Some of my computer equipment is dated, if not actually dying or dead.
One of those items i my old scanner/printer. Also the HP black and white printer which is, apparently, not compatible with Windows 10 and does not have a ready-made Linux driver (it is a very old printer).
Rather than dick around any more with my ancient stuff I’m thinking of buying something new.
Here’s what I definitely want as a minimum:
Scanning - both black and white and color
Functions as a copier
Printing in at least black and white
Takes letter format paper
Talks to my Windows 10 computer
What I would really like to have in addition:
Color printing capability - BUT I want to be able to replace/replenish Individual ink colors instead of buying three-packs
Printing in several sizes, up to 11x17
Photo quality printing on request
If you can think of anything else that would nice go ahead and suggest it.
Would like to have suggestions and opinions so I’ll let ya’ll run with this for awhile before chiming in again (I’m hoping to get something).
The Epson Workforce ET-4550 is what I have. It has bulk ink tanks (no cartridges!) that last quite a long time, and you can buy individual refill bottles. You’d likely need a different model to do 11x17 printing, probably the ET-7550.
I have an HP OfficeJet 5255. No 11 x 17 printing. You buy three color cartridges together, but you replace them one at a time.
It can handle all your other requirements, and even prints double sided. And it was well under $100 on Amazon.
I think it can do photo quality printing, but I’ve never tried it.
Before that I had an Epson which was also good, but this one has a smaller footprint which is nice.
How often are you printing color? How often do you need to print 11x17? Because the cheapest thing may be to get a monochrome all-in-one laser printer/scanner/copier and go someplace when you need color printing or printing on 11x17. (Generally even if the printer is only black and white, the scanner can scan in color.)
How often do you print? My home printing needs are very sporadic, and I found that my infrequent use made an inkjet printer completely unacceptable. Every time that I got around to needing it, the ink jets had dried and clogged, and I had to do a deep cleaning just to get one good page. That wasted a ton of ink, not to mention my time.
So I tossed it and bought a laserjet. No muss, no fuss, and it works great however infrequently I use it. I got a cheap black and white model, but even a color model wouldn’t have costed much more.
So yeah, unless you are printing at least every other day, I recommend you avoid the inkjet and go for the laser.
I bought an Epson Eco-Tank ET-3710 a few months ago when working from home on a daily basis forced me to get a new computer. I believe it fits all the OP’s requirements, and so far I’ve been very happy with it. I don’t print every day, but I try to print something in color at least once a week to keep the print heads from clogging up. I haven’t tried printing on legal paper but it looks like you can extend the paper tray. And one of the first things I did when I got it was to print out some photos and they look great.
Just wanted to second the Epson eco-tank printers. If you don’t do much printing, or have a long time between jobs, then they may not work as well, but if you do a bunch of printing, as I do, they are amazing.
They are higher on the front end, but keeping them full of ink is so much cheaper.
Four color ink cartridges; two different black cartridges. The paper tray only takes letter or legal size. Can print directly from an SD card.
My only problem with it is that sometimes the rollers which take up the paper get dirty, causing the printer to think it’s out of paper until the rollers are cleaned.
Are there any printers any more that are NOT wireless? “Voice activated”? I find it incredibly creepy to have machines eagerly listening for my voice. Also, I have parrots, one of which actually has an English vocabulary, I’d prefer my machines to NOT be listening for instructions with him around. Because, yes, voice activated systems can in fact be activated by a mouthy parrot, see YouTube videos for examples.
OK, OK, I know that a lot of them have options to be wired. Just please re-assure me that anything with “voice activation” can have that feature turned off. I don’t want to come home from work to find Griffin the Bird has talked the printer into going through an entire ream of paper and he thinks the machine now complaining about needing more paper and printer errors is screaming hilarious.
Digression over, you may now return to more serious discussion and recommendations.
Given how many leftover cables my electronics-hobbyist late spouse left me I don’t think securing a USB cable for anything would be a problem at this point.
Good to see people have finally gotten the news about needing to print a color page at least once a week.
My current printer is a Canon color laser all-in-one. I can ignore it for two months and the toner doesn’t care and doesn’t clog.
For the OP - how often do you need 11x17 prints? It might be cost-effective to let the local FedEx Office or OfficeMax print them. I only need big stuff like that once every other year or so. Buying a printer specifically to handle that size at home would be madness.
Similarly for photos, I send them over to Walgreens. Why sink a pile of money into something that can do high quality 8x10 photo prints at home when someone’s already got the equipment down the street?
I just bought a Brother HL-L2370DW, Consumer Reports top-rated NON-all-in-one basic printer. It’s fast & efficient at printing B&W text, which is basically all it does - and that’s 95% of what I was doing with my old printer. Having no scanner / copier function makes it far more compact, much less obtrusive in my open plan bedroom/office. The useful extra function that it does have is double-sided printing.
I realized that:
(a) when I do want color printing, the commercial machine at the Fedex store is far better quality than any home machine;
(b) if I want to scan something, I can just photograph it with my phone (or there are scanner apps).
The only thing I suppose I might miss is the copy function, but scanning with my phone and re-printing is a workaround for the odd occasion I might need that.
Hmmm… I think there are good arguments against getting a large format printer and outsourcing that function for the few times I need it.
I do want a scanner/copier though - I’ve really felt crippled not having one these past couple months. I’ve done the “take picture with phone and print it” thing but I’m not really pleased with it even if it’s a good work-around for some people.
I’ve had the same cannon Laserjet BW printer for 6 or 7 years. I use it for my consulting company primarily but occasionally it gets used for family print jobs. It scans and copies really well and it prints super fast which are why I bought it what I’ve fallen in love with is that I’ve only changed out the ink twice in that seven years despite going through almost 2 cases of paper.