My old HP is finally starting to show its age. It’s going on eight-years old, which in human terms is about 150. So I’ve been researching all-in-one printers on various sites, but the reviews seem to be all over the board. Reviewers praise the HP Photosmart Premium, but users beat up on it as glitch ridden and an inkhog.
So once again I turn to the Dope to see if anyone has hands-on opinions of the printer they own. I’d prefer inkjet to keep the cost down, but will pay more for quality. I’m running Windows 7, 32 bit. Thanks all.
I am really happy with my Brother MFC-885cw. It got great reviews on newegg, doesn’t seem to install a lot of bloatware, and has separate ink cartridges.
I’m still using my Brother MFC 240 and am still happy with it. Given my and CaveMike’s experience, I’d recommend you explore the Brother line to see if any models match up with your needs.
I’ve had a Canon Pixma MP560 for a little less than 2 months now, and I love it! Especially the wireless connection. Easy to set up, separate ink cartridges, scanner and printer both work great, and the 4x6 picture I printed on one of the included sample “photo paper” sheets looks awesome. I currently have it framed on my desk and people are always amazed when I tell them it came from a printer.
It doesn’t fax, though, and I haven’t tried the copy feature yet. So if you need an all-in-one that includes fax, I suggest one of the other Pixma models.
Lexmark impact 305S wireless. You can get it for $70. Has good reviews from Cnet and Zdnet. Great home printer. If you are planning on using it for a small business, should probably look a bit higher end.
I’ve actually got an HP OfficeJet 5500 and have zero complaints. There might possibly be some bloatware but I’ve been able to pare it down to nothing, and it hasn’t come back since.
I have no issues with scanning (either into Acrobat or Photoshop), faxing, printing or copying. I’ve had it for at least 5 years, if not more.
But, I don’t do much of any of the above…maybe faxing 10 times a year, scanning 3 times a year, copying once or twice a year, printing once a month or so. Hard for me to say how much ink it uses or whatever. But it’s been brilliant for what I need it for.
I have an HP OfficeJet 6500 - the wireless version - and it SUCKS.
Well to be fair, it prints just fine, the fax works just fine, the copier works just fine, the scanner… tough to scan my daughter’s pencil drawings in dark enough but I suspect that’s something we can learn to correct…
However, after a few minutes / hours of inactivity, it goes into power-save mode. The power light flashes periodically. This would be fine, except that when it does this, there is NO WAY TO WAKE IT UP. Completely unresponsive to any button presses, unresponsive to attempts to print from it. I haven’ tried sending it a fax (I’ve heard that it will still receive them even in that limbo). But basically the only way to fix it at that point is to unplug it.
It’s frustrating because it’s a known error, HP tech support has no fixes, user-suggested fixes I’ve found don’t work…
Since it’s a four-in-one, I assumed everyone would know print/fax/copy/scan are the features. I need good to excellent photo printing.
I’m not familiar with the Brother line, but saw that it received some good reviews. Also the Canon laser got good reviews. HP looks like it has the same flaws nearly across the line with their machines. The same complaints keep cropping up about the machine not waking up and having to be unplugged, not responding to commands, etc.
I have a portable Canon Pixma (iP100) that I really like, but it won’t perform the functions that I need. Thanks for the help so far.
My apologies - I should have been specific. What volumes of each function do you require? Are you going to be printing a lot of photographs, for instance? Are you going to require an automatic document feeder, or will a flatbed scanner suffice? Because inkjet printers can be expensive on a per-print basis. It may be cost-effective for you to buy a colour laser instead. OTOH you might care to investigate a Continuous Ink System.
Well, for my part I never saw “four-in-one” anywhere in the OP – just “all-in-one,” which can mean different things to different people/manufacturers. For example, the Pixma I mentioned calls itself an all-in-one even though it doesn’t fax.
Most of what we do is print and copy. Scanning would probably tie with copying, as I do genealogy work. Fax is a distant last, and I wouldn’t get that feature except my wife wants it for some reason. It’s handy when you really need it, I guess.
All in ones, generally do not contain fax. MFD (or MFP, depending on manufacturer) devices do all 4.
I like HP devices generally, but the ink cartridges aren’t cheap for the HP DeskJet line. If I had my way, I’d have a color all-in-one laser from HP for my home use. I don’t need the faxing though.
Once you start scanning, you’ll be amazed you could live without it. Especially if you’re doing genealogy work. It’s far easier to store in an electronic medium, than sorting though reams of paper. IMO. I’d love to see my wife’s family history (going back 3-400 years) digitized someday.
All-in-one seems to be a generic term. When you google “all-in-one printer reviews”, you get everything, including the printers that serve as fax machines. I haven’t seen the term MFD or MFP, although I’ve called my HP an mfp recently.
I scan in documents whenever possible. It’s gradually taken over the copy and file routine. At some point, I need to scan in all of my genealogy files, which would be a large undertaking. My spouse is a print junkie and, as far as I can tell, has printed out the entire internet. Maybe twice.
More research is showing the Epson Artisan 810 to be getting good user reviews, and great ink usage, along with cheap cartridges. The Canon Pixma MX860 gets mixed reviews, as the functions are not intuitive. I also looked at the Lexmark Interact S605as an alternate.
Have enjoyed a satisfactory experience with Canon over the years (currently using an inkjet 4-in-1 from the MX line); that said, I’m not an intensive printer, the machine probably has had more hours of work as a scanner. Like **Chefguy **I very seldom use the fax function and it turns out that’s good because it seems to be its weakest mode.
HP multis have something against me, unlike their plain old printers which have usually only been objectionable over the the cost of consumables. Meanwhile, have heard good things about the Epson Artisans but haven’t had a chance at using one. Lexmark product has not meant good times for me in the past.
I have been very happy with the Brother printers I have owned. I presently own a Brother MFC 8840D. It is a B&W laser printer with document feeder, fax, copier and network printer and scanner. It easily works with every computer I have tried.
Obviously if color printing is something you do a lot, this doesn’t help. But I find that 98% of my printing needs are satisfied by B&W.
I have a Brother MFP-750, several years old and I am NOT happy with it. We don’t use it that much, maybe to get or send a few pages of fax once or twice a month and print or copy a couple hundred pages a month. After six months it will complain that it needs a new ink cartridge, even then it is half full. I can take it out and replace it, but somehow the machine knows the difference. Now, after several years of light use, every page after the second or third comes out smudgy and it clearly needs a new print assembly that sells for $250, more than the cost of a new one. It has two advantages: it fits in a small space on my wife’s desk and most of the replacements we have looked at don’t; it gets along well with our answering machine in the sense that it senses when the answering machine has picked up and sends its ready-to-receive signal that turns the answering machine off and receives the fax even when no on is home. It is documented not to do this, so I am afraid any replacement won’t.
We need a fax machine for the handful faxes we receive a year. The ease of scanning/copying to an all-in-one is a great help, and the bonus of photo printing is a nice plus.
We had a Brother MFC-456CN for a couple years. We were nominally happy with it, but it goes through it’s cleaning cycle much too frequently. Ink cartridges lasted less than six months of idle time — less than six months without printing anything. I understand the expensive ink model, but was not happy with the annual cost for such low usage. (ETA: /me shares a dark look with Hari Seldon)
It just went PC LOADLETTER on us, so we went out in search of a replacement.
Enter the Epson WorkForce 615. All seemed well, but I couldn’t figure out how to get incoming faxes to bypass the printer and go right to the computer. You can’t. :mad:
Maybe it’s unique to Brother, but it seems so logical to allow a machine that is already connected to the network, that already has software inside to create PDFs or TIFFs or other image formats, and already has the capability to save images to a remote computer to do so with a fax.
Nope. Not on the Epson.
It’s going back.
Do the Canons and HPs of the world do this or was this a unique Brother feature?
