Need a printer

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pjbetman
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Joined in 2017

PostRe: Need a printer
by pjbetman » Thu Mar 14, 2019 4:00 pm

Green Gecko wrote:Colour generally starts around £110+, multifunction around £200.

I dropped £185 on an Epson WorkFroce 4630 and while I've burnt out several of the printnhead nozzles so I only get a perfect print on high quality settings it's lasted about 5 and a half years and still just churns out postage etc. With the XL cartridges the cost per print is actually slightly lower than a laser printer. Including inks I've probably spent almost twice that much on my businesses (although I've bled cartridges once or twice to unblock them).

You shouldn't have that sort of problem with a laser, but as I do art I needed the reproductive quality of an inkjet printer. Ideally I would have both.

Last I was looking into it I was considering Xerox actually.

Business class printers have more memory and are just more responsive, starting up quickly and not taking an age to spool a job. You may want to look at an HP LaserJet Pro if you want colour laser and multifunction stuff.. but honestly you might be better off with just a colour laser printer and a cheap MFC inkjet printer for scanning and stuff or the odd photocopy - they don't generally need to be brilliant quality reproduction. A full office style colour laser printer is about £300.

Samsung do some colour multifunction printers too, as they're new to the market they are good prices. Brother, HP, Xerox etc all do those as well.

Here's a no-frills colour Samsung laser: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B010NE2HGW/ ... B010NE2HKI

Here's an MFC version: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B010NE2HKI/ ... B010NE2HGW

But please bear in mind with a colour laser printer you have to replace all four toners (black, cyan, yellow, magenta), and one toner cartridge can set you back anywhere between £40-£100. The thing is you don't have to replace them anywhere near as often as colour inkjets. So you need to look at the total cost of ownership and how much you print.

Brother are well known for having lower running costs and more easily replaceable components. If I was spending that kind of money on a printer I'd probably go for an HP, Brother or Xerox by just weighing up the running costs and it having the features I want (two sided automatic duplex, auto document feeder (ADF), edge to edge print, envelope printing, Wifi etc etc).

Another nice thing you get with most home office / biz printers is cloud scanning/printing abilities. I nearly always scan documents directly to my dropbox now.

I find this supplier good to compare against other sites like Amazon as sometimes older models or newer revisions etc. look very similar but have wildly different prices. They also offer cashback and extended warranties on a lot of printers: https://www.printerland.co.uk/

(That site will also call you and try to offer you cashback on a different printer. Ignore them because they earn commission on some stuff, last time it was HP over an Epson.)

You want to look at reviews obviously. Printers are generally horrible - you either have an "OK" one or worse luck with them in my experience. They're complicated machines that require a lot of maintenance with nobody doing it. Just look at office printer problems all the time for machines that cost £3000+

Laser printers need less maintenance and don't need to be used constantly to maintain themselves. For the odd print, with the cost of them going down a lot in recent years, I'd certainly recommend a mono laser for most people over an inkjet if they occasionally need to print a form or a ticket etc., or for reading.

Over that I would recommend printing nothing at all but that's not possible for some people.


Wow! Thanks dude. I think i'll keep my old HP2540 inkjet for scanning and the odd photocopy (dont hardly use that to be honest), and use a mono laser printer for the bulk of my printing. Cheers. Thanks again.

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OrangeRKN
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Location: Reading, UK
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PostRe: Need a printer
by OrangeRKN » Thu Mar 14, 2019 4:21 pm

Gecko is the hero prospective printer buyers need.

That said the library has worked out fine so far, 10 pence per sheet and the warm feeling of supporting local library services

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Meep
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Joined in 2010
Location: Belfast

PostRe: Need a printer
by Meep » Thu Mar 14, 2019 6:38 pm

Laser printers all the way. Bought one last year and it is one of the best purchases I have made. Still have not needed to replace the toner. They are a bit pricey to buy but it's worth it for not having to deal with inkjets and their constant hunger for ink so expensive it must be made out of unicorn blood.

This Brother one is fairly cheap:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Brother-HL-L23 ... ers&sr=1-5

I don't think scanners are a must have any more as phones have decent enough cameras and software to capture documents if you really need a digital copy.


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