My wife is a consultant, and prints 2-3000 pages per month, much of it in color.
We have had color laser printers for at least 10 years.
1. You will never get photo quality from a color laser printer, you can & will from a good ink-jet.
2. You will not get a "quick" print from a color laser. Warm-up time is on the order of a minute, but this has gotten better lately.
3. We don't bother to look at anything but HP printers any longer. This are the most bulletproof printers around. When you have a report you are being paid $5k to write due Monday and your non-HP printer goes belly up Saturday afternoon, you will realize the value of buying quality.
To her, the waterproof nature of color laser is worth a lot.
Wireless is nice, but the big deal is networkable. If you want to access the printer from more than one computer, the only way to go is ethernet, either wired or wireless.
In addition to toner, you will need a new drum, fuser, and transfer unit periodically. This combination can set you back $1k. A complete set of 4 toner cartridges will be on the order of $600.
If you ever print transparencies, you need special color laser ones ($$$$$). The high temperature of the fuser units melts the ordinary ones inside the printer -- getting them out is a fun project.
No matter what kind of computer you have, you are going to have to re-install the printer every so often. If you decide to go other than HP, bring a laptop to a computer store and challenge the salesperson to access his demo printer from your laptop over ethernet/wireless. If he can't do it, or if it takes more than a few minutes, don't get that brand of printer. If he doesn't have a demo printer on ethernet, go somewhere else.
Be sure you can live with the printer speed. All of them will be rated for a certain number of pages per minute. The more you spend, the higher the number. Real world performance is about 1/2 of that promised.
All medium and high end printers have memory. Be sure it is standard memory, and max it out with generic memory modules. Performance will vastly improve.
The lowest cost per page in HP printers is no longer color laser. The last I looked, they were touting the ink-jet L7600 series as lower cost. We have a L7680 and it is very nice. It is an all-in-one, so it can also be a scanner, fax, and copier. We also have a HP 4550n, which is getting a bit long in the tooth. We are going to upgrade in about a year.
At about $400 with wireless, ethernet, duplexing, and a lot more the L7680 may be just right for you.