Things have come a long ways from the old days when a technician was scheduled to service the copy machine that cost half as much as a new car every month, or in some cases every week...
Posted on 03/16/2019 10:58:47 PM PDT by fireman15
We spent more than 150 hours on in-depth testing to identify the top inkjet and laser printers you can buy. And our favorite overall printer is the Canon Pixma TS9120, which offers best-in-class print speeds and high-quality output for both text and graphics. For a printer that won't break the bank, Epson's WorkForce WF-2760 inkjet packs in features like an automatic document feeder and duplexing, while also turning in fast print and copy times.
What All-in-One Printers Cost All-in-one printers sell for as little as $60 (£45/AU$90) for inkjet models, and $150 (£170/AU$200) for laser printers, with high-end models ranging up to the hundreds of dollars, but offering better print quality, durability and features. And don’t forget ink and toner, which can range from 1 to 5 cents per page.
(Excerpt) Read more at tomsguide.com ...
Print beautifully and 20 Pages a minute color or black
I have one of those and it is good - but you don't dare use off-brand toner cartridges - you'll get streaks and splotches. And genuine Samsung cartridges run about $360 for a set of four - you'll need them every 6-9 months based on usage. Color laser is still very expensive, even though the printer prices themselves have come way down.
I was happiest with a Canon MP980 inkjet a few years ago, but mine died and the newer ones seem to have taken a nosedive in quality. I have an HP M15w laser and ENVY 7800 inkjet right now and I'm not very happy with either of them.
I had an HP inkjet printer once. I bought it at the tail end of a school year. It sat all summer then when the kids used it in the fall, the ink had leaked and gummed up everything. I switched to Brother laser printers and never looked back.
Your observation is basically accurate, but it depends a great deal on the laser printer that you have chosen. I pined for a color laser when they first came out. Then we got them at work. From my experience there... some of them can be much more trouble and far more expensive to operate than an inkjet.
We went through a lot of toner cartridges at $110 a piece and some of them had problems almost immediately. They may not dry out but they cake up and clog and one of the things you could do to sometimes get them working again was to take them out and shake them. But if you didn't do it right messy toner would sometimes get all over the place. It got worse when the department started buying remanufactured toner cartridges, but the OEM cartridges were not that much better. And these were large commercial printers that cost a lot to start with. We had technicians coming into service them fairly frequently. To be fair they did get a lot of use and abuse at some stations.
Up until our last ink jet all-in-one quit working after several years we churned out a lot of material for very little expense and not a lot of trouble. But I did switch from a cheap continuous ink flow system to plain Jane refillable cartridges when we stopped going through as much ink.
Most inexpensive printers whether laser or inkjets are designed by the manufacturers to sell cartridges, and then they are designed to quit after a certain amount of printing has been done using the waste ink counter. The business model of most of the manufacturers is a bit seedy and causes a lot of frustration, even though the initial cost of the printer is often less than what it actually cost to make them and get them through the supply chain to the consumer.
I think that the new inkjets with ink tanks instead of cartridges are a more honest business model, but even they have the waste ink counter. When you install a continuous ink flow system on a printer, you typically reroute the waste ink flow tube to an external container. It is incredible to see the amount of ink that is wasted in the automatic head cleaning process... This type of waste does not happen as much with laser printers, so that is a plus.
The printer that just quit on us was an Epson Workforce 610 which I just looked up and we purchased in 2011. Our Workforce 600 was used with a continuous ink flow system and got a lot more abuse and lasted only 2 years before I had some issues related to a bad batch of ink that I ran through it. The new printer is an Epson Workforce 2750.
All of these Epson Workforce printers have a lot of bad reviews from people who have had difficulties with them, which is one of the reasons I thought it would be interesting to have a discussion on printers here. And I think that it has been a good discussion in this thread. Your mileage can vary widely. We have been heavy users at times because of work that my wife does.
I have a cheap Brother mono laser that’s over 10 years old. It’s still working well and still using the demo cartridge. I did have to shake it and cover a hole or something to get the cartridge going again.
My Dad has an HP color laser that’s now about 5 years old. I think it was a bit over $300 when we bought it. It doesn’t get used much and the third party toner cartridges work well on it.
I think he must have spent over $1000 on ink back when he had an Epson inkjet. It always seemed to need new ink when we wanted to use it.
Thanks for the info - looks like the Epson Workforce is a bit too pricy for me. Since I only need to copy/print maybe 2-10 pages once every month or so, I guess the cheapos work for my needs.
“So I bought a monochrome laser printer. Less than a hundred bucks”
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There yuh go - might be a good way for me to go in the future since I’ve never really needed to print in color.
back up for later
I had 2 ink jets — home use. One quit after the first cartridge stopped. I didn’t print much, so the jets clogged. It would not work after I installed an OEM replacement cartridge. The 2nd one — the feeder jammed at about 20 pages, just after the warranty expired.
I next went with a small Minolta b/w laser. Great little machine — until I was forced out of WinXP into Win7 — no drivers for Win7-64 bit.
About 12 years ago, I bought a Xerox Phaser 6125 color laser. It cost $150 with free shipping on a Cyber Monday. I still use it. Last summer I finally had to replace the black cartridge. I used a cheap print-for-less replacement. I was apprehensive, but it works flawlessly and has great print.
Occasionally, I check color laser prices. I would like a one with auto-duplex. I occasionally see one on sale for around $150, but I can’t really justify the cost, since the Xerox is still working great.
I have an old HP 3015 Laser AIO that is only B&W. We have a newer HP AIO that is a color laser, and its been a problem from time to time. The old 3015 no longer does any AIO functions except printing and copying. That’s the other bitch I have with all peripherals, they do, over time, stop getting S/W support so you loose functionality. When the HP no longer worked as a scanner, I bought a Canon Flat bed scanner. Now, Canon no longer supports it into the Mac 64 bit migration, so I had to buy a S/W package from a third-party provider to keep the relatively new scanner in business. As far as the mfrs. pulling this firmware nonsense that keeps your printer from running with consumables from non-OEM suppliers, should be the subject of a restraint of trade lawsuit.
Epsons typically are not very suitable for people who use them infrequently. This is because they waste a lot of ink in the automatic head cleaning process if you have left them sitting.
But the price that I just got this one for was amazing especially considering its capabilities. It is smaller but has better and more capabilities than the printer it is replacing. The WF-2750 that I just bought at Walmart was $59. It was the cheapest All-in-One printer in stock at the store that I went to.
I bought a two year extended warranty for $5. Cheap inkjets are one of the few items that extended warranties are a good idea on. I also bought 4 extra black cartridges and 6 extra color cartridges for it for $30 on Amazon. All told it came to $95 before sales tax.
The Walmart I went to had only a couple of other printers in stock that were slightly less expensive. The generic cartridges on Amazon for both of them were much more expensive.
Thanks, I bookmarked it to check out when I get POed and smash my current printer!
I always pass on extended warranties for most such gizmos.
With printers... I am a firm believer that if you have got one that works well for you... you should stick with it until it is good and dead. But I hate to tell you that 12 years is getting pretty long in the tooth for a printer. I don't want to jinx you but depending on your operating system and how much you use the printer, you are probably be going to be looking for a new one not that far down the road. And the new one is likely not going to fit like an old pair of slippers at first.
Another issue that I was having with our 8 year old printer that just died is that the drivers hadn't been updated several years so it was getting a little unpredictable when using it wirelessly on Windows 10. If I wanted to use the scanner I had to fire up my old Windows 7 laptop. Not to mention that it was needing frequent restarts to clear printer errors. I am convinced it was getting tired before it refused to work at all.
Basically what that means is that it is cheaper for us to replace a printer than to send somebody out to fix it. So unless we can get it running over the phone with the end user, we ship the new printers out to them with a return label. The older printers come back and we either fix them in-house and put them on the shelf (to send to somebody else)) or we trash them.
The only thing that I buy extended warranties for are expensive cameras and cheap printers. This is because they are very complicated electro-mechanical devices that have a lot of small things that can go wrong with them that can't be fixed at home.
One time I knocked over an expensive DSLR that fortunately was still under the 4 year drop and spill extended warranty that I purchased. The thing was still a great camera, but it would have been history.
As for printers... we are downsizing to move so I have a whole pile of old printers that I have to take to the recyclers, many of which I got very little service from before something went wrong. I would have got money back on enough of these that I would have been money ahead. The $5 extended warranty I got on this one will just return my money if something goes wrong in the next 2 years. Judging from past experience, I would guess that there is close to a 25% chance that this printer will quit working before my 2 years is up.
“The only thing that I buy extended warranties for are expensive cameras and cheap printers.”
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I’d go along on the expensive cameras, but not the cheapo peripherals. If it doesn’t work out of the box, it’s usually easy to get a refund. But if we’re talkin’ about a $40 printer that’s turned to kee-rap after a year, it’s less trouble (for me) to junk it and get a new one.
Most the time the warranties and service agreements are just big money for the sellers.
Things have come a long ways from the old days when a technician was scheduled to service the copy machine that cost half as much as a new car every month, or in some cases every week...
I agree completely, except that in my experience a lot of printers give up the ghost after the return period is over, but before 2 years is up, especially one with a lot of bad user reviews because of failures. And almost none of these inexpensive printers will be serviced, you just get your money back. It's just a gamble, $5 to protect $60.
The other nice thing about a laser printer is they’re really fast and the print doesn’t smudge. If you can live without color, a laser printer has lots of advantages. My thinking is I’ll just go to Kinkos if I need color prints. So far in three years that has happened only once. The rest of the time having this fast, tiny, inexpensive monochrome laser has been perfect.
You’re right. It uses toner, not ink.
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