Are There Any "Non-Piece-of-Crap" Printers?

In My Humble Opinion
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I had the HP 2100 for several years, printing drafts for proofreading – often several hundred pages each day. It ran very well, till I printed some clear stick-on labels and the heat melted some of the glue goop onto the rollers. I never could get them really clean, and the edges of the pages had shadowy scallop marks. The paper feeding was usually okay, although sometimes it refused to feed through previously printed on paper I was printing on the back of.

After about five years, the printer started getting wonkier, and I upgraded to the HP2200d. Love it! It’s twice as fast, feeds all kinds of paper, even jumbled together, and does a great job overall fulfilling my B&W workhorse needs. It’s definitely not cheap – but it’s worth the roughly 700 bucks I had to shell out for it.

The toner cartridges do cost 80-something to 90-something dollars, depending on whether you use the HP ones or, say, Staples cartridges. The printer works just fine with every cartridge I’ve used.

For color, and for high-quality results – letters, invoices, photographs, envelopes, etc. – I use the HP DeskJet 842C. It’s given me at least three years of intermittent service with no problems.

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Ex-Canon (and HP) tech checking in here.

[nitpick]Laser printers do not print with ink! They apply a static charge to the paper, which attracts toner to it. The toner is then fused (ie high heat is applied, and the toner melts), which gives the effect of a printed letter on the paper. Hence why the “ink” doesn’t run or rub off, and also why the paper feels warm when it comes fresh out of the printer.[/nitpick]

To answer the question - MOST bubblejet/inkjet printers will have some level of suckage. As others have already pointed out, the biggest problem with inkjets is to do with ink quality and print head quality. Left unused, a printer’s print head will dry out, leaving nozzles clogged. End result is a line through the print, crooked print or fuzziness in the print quality.

The Canon S300 series (and the 600) were the bane of my fucking existence. Print heads, print heads and print heads. And when the print heads actually worked, the paper feed mechanism would usually have some problem or another. Misfeeds, multiple feeds, non-feeding were commonplace. The issue there (IMHO) was an overly-complicated feeding mechanism.

Print quality problems (in inkjets) are further exacerbated by using non-genuine ink. Yes, I know it’s a ripoff. But the fact remains that the genuine product usually doesn’t fuck up quite as badly as the knockoffs. Additionally, if you have problems with the head and it is found that you have used non-genuine ink, there will be problems with any warranty claim you make on the consumables.

Speaking of consumables, consider that a printer in the $100-130 mark uses consumables that cost $80. That should tell you something about the cost (ie worth) of the printer itself.

With laser printers, you immediately bypass most of the suckiness associated with inkjet printers. Still, there are problems that are common to both (paper feed problems, jams), and problems that are specific to lasers (most commonly the fuser unit).

As much as it seems strange, I never had a great deal of Canon (or HP - most are built on Canon engines) lasers come back for repair. Of those that did, it was most often a paper feed problem - worn separator pads causing multiple pages to feed, or paper pickup rollers worn causing paper to stop halfway through.

If someone were to ask me what laser printer they should buy, I’d tell 'em an HP. As for inkjets… bah… they all suck (for reasons stated above).

Max.

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FYI, any masochists out there who are interested in the inner workings of those things we call printers(and often malign for unjust reasons) there are two excellent articles on the How Stuff Works site. One on Inkjet Printers and another on Laser Printers.

Enjoy,
Steven

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Depending on how much you want to spend, OKI do some really neat color printers. The cheapest is less than a grand. They use LED strips instead of a laser, and they have a single pass method that works like a printing press, where the paper just passes flat through the CMY and K strips before the toner (acrylic powder) is heat-sealed onto the paper. I have had one running constantly (around 10,000 impressions so far) for two years, and have had no problems at all - no paper jams, no double-page snagging, etc. The toner and other components are really easy to replace, too, although they do cost a bit more than other printers.

At home I just have a Canon inkjet - poor quality but gets the job done, though heaven forbid you should drip coffee on a page, as the stupid ink is water-soluble.