Help me choose a home printer

In My Humble Opinion
1

My old HP printer has finally given up, and so I need to replace it. However, the home printer market is muddy and confused (deliberately on the part of the manufacturers, I’m sure), so I’d like your thoughts and experiences.

I’m in the UK, and I’m looking to spend around £50-£100, and I need it to be wireless (I think they all are these days), and I need scanning and photo printing built in.

What brand do you use? How easy is the ink to use and install (the HP one I have requires regular swapping out of cartridges - annoying)? Are the ink pots reasonably refillable?

2

Something like this - we have an earlier model:

Canon, because they have cheapest refills, and wireless because it prints direct from our phones and laptops.

That said, you’re talking in pounds, and I don’t know if Canon’s prices for refill ink are the cheapest outside of the US. I mean, they might be, but I don’t know. You’ll want to check the UK stores for the prices. But something like that model is what you’re looking for.

Try this link here, and see what you think -
http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2/279-6979359-4885728?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Canon%20PIXMA%20MX922

3

I took the plunge and bought an Epson ET4550. It has large, refillable ink wells and comes with a two-year supply of ink (equivalent to about 50 ink cartridge sets in an office setting). A set for my last Epson was about $30-$40 for second market cartridges, so this is the equivalent of about $1500 worth of ink, assuming you do a lot of printing.

The up-front cost of the printer is high, but it easily pencils out on the ink.

4

This.

Not a pig for ink.

5

From the Amazon page for this printer:

6

There was a previous thread here where several people were emphatic in their opinion favoring a laser printer over an ink-jet, on the grounds that ink-jet nozzles are more likely to clog or dry out, making you use the “clean heads” function, which wastes a lot of ink.

Dunno if that was a widespread consensus or a noisy minority, but they were pretty firm in their beliefs.

I’ve got an Epson multi-function, and, yeah, it dries out now and then, so I have to make a point of printing something every week or so, just to keep it working smoothly. The scanner is really, really nice: I do a fair amount of scanning and OCR, and am happy with this machine.

(Epson Scan and ABBYY FineReader OCR software. Hope your luck is as good as mine has been!)

7

I have a cheap (wired) Brother Scan/Print/Fax (that last one tells you its age).

I have never had a problem beyond ‘out of ink’, but the thing does drive me nuts with sudden, uncommanded (it isn’t even connected to ANY device) runs of 3-5 seconds.
I am assuming this is some auto-clean function.

8

I’ve owned only inkjets for 15+ years. In a perfect world, I’d have a color laser. In a slightly less-than-perfect world, I’d have a fairly inexpensive B&W laser printer coupled with a color inkjet that does nice pictures. I don’t have a LOT of pictures to print, but sometimes I get into projects and I want to have the capability to print out a nice pic if I need it.

If you get an inkjet, get one that has separate ink carts for all colors. Now that I have that, I can see how often I used to replace my tri-color carts with a ton of cyan and magenta left because the yellow was gone.

I had an HP printer for like 10 years. The ink was expensive as hell, but my print needs were modest, and it’s output quality for both text and pictures was very nice. When I replaced my OS with Win7, my HP had a driver issue, so I had to replace it. Over the next 3-4 years, I’ve picked up 3 replacement printers. They all have scanning capability, with the last having batch scanning and fax as well.

First, I got a Canon Pixma something-or-other for about $40. Wasn’t wild about the print quality. Poor text, don’t remember about the picture. Probably good pictures, but what kind of printer can’t do AWESOME text by now? Apparently it’s more common than I thought.

I picked up an Epson XP-310 for about $40, and liked the text MUCH more. The photos were nice as well, IMO. However, I found the ink to be on the expensive side, and I had difficulty buying off-brand ink. When I found I now had more home-office needs than in the past, I kept an eye out for a replacement. I’ve since found off-brand ink that works with it, although I frequently get pop-ups complaining about it.

I bought a Brother MFC-J475DW all-in-one for $30. I do not like the text or photo quality as much. Photo seems passable as best, and only when I crank up the quality to maximum does the text approach that of my Epson in regular mode. I wanted it to give me more ink options and for batch scanning. The Brother ink is supposed to be cheaper in operation, and it has off-brand ink that, according to reviews, works with it.

For now, I’m using both the Epson and Brother - the Epson for color pics, the Brother for scanning and day-to-day printouts for which quality is unimportant. I’m also playing with 3rd-party ink, so if that bites me in the ass, I won’t have to run out and buy a new printer immediately.

I print out a couple pages daily for my mother’s TV guide needs. Occasionally I’ll scan copies or reprint forms, and print out the occasional full-size picture. Because of the light but constant use, I never have issues with dried-out printer heads/carts.

It seems there is no perfect printer. Some have better quality, some cost more to buy, some cost more to operate. You probably won’t find a printer that has great quality, cheap ink/toner, and is cheap to purchase, so you should examine your budget, usage, and print quality needs and proceed from there.

9

I was one of those guys. I went through 4 inkjet printers over the course of about 10 years printing a total of about 10 color pages each. I always had a dedicated LaserJet B&W printer so I hardly ever printed color. The mechanisms would always break or the inkjets would get clogged. I’ve got something similar to this HP Color LaserJet and even though the printer isn’t really photographic quality, the ink is much more colorfast and UV resistant. If I need photo quality, I print them out at Costco or similar places.

10

that’s usually my take, but OP wants photo printing capability.

my fear (based on my experience with multiple brands of inkjets) is that when it comes time for you to need the inkjet, it’ll be conveniently “out of ink.”

11

For what do you use the printer? And how much do you use it? If it’s mainly printing text and only minorly pictures, do consider upping your budget and purchasing an AIO laser printer. Yes, you’ll pay more initially, but you’ll save in the long term by not buying ink cartridges. I print under 100 pages a month and having a laser printer has saved me from buying several sets of ink cartridges as a lot of ink would get used in the cleaning cycles. And when I suddenly had to print many hundreds of sheets it wasn’t a problem either - a cheap inkjet would have given up.

12

What brand did you get?

13

I got a Brother DCP-9020CDW.

14

I got a Canon MG6650, after much deliberation.