper before you need to swap a toner cartridge, instead of 3+ ink cartridges per ream. If you don't print anything for a few weeks, you won't need to throw out a dried out cartridge to use the printer again.
I found an unused HP P2015dn at a family member's office. It came loaded with an aftermarket cartridge. I also found a new-in-box HP toner. Pages printed with the genuine HP part are much sharper. Maybe some generic cartridges are better than others... ?
The paper doesn't feed from the drawer anymore, but it feeds fine from the fold-down tray. It's got a wired network connection too, which works pretty well, except I can't print auto-duplex (manual-duplex only) over the network unless I'm printing from Chrome's printing dialogue (wth?).
Total pages printed: 60387
Duplex pages printed: 4279
Pages mispicked in printer: 783
Pages jammed in printer: 29
PCL6 pages printed: 48916
PS pages printed: 505
PCL pages printed: 12937
According to the printer's status sheet it's printed 7298 pages so far and jammed just nine times.
The printer is still running on its original fuser and drum units and it's on its second toner cartridge. I think it cost me GBP150.00.
It's connected directly to my Windows 10 workstation via USB and is "shared". Fairly certain I could get some sort of WiFi arrangement rigged up, but this PC is rarely switched off.
* Canon MG5500
Got this as a freebie. I use it now and again as a scanner and to print high quality Hubble pics onto high quality printer paper. It's set up over WiFi which was ridiculously easy to do. It even scans over WiFi which gave me a certain sense of wow that's clever even though it shouldn't have :)
In parting, I'd say that the economics of a half decent laser printer are a bit of a no-brainer if its mostly b/w printing you do.
[edit] Forgot to mention that both printers happily talk to Fedora.
If you find something without networking it isn't hard to find a way to add it on!
I have an inkjet at home, hardly use it.
When I want something to look nice, down to the ink on the paper, I use Staples.
Anyway, to me, it's really a pointless question; if you want good color, take your files to a pro printing shop. You're not going to get good color at home.
Printing photographs (e.g.) at home is a silly waste of money.
Firstly, it requires ink, not toner. (Rules out a LED or laser printer like this). Toner is colored plastic powder: the three colors don't blend properly. On a given pixel, more of one toner is going to end up on top, and even though it's melted by heat, it's not going to produce the right effect, like when drops of liquid ink blend together.
Ink requires an inkjet, and an inkjet is a silly thing to own. The ink is used up quickly and is expensive. You have to print quite regularly otherwise they dry up and clog. If you try to refill the cartridges yourself (e.g. open holes in them and syringe in the ink), you risk introducing particles of impurities which will clog the heads, and then the unit is kaput.
After all that, the cheap inkjets that people buy for home use don't compare to big, professional printing units. You will end up pay more per image than if you send out for it.
I have this printer for printing documents and the occasional image (perhaps embedded in a document). Color adds a nice dimension to docs, and doesn't have to be correct.