What do you mean by that? Do you just mean Ethernet? If so, that's most printers these days. In fact, I wouldn't buy any printer in 2015 that didn't have Ethernet and/or WiFi support.
So, any laser will do in terms of quality, but toner cost might matter a bit, since you're printing 5000-6000 pages a year. That means for a unit with small toner cartridges, you might be buying two to four toner cartridges a year, at 1500-2600 pages per cartridge. The bigger printers generally take bigger cartridges, which are often a bit cheaper on a per-page basis. For example, my business oriented printer's minimum cartridge size is rated for 3000 pages, but the usual sizes are 5000 or 10000, with 10000 being the cheapest on a per-page basis (at 2¢ per page).
I have a really old Samsung ML2010, it is a very low end laser printer but the output quality on that unit is superb, everything is razor sharp. Unfortunately the paper pickup on that printer is absolute garbage and it jams on almost every print.EugW wrote: ↑I checked out a Brother LED a while back and the print quality was indeed worse in comparison to most lasers, and that impression was confirmed by independent reviews, but then again it was usable. However, the consumer Brother lasers seem OK according to the reviews though.
I just bought a business oriented Samsung, so much higher end than the consumer lasers, and the printing is fine, but quite honestly I don't think the print quality is that much different than consumer units I've bought in the past. It has more memory, is much faster, has cheaper toner, and has a whole bunch of features you never see on consumer units, but the print quality isn't better.
I suspect if you want to get a printer for print quality, you have to look to specific models, and not just general classes of printers. Spending more may get you more features and speed, but not necessarily better quality.
However, to turn that around, one could say that even cheap lasers have good enough output for most users, unless you need good photo representation or if you're distributing the stuff to ad clients or something like that.
