"Cheap" printer

[Otter Spotter]

Not at all my user experience.

(I've 'heard' that Covid vaccinations inject microchips ).

Are those full colour microchips or just black and white ?

 

[RYHALLRED]

Bubble jets are expensive so I bought a Brother LED (its not been a laser for decades) printer years ago & I still have the original toner after 1000s of prints. They are also cheap these days, here is a link to give you an idea. Broken Link Removed

One other thing about bubble jets, they need special paper to print well. Lasers/LED printers will print to most standard paper, including coloured paper.

 

[Gordo]

I use an Epson workforce 4820 and love it - large cartridges which average about 3p a print. It‘s fast and has a multi document autofeed scanner which is great for legal docs etc. Have had it 2 years and it just works and is always ‘on’ on our home network even though its in an outbuilding. I got my other half a more expensive Canon tank Pixma Megatank as she wanted it to also print photos whereas I’m only documents. It’s awful. In theory it should be cheaper per print and wifi but every couple of months it needs sorting out which seems to use a LOT of ink and no matter what I do to it we can’t convince it to stay reliably on the network. I‘ve been so impressed with the Epson that I’ve bought one for my mother and am about to get my daughter one.

 

[Gromett]

If you are not looking for colour or to do photos then a laser printer is better economically and speed wise.

 

[makems]

I got a Brother 5625 all in one about 4 yrs ago on the basis that the cartridges were relatively cheap. It works faultlessly with cheap aftermarket no name cartridges unlike Canon and Epsom printers I have had. It’s also possible to buy jumbo cartridges which last much longer. I do buy black ones but don’t bother with colours as most of the stuff I need to print is plain black.

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[MichaelT]

We use HP Instant Ink on a £2.99, 50 pages per month plan - works for us!

Same here, unused pages are kept so if you do say 30 pages in a month the other 20 are rolled over.

 

[Puddleduck]

My sister says she has to have colour so it will be an inkjet I think ........ the Canon cartridges are just so expensive and no ink plan so I have decided against Canon.

It's just a cheap printer needed for occasional use - the odd letter or so, taking copies/scan of documents etc. Mum may want to have some photos printed once she realises we have the printer

This one is only £40 and has instant ink, flatbed scanner and wifi / Airprint so is a contender! Although I had issues setting up my old HP printer. I just have to hope they have improved now.

Broken Link Removed

 

[Puddleduck]

If you are not looking for colour or to do photos then a laser printer is better economically and speed wise.

Agreed and that is what I have a home but sister wants colour. Also the laser is on the larger size.

 

[Oldrat]

Our Canon Pixma is over ten years old and has been faultless on cheap non-Canon ink

 

[Puddleduck]

Or maybe this one

Buy Canon PIXMA TS3550i Wireless Colour 3-in-One Inkjet Photo Printer, Black

Shop online for Canon PIXMA TS3550i Wireless Colour 3-in-One Inkjet Photo Printer, Black at Canon UK Store. Just one of the many great deals in Wireless Printers. Free shipping on all orders over £30!

store.canon.co.uk

errrrr no. £28 for a 2 pack of replacement non-brand cartridges.

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[Gromett]

Agreed and that is what I have a home but sister wants colour.

Ah fair enough. Although you can get colour lasers. I don't see the point unless you are doing huge quantities of printing.
If it was black and white only laser is far better, cheaper and faster.

Also the laser is on the larger size.

You can get lasers as small as inkjets these days.

 

[cliffanger]

We use HP Instant Ink on a £2.99, 50 pages per month plan - works for us!

We use this as well. There is a rollover of the pages you don’t use, and for me, not having to physically go out and buy the cartridges is brilliant.

I had a cartridge delivery last week, and I didn’t even know I was running low!

 

[Puddleduck]

I had the instant ink for my previous printer - so good I want a similar service for the "Mum's House" printer.

It will mean that as my sister and I are sharing we won't get to the point where one of us uses the spare cartridge and doesn't go out and replace it. I'll get the cartridges sent here as Mum won't know what they are and will just bin them.

 

[cliffanger]

I had the instant ink for my previous printer - so good I want a similar service for the "Mum's House" printer.

It will mean that as my sister and I are sharing we won't get to the point where one of us uses the spare cartridge and doesn't go out and replace it. I'll get the cartridges sent here as Mum won't know what they are and will just bin them.

A friend of mine has just had her expensive Canon printer go kaput. She’s gone onto HP, bought a printer for £40 and has signed up to Instant Ink - she’s very happy!

 

[dna]

My experience is with 3 printers I use for personal things, I used to be secretary of a charity so was producing a lot of paperwork for that and now we have a fair amount of paperwork for our guesthouse.

We have an all-in-one epson inkjet machine - prints great photos and also prints onto CDs which is useful for back ups of business documents. The nozzles in this can get blocked between uses and I use non OEM ink cartridges.

Second is an HP 1320 black and white laser printer. I've had that since around 2004 . It has printed 44,000 pages so far and also runs with non OEM toner.

Lastly I've got a Dell C1660W colour laser from 2013. That has produced 8,500 pages to date again with non OEM toner. Colour printing is good except that photos cannot match the inkjet resolution / quality.

Both lasers have been pretty much fault free. I have avoided any Bios updates that mention blocking the use of non OEM supplies. Some brands did try to do this but my machines just give a warning that "wrong" brand toner / ink has been installed

Before buying I also did some research on the availability of 3rd party toner / ink to make sure supplies would not be a problem.

Although I bought new machines, we did buy a second hand mono HP Laser printer when my son went to University. We got it at a computer fair and saw it print a test sheet before purchase. That lasted over 10 years and only got replaced when he switched to colour printing. Depending on how much use you expect, maybe a second hand machine would do?

I hope this helps!

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[robnchris]

We got fed up with the cartridge type printers, have had HP printers which despite be excellent quality the cartridges are bloody expensive so have just bought an Epson ECO et 2850,. we must have printed over 200 sheets and the sight glass hasn't registered much of a drop at all, very impressed and very cheap to run.

 

[Puddleduck]

If it was for home use I would go for a laser (as I actually did!) or a refillable but for occasional use the instant ink system is probably more value for us.

The price difference (about £150 or perhaps a bit more) is at least 30 months of printing - by which time we may no longer need the printer.

 

[RYHALLRED]

Strange how no one mentions the paper! Paper can be critical for a bubble Jet, where as it matters little to a LED (laser) printer.

 

[Guigsy]

Strange how no one mentions the paper! Paper can be critical for a bubble Jet, where as it matters little to a LED (laser) printer.

That's not really true. Bubble jet is just a method of squirting ink. Like all ink jets, some paper is better than others, purely for print quality. It just goes more blotchy if the paper is cheap and fiberous.

If anything, lasers (and LED) need good quality paper as dust causes the drum to deteriorate quicker. And jams that leave toner on the drum for the next cycle also aren't good. So consistent paper is more critical.

 

[RYHALLRED]

That's not really true. Bubble jet is just a method of squirting ink. Like all ink jets, some paper is better than others, purely for print quality. It just goes more blotchy if the paper is cheap and fiberous.

If anything, lasers (and LED) need good quality paper as dust causes the drum to deteriorate quicker. And jams that leave toner on the drum for the next cycle also aren't good. So consistent paper is more critical.

Its good you disagree in your experience. But in my experience, bubble jets are a lot more fussy over paper type than any laser/led printer I have ever used. It certainly would be interesting to see if others have different experiences.

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[L' Hobo]

I bought a HP All-in-one printer for £25 four years ago with the Instant Ink subscription service. I only do occasional printing and some scanning. I get 15 pages a month for free. On the very rare occasions I have gone over this, I get charged £1 per additional 10 pages. Price is the same whether colour or B&W. One cartridge went faulty / became depleted and HP sent out a free replacement.

The HP app is pretty decent - particularly for batch scanning and conversion to PDF. All performed from a smart phone with no need for an actual PC to be switched on.

HP quickly withdrew the "15 pages for free", plan, (but after backlash had to continue it for existing users), but the other plans detailed above seem reasonable value.

I also bought a HP3630 scanner/printer a 4 years ago with a ink plan. I used to be on the 50pages a month but reverted to the 15 which now costs me £0.99 per month.

They were so cheap (£35, I think) that I bought 2 (one as a spare) and it's still in the box.

 

[Puddleduck]

I had a cheap printer I bought some years ago (the cheapest I could get from PC World to take away that day) to print off forms when Dad had just started his dementia decline. It was used in the van as it was so small. An HP and a real pain to set up but was a great little printer once it decided to talk to the router and my laptop and my phone. After several thousand pages it gave up ....... I'd have a similar tiny printer except my sister wants a flat plate scanner for books and so on, the tiny printer had a roll through scanner/copier. I had the instant ink set up and as it is possible to change plan I could estimate what I would need and do that month by month. I never ran out of ink (important here as we are so far from anywhere so have to order things in - either at local shops or by mail order).

Anyway having taken everything said above with our own needs and circumstances taken into account I am going for either an HP or Epson on a print plan. Yes, a laser would be lovely but a colour laser is not really within budget and hammer to a nut for our requirements. I also looked at an A3 printer for home (taking the laser to Mum's) as that would be great for bigger charts and pictures but for the small volume I need a commercial print service still makes much more sense.

So a printer at sub £100 (possibly cheaper than that) and a maximum £5 a month ink plan and we are sorted. I buy paper in 5 ream boxes (Indigo Silver now but I used to use Discovery until the price went up so much, both work very well). It means both my sister and I will be able to work from Mum's much more easily. I am a dinosaur and find I do need hard copy for proof reading so I can use lovely colour highlighters to mark up errors - and it also shows that it really is all my own work

 

[RYHALLRED]

I had a cheap printer I bought some years ago (the cheapest I could get from PC World to take away that day) to print off forms when Dad had just started his dementia decline. It was used in the van as it was so small. An HP and a real pain to set up but was a great little printer once it decided to talk to the router and my laptop and my phone. After several thousand pages it gave up ....... I'd have a similar tiny printer except my sister wants a flat plate scanner for books and so on, the tiny printer had a roll through scanner/copier. I had the instant ink set up and as it is possible to change plan I could estimate what I would need and do that month by month. I never ran out of ink (important here as we are so far from anywhere so have to order things in - either at local shops or by mail order).

Anyway having taken everything said above with our own needs and circumstances taken into account I am going for either an HP or Epson on a print plan. Yes, a laser would be lovely but a colour laser is not really within budget and hammer to a nut for our requirements. I also looked at an A3 printer for home (taking the laser to Mum's) as that would be great for bigger charts and pictures but for the small volume I need a commercial print service still makes much more sense.

So a printer at sub £100 (possibly cheaper than that) and a maximum £5 a month ink plan and we are sorted. I buy paper in 5 ream boxes (Indigo Silver now but I used to use Discovery until the price went up so much, both work very well). It means both my sister and I will be able to work from Mum's much more easily. I am a dinosaur and find I do need hard copy for proof reading so I can use lovely colour highlighters to mark up errors - and it also shows that it really is all my own work

I must be a dinosaur also, as I just find print easier to read, although I don't print much as I read lots and lots of stuff online and would be turning too many trees into paper

 

[rosalan]

If like me, you are not printing every day or in large quantities, the ink becomes ever more expensive. It slowly dries out and for very few copies, it is wasting ink by more frequent flushing out.
Please note.... You cannot win! All latest printers are similar in functions, reliability and price. They can all fail, clog and use excessive ink. Well that's my opinion.

 

[Puddleduck]

If like me, you are not printing every day or in large quantities, the ink becomes ever more expensive. It slowly dries out and for very few copies, it is wasting ink by more frequent flushing out.
Please note.... You cannot win! All latest printers are similar in functions, reliability and price. They can all fail, clog and use excessive ink. Well that's my opinion.

That's why the instant ink type deal makes sense to us!!

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[The Wino]

We just bought an hp one at Currys and the first 9 months on instant ink are free. We sold off our old spare cartridges which covered the cost of the printer!

 

[Puddleduck]

I have one on order at Argos also with 9 months ink. I hope it is easier to set up than the last HP we had.

 

[Jev88]

Canon for us. Four colour cartridges but £6 a set on eBay!

 

[Kelsae2]

HP setup is now a lot easier . Hope it works out for you.

 

[The Wino]

HP setup is now a lot easier . Hope it works out for you.

Installed ours a couple of weeks ago seems fine.

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