Comprinter Pu-touts? Just wondered who has got a colour printer and whether they are happy with it, taking into account reasonable running costs and quality of output? I am looking at this make/model as the toner is the same size as the paper so the print heads don't move: Can anyone recommend a good colour printer? I am looking because the kids need more things printed out as they are getting older.
I can highly recommend any of Brother's MFC range - I have the MFC-J5320DW (Business Smart Series) and it is excellent. In addition to USB it is connectible via WiFi or hard-wired to your router. It's quite cheap to run and very reliable. I've had mine for over a year now - plus I had one for over 3 years in Davao - and never a moment's problem, not even a single paper jam. It can print on both sides of the paper which is handy . By far better than anything made by Hewlett-Packard nowadays.
I almost never use my colour printers Mike, I have a couple of them both Canon I did use them for making prints. I would not use an inkjet for high volume printing, for the kind of thing your kids might want to print for school and so on you would probably be best with a colour laser as the quality is fine for most requirements. Photo printing is another matter altogether and should use a dedicated photographic colour inkjet printer. I have always felt that multi function printers never service any feature really well and I certainly would not be wanting to pay 300 odd pounds for a multi function printer, when a cheap colour laser could do the job.
Any recommendation for the cheap colour laser, Jim? I have a cheap Epson photo printer but it has not been used for a few years so I am guessing the ink will be clogged up by now!
I bought a Xerox workcentre 7425 colour printer photocopier with 90,000 pages in the clock for fifty quid on ebay. Duplex printing. 25ppm. Postscript support. Network scan. 40k pages month duty cycle and 2000 page paper capacity. Prints a3 and card as well. If you've got the space that's the way to go. Cheap lasers and injets are rubbish.
I can't give a personal recommendation mate I don't have a colour laser printer but search Amazon using 'color laser printer' (American spelling) and the majority seem to be Brother or Samsung, some of them are very cheap. I use the reviews to choose on stuff like this, Amazon reviews are quite good if you can figure out the mind-set of the reviewer you have to look for people whose reviews look like they have asked themselves the same questions you are asking yourself. From technology viewpoint they will all be good, yes personally I am still an HP fan but as Markham implies they are not the company they used to be, print quality on a colour laser is not photo quality it is far from it but for most use cases it is very good.
Cheap Inkjets can still be good because most are produced at a loss the profit is in the ink But yeah I like buying older quality stuff from eBay where possible!
Only trouble is the size and weight. You know how heavy these multifunction photocopiers are. Weighs about 160kg but with a sack truck it was fine. Been printing happily for a year with no drama.
Yes. Friend of mine at HP said much of the company profit came from printer ink not workstations or anything else. My old injets used to cost eighty pounds for new ink cartridges. Don't think so. Suggest you look at used Xerox business printers @aposhark they do come in different sizes.
I can't remember the name of it but the first Xerox laser that I came across was back in about 2003 and for what it was it produced excellent results, cost my customer about £1500 at the time I think, they kept it for many years it used solid ink cartridges, which were reasonably priced, they currently use an HP multifunction thing and I hate it horrible user interface.
For photography it is either Epson or Canon large format and multiple inks, there is nothing better in my view.
Another time I had a used kyocera laser printer. That worked for me for ten years. Ricoh also made some good printers.
For small scale photographic prints I would use dye sublimation printers they are small and fast and incredibly high quality for images up to 8"x10" the professional photographers essential stalwart. Not cheap though even second hand A very good point is that they are fixed cost per print as the consumables are the same size for every print.
I didn't get the impression that the poster was looking for a printer to specialise in photography but agree with your comments. I believe that for general family use when your printing needs increase and you don't need super high quality photo output then a business color or black and white laser is the way to go. You can always get a photographic printer for the dedicated photo runs. Inkjet running costs are just too high per sheet for more than occasional use.
For a few years I have been using Epson with no problem whatsoever. recently I had to reset the WI-FI because the Remote Print function had stopped, and I was pleasantly surprised to receive such informed and prompt help that is not read from a crip sheet. My WF-2530 fax, scan, print, copy is just great. I buy cheap ink from amazon for 6 quid for 8 cartridges, and even if the printer makes a song and dance about it, I click ignore and all is honkydory.
My printer cost €120 and the last set of four (CMYK) extended life cartridges cost me €47. I have printed some photos which looked great on the special "photographic" paper but less so on standard copier paper. Scan functions are not as extensive as on my old Brother back in Davao which could automatically scan both sides of each sheet of a stack of originals -- that would have been very handy for copying all the documentation we had to prepare for our sons' Passports.
Im nearly done with our epson printer. We were forced to buy a new printer back in feb this year when the old printer developed a problem the night before our priority appointment for the flr (m). Had to rush in a 24-hr asda to get one. Then that same printer told us the 'ink is running low' after we printed the 81 pages of appendix! Since then we have gone through 2 black ink cartridge which is not cheap and we havent been through 500 pages. Im sorely tempted to buy a different brand just to save money on the ink. I used to like to dot-matrix black and white printers. I dont know where i can find one. Those were cheap and lasts forever. Plus i dont print fancy multi color stuff anyway so i dont find any use for that fancy stuff.
