I can't comment on how good colour lasers are for printing photos (I never print photos), but my own experience with going OTT on printers is that several years ago I bought an LJ2200d (smallish office-standard laser, does duplexing, etc.) to replace the canonical small flaky HP home laser printer I had before, and I have never regretted it for an instant. Yes, it cost about twice as much as I'd have paid for a cheaper printer that notionally did the same sort of thing; yes, it takes up more space and weighs more; but it's robust and quick and prints happily on both sides of the paper and interprets PostScript itself, and I like it very much. I'll be surprised if what I replace it with (in a few decades :-) when it gets old) is anything other than a colour laser printer.