I’m considering buying a printer, or a printer/scanner. What printers are recommended for home users that aren’t too expensive and (more importantly) don’t have outrageous ink prices?
What do you want to do with it?
Do you want professional photographs made with archival ink or are you more interested in knocking out stuff that’s pretty decent and is cost efficient?
Do you want to print in B&W or color? Do you want to be able to print double-sided documents? Do you want a networked printer, or just a local one? In other words, there are lots of ways to go with this.
Last year or the year before, I bought a Brother MFC 7820N. It’s a B&W laser printer/flatbed scanner/copier/fax machine that includes a network port (or can be connected locally via USB). It’s about $250 now. You can spend less if you don’t need a flatbed scanner (and a sheetfed scanner will be sufficient) or don’t need a network-capable device. Or you can get something based on an inkjet printer.
But I bought this one partly because it’s relatively small, which was important because it’s on a small cart below my desk.
Some document printing, some photo printing, but it doesn’t need to be professional quality.
Since I plan to do photo printing, I’d prefer color. I probably won’t be printing 2-sided, and networking is not needed. A copier would be nice, but not required and I don’t think I’d use fax capability (okay, if I had it, I’d probably come up with some way to use it, but I’ve sent one personal fax in the past…5 years (maybe longer), and I did that from work). I’d probably go with an inkjet, because I prefer not to spend hundreds of dollars (and I haven’t seen color laser printers for less than that).
Oh, and small is good.
I think where he’s going is economical. The new inkjets out are now cheaper to print than laser’s in color. I would start by looking at an HPC7280 which is a scanner/fax/printer with a sheet feeder. It has separate ink tanks, a color viewing screen and will read most camera memory cards.
DO NOT buy one unless it’s on sale. I’ve seen $100 swings in price on these.
What I liked about the model I looked at was the ease of getting to the separate ink tanks and the way the scanner cover hinged for manual scanning of books. It was very well laid out.
Color laser printers have gotten a lot cheaper recently. For example, CDW has a Samsung CLP-300 for $215 (including a $35 rebate that expires at monthend). There are some other color laser printers that cost about $300. Or you can just get a B&W laser printer and print your photos at one of those photo kiosks at Wal-Mart or Walgreens.
I’m not certain whether this is still true, but inkjet ink used to be water-soluble. Laser-printer toner is baked onto the paper and isn’t soluble. Makes a difference if you are printing line art that you intend to water-colour.
Printers are pretty damn cheap. It’s to the point where the cost of cartridges is approaching the cost of the printer itself. I’m of the theory that you should have two. I’ve got a photo quality Epson color inkjet that will print directly on CDs. Also, I’ve got an old workhorse black and white HP LaserJet for cheap printouts, as the color printouts are pretty spendy.
Yes and no. My Epson was demo’d with prints in a jar of water. More importantly the ink is archival quality. It will greatly outlast color photography in sunlight. The new HP’s are a lot more stable and the price of ink makes them a better buy than laser jets. And you don’t come close to photo quality with a laserjet. The real cost of laserjets are in the toner. They could give them away and still make money.
But I will advise that the speeds adverstised with the color injets are bull. if They say 35 pages per minutes in color they’re more likely 10-12 pages per minute. That’s still really fast. Also, the HP’s have replaceable heads so that is an added cost down the road. Couldn’t find any data on the life of the heads.
That would be me too. The new technology blurs the need for what we have. $200 buys a hell of an inkjet now. Fast as a laser and cheaper to print in color plus photo quality prints plus a scanner plus a page feeder plus card readers. I was really amazed. Almost bought one to replace my laserjet. Decided I like a laser because of the font quality. For some reason it just doesn’t translate with inkjets even though the resolution is better. Maybe it slows the printer down too much for non-photo quality printing.
You are correct sir. If I could ever talk my mother in to taking her photos to Walgreens from a disk, she could save money. Christ, her printer needs five different ink cartridges, and they are pricey.
My old HP990 works well and will print photo quality prints. My mother takes the advice of 17 year old kids from Best Buy over my opinion. Oh well.
Thanks for the tips. I’ll be printer shopping sometime next week. I’ll take a look at the HPC7280, the Epsons, and maybe some cheap B&W lasers. And maybe some of the color lasers.
I have an old Samsung laser that has outlasted three ink jets. I print rarely, only a page or two every few days and sometimes don’t print things for weeks. Any ink jet has to be used oftener than that to continue working right. I’m only concerned with text and monochrome graphics. If I need color prints, I can get better quality at any number of places for much cheaper than the cost of having an inkjet around. When I replace this printer, you bet it will be with another cheap laser. There’s a Brother I was looking at that had a network and Wi-Fi interface at Microcenter for $129. The USB only one was $89. Those are ink jet purchase costs with dramatically lower per page costs.
Have you got specific models that you recommend?
I know there’s been a fair bit of antipathy towards inkjet printers here on the boards before… well, here’s some more fuel for the fire - I recently took apart an inkjet printer and shot video of the phenomenal amount of wasted ink inside the thing.
Take a look:
http://www.atomicshrimp.com/inkjetsecret/
There needs to be a little clay guy in that video, Mangetout. 
I’ve only owned HP Laserjet laser printers. I’ve got an older duplexing networked one that still runs like a champ. I’ve got a very cheap HP printer at my condo which seems very reliable. It is very similar to this HP 1018. I don’t have a lot of miles on it, as I don’t get out there very often. I’ve also bought this printer for a couple of other people and they have no complaints. Note the 5 star rating at Newegg, where the reviews tend to be very accurate and fair.
Upon preview, I notice that you want a color printer. I’ll leave the above commentary in for posterity.
As far as inkjets go, I’ve currently got an Epson R280. I like it fine, except it takes something like 6 cartridges. It is not very old, so I can’t say anything about its reliability. As I said earlier, the reason I bought it is because it can print directly on CD’s, which is a pretty damn cool feature. My sister has a similar model and I was unable to get one of the colors to work even after changing the cartridge. This does not bode well for the future.
My previous color printer was a Canon. It crapped out after the second set of cartridges after very limited use. So for this sample of one, I’d say don’t buy a Canon. BTW, this is from a guy who has owned about 7 Canon cameras.
Also, I’d spend sometime perusing the aforementioned Newegg site. Check the reviews. The prices and delivery time usually can’t be beat.
Funny you should mention that - I have something in development you’ll just love.
RUN AWAY from Lexmark.
My previous computer, pre-HP Compaq “package deal”, had a Compaq-labeled Lexmark in-cluded that was of even worse quality than the crappy monitor in the package.
This thing jammed frequently, would stop printing due to “paper out” if less than 25-30 sheets of paper were in the feed tray, would feed 4 sheets of paper through at a time, and had a super-expensive cartridge that got very little “ink mileage”. “Black” was made of the combination of the 3 colors of ink in the cartridge and changed to sickly green in about 50 pages.
My present HP inkjet printer/copier/scanner is going on 3 years old, has separate color and black cartridges, and I’ve never replaced color and only once replaced black at a cost of $15 as opposed to $37.95 for a Lexmark cartridge. I can copy or print right down to the last piece of paper in the tray and it has yet to jam.
I could have had a printer-only Lexmark for $39, bought at least 2 replacement cartridges by now@ $37.95 a pop, and still had to have gone to the Library with a pocketful of nickels every time I needed copies.
Oh, I would never even consider a Lexmark. My sister’s previous printer was a Lexmark that, AFAIK, never (literally never) worked.
Yay!