What printer should I get?

Haven’t bought a printer since 2007. Time to replace the clunker!

We use Macs at home. It would be nice to have something that works out of the box with Macs, doesn’t use expensive ink, and can scan a bunch of documents quickly would be nice.

Thanks for your advice!

Inkjets are kind of dead IMO. Good color or B&W lasers are both available inexpensively. Color laser toners carts can get pricey if you use it a lot. I use a HP B&W laser and use second party refill carts so my printing is dirt cheap.

Staples often has printers on sale and has (in my experience) some of the best deals out there.

Do they make a laser multifunction?

I’m really happy with my Epson inkjet multi. Ink isn’t too awfully expensive, and the print quality is nice. I can print photos on glossy paper, and they look like real photos.

Scanning is FUN! There are cheap and free OCR apps out there, which can save you a whole mess of re-typing! Also, it’s a big step towards a paperless office.

Yes. We have the predecessor to this HP color laser multifunction as our “downstairs” printer. Gotten a lot of good use out of all its functions (except fax. Because, really? Fax? The 20th Century called. They want their communications medium back.)

For us, photo-quality printing isn’t a thing. If we want photos printed, there’s a Walgreens 4 blocks away or any number of on-line photo print services. The design requirements to build a good photo-quality inkjet utterly compromise effectiveness, reliability, and cost for general-purpose printing. The mere fact it’s an inject is the first step down that particular road to printing hell.

Yeah. The MFP we’re using even has a document feeder, so scanning in a couple dozen pages is a matter of stacking the pages and pushing a button. Also works well as a copier, black-and-white or color.

From one Mac user to another, my Canon MF720C is the perfect printer.

[ul]
[li]It’s a laser printer so no wasted ink on cleaning cycles or worrying about cleaning the heads.[/li][li]Yeah, color cartridges can be expensive, but most prints are B/W.[/li][li]It’s not an awesome, archival-quality photo printer, but those are only 19¢ at Costco the one time per year that I need them.[/li][li]For some reason it has something called “fax” built in. As I have no phone line, I can’t attest to its usefulness.[/li][li]Works flawlessly on my Macs without worrying about drivers and all that miscellanea, including printing, scanning, etc. We don’t need special software for this basic stuff these days.[/li][/ul]

That sounds good.

Amazon has “Canon Lasers color imageCLASS MF726Cdw Wireless color Photo Printer with Scanner, Copier & Fax”

https://smile.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Canon+MF720C

$342 on Prime, maybe less with other sellers ($285 and up). Does that sound roughly like a good price? Thanks!

Well, I got it for $341.54 on Prime, so you’d be paying 46 cents more than I did! :smiley:

I’ve got a Brother DCP-9202CDW - it’s scanner, copier, colour laser printer with duplex and Wifi.

My only gripes are:
[ul]
[li]It’s a tiny bit bulky for my home (but duh - it’s a multifunction laser - there are smaller colour lasers that don’t scan or duplex)[/li][li]The paper tray only holds half a ream[/li][li]The original consumables are a bit pricey (but compatibles seem to work just fine)[/li][/ul]

I would contest that inkjets aren’t dead and a pretty good option if you’re not planning on printing off photos or really hi-res items. For general use they are perfectly accepable and a multifunction like thisHP can be had for less than $200.
FWIW, I have a 4 year old HP at home and it’s given me zero issues.

Brother lasers are very popular for a good reason. And you can often catch a deal.

We’re in the process of buying a laser printer for our small home business, and I’ve been doing Cost Per Page (CPP) comparisons, and inkjet ink doesn’t seem too expensive until you compare how many copies you get, and the cost per refill. I’ve got most laser printers at around 1.25 to 5.25 cents CPP, and the HP Envy 4502 Inkjet that we have at home at 19.25 cents per copy. The critical factor is that we’re getting 165 pages out of an inkjet cartridge and would get 1400 to 4000 pages out of a laser cartridge.

Please note I’m not crapping on your inkjet printer (or mine) - my point is that they aren’t as cheap as we think they are. If you’re printing five pages per month, it probably doesn’t matter. :slight_smile:

They definitely do. We have a b&w laser multifunction that is VERY useful - scans, copies, prints, sends faxes (we haven’t got the “receiving fax” working because the answering machine gets in the way).

We opted to keep our ancient HP inkjet printing for those rare occasions we need to print in color, though if we had to replace our big one now I might go for color laser and get rid of the inkjet - it was not new when we moved to this house 14+ years ago. At the time (4-5 years ago) we didn’t think color laser was worth it.

One downside: Ours, at least, pulls such a surge of power when it’s revving up to print that it drops the current to the computer on the same circuit - causing the computer’s UPS to shriek. I don’t know if newer laser printers are better about this or not.

Inkjet printers are dirt cheap - before the laser printer, we had an HP multifunction inkjet, and it seemed we were buying new ink cartridges every 2 months and in a year or two that adds up to more than the printer costs - it’s like the old razor model: sell the razor for cheap and make it up on the blade refills. We replace the toner on this laser machine every couple years at most and it’s not that much more than a round of inkjet cartridges.

I use an epson ecotank 3600 when i need to do printing
It is an inkjet, but its cheap as heck
it does not use ink cartridges, i just dump bottles of cheap bulk ink into it.

It costs more upfront, but you never have to buy a 20 to 60 dollar printer cartridge for it
and bulk bottled ink you can find online cheap, i havent used up the bottles i have in like 2 1/2 years?

It does not fax, but i dont have analog landline to do so.
But i can scan direct from it to ringcentral fax, because there are still places that insist on a fax instead email, i have no idea why

Because they’re run by an old man who is afraid of these newfangled technologies.