Cheap home printer that is not utter pants?

martimu

Any inexpensive home printer recommendations?

We print very little - just kids homework TBH.

I have an Epson with inks that cost a small mortgage, can take 30 mins of surgery before it decides to print, drops off the wifi (goes on holiday I think) and generally is about as good at printing as a frying pan driving a car.

I would get a basic b&w laser but they need to print colour sometimes. Any other brand worth giving a go or are they all pretty much as bad as each other for the cheap ones?

Thanks

Martin

Jamie

I've recently had enough with crappy inkjet printers that are always unreliable, especially if not used for a while.

I went for a brother colour multifunction job.that cost me around £160 and it's been a revelation TBH.

While it's not photo quality like an inkjet would be it's actually pretty good, certainly good enough to print photos for the kids homework books when necessary.

martimu

Thanks will have a look. Someone in the office said they've had Cannon and Brother that were much more reliable.

martimu

Thanks Jamie,

Hadn't realised laser was available from that sort of price. Will wait till black Friday and see what comes up!

Jamie

This is the one I almost bought

Brother HL-3140CW Colour Laser Printer | Wireless & PC Connected | Print | A4 https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00BJOA3HQ/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_95j2Bb2FJ1RHM

The only reason I ended up spending more was because we'd gotten used to having a scanner and I didn't want to get a separate one.

Compatible toner sets (there's 4 of them for CMYK) are about £35 or so. I bought a set ready to replace the included toner cartridges it came with but they haven't run out yet and we bought it in April.

The only slightly negative I'd say is it's chuffing massive, pretty much office printer size so a fairly large footprint. Having said that my old inkjet while much smaller still needed a large space for the fold out output tray for your prints to go in. The larger printer has the output tray on top so it doesn't need any extra space.

martimu

Yes I guess it's the compromise on size to contend with. TBH it's a choice of something bigger that works compared to a piece of plastic taking up space and not doing anything. Also with compatible toners at that sort of price then its decsion made really

Thanks again

Martin

dib

Hi
Try printerland. I bought a lexmark cs417dn colour laser from them for £90 with £40 cashback and a free Bluetooth speaker. Comes with 750 pages of colour & 1400 black toner. I was sick of buying ink every time I needed to print something.
ebuyer may be worth a look too.
Dave

martimu

Thanks Dave - think we use printerland for work so will check out what they have

GadgetObsessed

I bought this for a net cost of £51. (£151 less £100 cashback from HP.) Also at the moment you get a 3yr guarantee from HP when you register it.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01E3UAO1M/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

One issue with inkjet printers is that they regularly clean the nozzles to ensure that they don't dry out and clog up. This process uses ink each day. So, if you have an ink cartidge that has a capacity of 1,000 pages but you only print 1 page per day then you will probably run out well before the end of a single year. (Simply because the printer used the ink in all the cleaning cycles.)

This is one of the reasons that I use HPs Instant Ink. You can print 50 pages per month for £1.99 per month, 100 pages for £3.49 or 300 for £7.99. So if you average around 2 pages per day then your cost is capped at £24 per year and the cartridges are posted to you.

I used to have to buy at least two complete sets of cartridges per year at a cost of about £90 per time for HP original cartridges - so at least £180 per year. Now I pay HP £8 per month (£96) per year and always have spare cartridges available.

martimu

Thanks. Make sense! Though I'm not sure our printer did cleaning cycles unless forced to.

I ordered a brother laser printer in the end. We are working from home more than we used too as well so it makes sense. We print so little personally I can probably get ink covered by work too!