Our printer died, and we’re going to buy a new one sometime after returning next weekend from our annual escape from the dreaded Songkran holiday. It was a Canon inkjet printer that we’d had for several years.
We have our eye on a Hewlitt-Packard inkjet printer, a 3-in-1 device – printer, scanner and copier – that costs the equivalent of US$140. However, we have been told that laser prints better quality, and there is a unit, also HP brand, that is only a printer and costs only $106.
The price difference to us is negligible, so we’re okay with spending the extra $34. We thought the quality of our old inkjet unit was pretty good, so that’s not really a consideration. But how are these 3-in-1 devices? Do they work as well as if they were separate units? (I remember the fiasco when they tried to pair TVs with the Internet.)
Also, the inkjet cartridges are much cheaper but don’t last as long as the laser cartridges; the laser cartridges are very expensive, but we’re told they can print many, many more pages, plus the ink won’t dry up if we don’t print anything for a few weeks.
So, any thoughts on inkjet versus laser? And 3-in-1 versus printer only?
laser is a much better black printer and faster. it will go months without printing and still be OK. price per page is cheap.
inkjet can give color. the 3-in-1 devices are nice, you can scan and copy as well. scanner may stop functioning when the ink runs out, even though the scanner doesn’t need ink it may be prevented from running.
if i had room or money for only one device i would get a 3-in-1. if i needed color printing or a moderate amount of black printing i would get a 3-in-1. if i did a lot of black printing i would get a laser.
I love my 3-in-1. Actually I have a 4-in-1, fax included. Copying is rad. I don’t know how people get away with not having a copy machine in their homes! I also like that it’s both a flatbed and a feed tray scanner. I am pretty sure that’s how 3-in-1 works too?
The thing that sucks is that the scanner and copier are pretty much the same thing so if the scanner goes, the copier goes. And the copier and printer are the same thing, so if the printer goes the copier goes.
I have been loyal to HP printers and really they haven’t let me down. I set my mom up with a HP 4-in-one and she hasn’t managed to kill it. I think my bro has an HP 3-in-1 too.
I did kill my HP OfficeJet 5500 printer about 8 months ago - just after buying a bunch of ink! And, the current models don’t use the ink I’d bought. However, I just popped on to Google and searched for my model for sale and found it used on Amazon Marketplace for slightly less than a new printer (of the latest model).
I use my OfficeJet for my business. Probably oh, 35% printing for in-office use, 35% printing for sending to clients (including checks and envelopes), 30% faxing and 10% copying. I’ve never thought to myself “wish I had a laser.”
People give HP printers a bad rap because they have “bloatware” or the ink is expensive or whatever shit, but honestly I’ve been using them exclusively for 10+ years and they rock.
I am on my 4th Canon printer. (Not like it sounds, all 4 still work)
the first one didn’t do photo prints so I got a Pixma 6700, which does excellent photos.
At work I needed a photo printer so I got a Pixma MP860 which is awesome with a sheet feeder for the fax and scanner. I had two printers on my desk top, a HP laser jet for B&W items and the Canon for color, scanning, and fax work.
At home I have upgraded to a Pixma MP 990 which does not have a sheet feeder, but is an all in one and if just flat awesome.
The 6700 has gone to work where it is in the shop printing every day.
I have never had any issues with my Canon printers, and they always work for me even if I have not printed for awhile. No clogged nozzles.
If I was a very heavy user of ink, I would look into Epson as you can buy external print tanks for them that lowers your ink cost to damn near nothing per page.
HP inkjets are notoriously bad in a variety of things, one being a paper jam that requires any tugging can screw with the alignment of the rollers and leave you with a brick. Also last I heard HP has been kinda uncooperative with shops that fix printers in providing parts and or service manuals.
HP Laser printers on the other hand are often unassailable fortresses of longevity. Some of the common small office units like the 2200 series and its like can pound out hundreds of pages a day for years.
My HP 1312 Color 4in1 laser is one of the best printer investments I ever made. In my shop we use it for everything and regularly go 4-5 months on a set of toner cartridges.
I have had very bad luck with printers this year. Three all-in-one printers didn’t last a month each. Kodak jammed right from the beginning, I never did get the damn thing to work - nor its replacement. Followed by Lexmark. Eventually they sent me a new ink-head and it worked for a while, then started jamming. Finally I bought a cheap HP printer-only and so far it has worked a treat. But I haven’t had it a month yet.
Forget the brands. Printers are pretty much commodity items these days. Look at the cold, hard specs before you buy (warranty details, print speed in ppm, estimated cartridge life, whether it includes two-sided printing [duplexing], networking, etc.)
Our office HP color laser is the slowest piece of shit ever invented. A friend gave us a Brother black & white laser that he didn’t use anymore and now it prints almost everything we need because it’s literally 4-5x faster. The current Brother b&w lasers are hard to beat in terms of value per dollar.
All in ones are fine if you need all the functions, but otherwise they’re unnecessarily big and expensive.
You need to ask yourself the basic questions, “What is it I want to do? What is my budget?” Then get yourself the best device or devices within that budget. Remember that your budget should include consumables and cover the expected lifespan of the device. Think about the cost per page. Don’t be afraid to get more than one device. Don’t be afraid to get both a workhorse laser for documents and a PSC for everything else.
Top tip: if you’re thinking of buying a colour laser printer, check that it doesn’t use colour toner to enhance the black. HP, I’m looking at you.
New HP printers generally get bad consumer reviews. These are easy to find online, so I won’t link to them. I bought a Canon MP640 3-in-1 this time around (after many years of HPs) because it was one of the very few printers that got consistently high praise from reviewers. It’s only drawback is that it takes several ink cartridges and they tend to run out more quickly than the HP cartridges.
color printing has come down in price exponentially in both laser and inkjet. It really comes down to what you plan on doing with it. Laserjets tend to do better with typing fonts. You can print something in a 6 point font on a laser printer that is razor sharp. That holds true for a 600 dpi laser printer versus a 2400 dpi injet printer. The reverse is true of pictures. An inkjet printer is capable of photo quality prints and some of the printers use ink that is archival quality (100 to 200 year stable images).
HP use to be the standard in laser printers in the 80’s. They were built like tanks. I still have an HP-4. It won’t die. The service behind it was outstanding (in the 80’s). I called with a software problem and the person on the phone apologized in advance for the 3 days it would take to mail out a new driver. Those days are gone. What you buy today from any company is disposable.
I have 3 printers, old reliable (HP laserjet), an Epson inkjet wide carriage specifically for photographic work, and a networked HP inkjet because I got tired of plugging my laptop into a printer every time I wanted a printout. The new HP printer was cheap and it was a pain in the ass to get it networked because the auto install failed and instructions sucked. All I needed was the printer ip address which was available at the push of a button but that info was lacking. It’s also too smart for it’s own britches. It measures the paper and will reject a printout if the wrong size is inserted. I have to be fairly precise with odd sized envelopes.
So it comes down to what you want your printer to do. If it was my only printer I would go with a networked 4 in 1 combo inkjet that used separate ink cartridges. That would give me a home work station capable of photo-copying and printing of pictures as well as normal text printing. The separate ink cartridges for each color prevents the extra cost associated with the replacement of a single color cartridge because only one of the colors has run out. If the printer isn’t close to the router then it would need to be wireless capable.
Thanks for all the comments. They are really helpful. We’re looking at HP not because we were dissatisfied with our Canon – far from it – but rather because the wife’s office uses HP, and they seem to last forever, so she stopped off and picked up a bunch of HP brochures. Someone above mentioned Brother, but I’m not sure they’re available here.
Now we’ve noticed a 3-in-1 HP laser printer that’s the equivalent of US$163, and that’s still within our desired range. We’re leaning toward that one. Black and white, not color. The color laser printers seem prohibitively expensive, at least over here. Our Canon inkjet did color, but we’ve found we simply don’t need color; B&W suits our purposes. Nor do we need a fax function, which is why we’re not looking for a 4-in-1 model. When we first moved into this unit, we had a fax line installed, then never used it. After a few years, we finally dropped it. On the few occasions we need to fax anything, the wife just does it from her office.
We’ll start checking the online reviews. I’m not sure if the model number of the one we’re leaning toward at the moment is the same from country to country – model numbers sometimes differ in various markets – but here it’s the HP Laserjet Pro M1132 MFP. We’re heading upcountry for a few days this week and will return at the weekend. Will make a decision very shortly after that, within the next couple of weeks for sure.
Reviews seem to be scarce for this one, although I did find this site. It’s not a model that’s available (under that number) in the US. For an entry level printer, it will likely do the job for you.
My experience with “three-in-ones” is that they don’t do either function well. They have to meet the single function printer price, so they skimp.
It depends upon whether you are writing your Mother a letter once a week or printing a newsletter.
I found this review of the model we’re looking at. Sounds so-so. But the references to “dinosaurs” may not be relevant, because after the one we had for years this one could seem all modern to us.
Back home in Bangkok and uncertainty has set in. I’d mentioned earlier that Brother did not appear to be available over here. Then what do I see when we went to the airport? A big billboard advertising Brother printers! So I think we’ll check into those.
And my friend upcountry joined the chorus of those advising against a 3-in-1 unit. His office has had back luck with those. He suggested maybe getting just a printer and a scanner as separate units. He pointed out that a scanner is basically nothing more than a copier anyway and that you could scan and print out documents. Well, maybe. So now we’re not sure what to go for.
We’ve had HP All-In-Ones for a while and they generally work fine. The downside, as always, is the cost of ink, but I don’t think that’s going to change for any inkjet unit you buy.
We also had our old unit die recently (printhead sprang a leak, and whoo boy is that messy) and had to replace it. I looked at color laser printers but they’re far too expensive right now, so we ended up going with the HP C310a, an all-in-one that also has wireless capability. So far we’ve been quite pleased with it-- it prints well, both BW and color, and is convenient for scanning and copying. The wireless connectivity is great as we can print or scan directly from any other connected device on the network (and do scans from the printer itself, choosing which device to send them to).
I think it was about $250-300, I don’t recall, and we got it from Power Buy at Central World. It sounds like it’s above your budget, though.
(If you’re considering separate units, I also have a sheet-fed Fujitsu ScanSnap unit that is fantastic-- it will scan, convert to PDF, do text recognition and keep the documents organized on your computer, all at the press of a button. It’s not a flatbed scanner, though.)
Thanks. That is a bit above what we would like to spend. We were thinking maybe 5000 baht (US166) tops, but that’s an arbitrary cutoff, and we could go higher. But we’d just use it mostly for general purposes, although the wife does like to be able to print out work-related stuff on days she does not go into her office. We’re not concerned about whether it’s wireless, as the space for it is right by the CPU.
Regarding sheet-fed scanners, I suppose those are for paper and not for, say, photos?
I love my HP all-in-one. If money’s not an issue, then you have two options: buy the cheap consumer model, and pay lots of money for ink in the long run, or pay a bit more for a professional model, and pay a lot less for ink in the long run. I’ve got a pro model, and I love it.
I had an inexpensive HP all-in-one, and I hated it from day one. The software was balky, the controls were often confusing, and it frequently fell into irretrievable error modes that had no fix except unplugging. I now have a Canon inkjet that’s just a printer, and it’s a breath of fresh air.
Certainly, my experience may not be typical, but I’ll never buy HP again.
I think we’ve pretty much decided against a 3-in-1 device now. We’ll head to Panthip Plaza this weekend – that’s a big IT center here – and look for a printer and a scanner. We have our eye on one HP model and one Brother model for the printer and a Canon scanner.
