Home Office Printer/All in One: Current, Easy, Reliable, Easy to Buy

In My Humble Opinion
1

My company got me an **HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M177fw **- printer, copier, scanner. I hate it. The paper feed seems very poorly designed: either misses pickup or grabs multiple pages and jams. Either scenario requires nursing and time, and doing things like ruffling out the paper before I put it in does nothing.

I have clearance to get my own - any standout choices?

  • Reliable - the concept of printing in an unattended way doesn’t immediately make you go “can’t happen” with your recommendation :wink:
  • Reasonably fast page rate
  • Scan and Copy all in one, unless there is a screaming need to keep 'em separated
  • Something I could go out and buy today at a Staples or Best Buy. Or, I suppose, order with an Amazon quick delivery or something…

I appreciate any strong recommendations. What’s the, I don’t know, *Honda Accord *of home office printers these days?

2

I recently bought an Epson WorkForce Wf-2660. No problem with the paper feed or anything else. It makes beautiful prints, even on plain paper, and has a relatively small footprint. I bought it on sale, at Staples.

3

And you have an Artist’s Eye, which means you are looking at least a bit more critically at the print quality, right?

Very cool - thanks!

4

The camry of printing is the Brother HL-L2340DW (or the Brother HLL2380DW, which includes a scanner). It’s cheap, reliable, does only one thing, and does it really well. If you don’t need color printing, I’d go with this.

On the downside, its big and the picture printing quality is poor. But text is very clear.

5

I also bought an Epson WorkForce (WF 3540). It was cheap and it’s reliable. I wouldn’t use it for photo printing, however. You can buy reliable after-market ink through LD Products to help keep costs down.

6

My experience with three in one devices is that they don’t do any of them well.
I think the manufacturers realized that folks are going to expect to pay the same amount of money for those as they do for a normal printer, and cut costs to bring the price down.

7

Five years ago I bought a Canon PIXMA MP560: it’s still going strong, and I still love it. All of the functions work well for me, and I don’t think it’s ever jammed. I printed pictures on the sample photo paper that came with it, and other people couldn’t tell them from regular prints. The only thing I don’t love about it is that it doesn’t hold much paper, but except for sheet-music-printing binges that doesn’t bother me too often.

8

I have a Brother DCP-9020CDW and it does just fine. It does duplex printing which saves paper (and thus the environment) which may be important.