My main printer is a $5,000 Epson wide-body (40”) with 8 separate ink tanks. It’s at my nearest Sam’s Club. Previously, I had purchased an Epson 1270 for around $500 and frequently had the heads clog due to lack of regular use. After the last time I wasted half a tank of ink trying to get it working I researched new printers on the DP Review forum https://www.dpreview.com/forums/1003 where somebody brought up Sam’s. They use Fuji semi-matt pro paper and will re-do a print if some thing goes wrong, although that has only happened once in the last several years. The software wants images in .jpg format at 300 dpi in Adobe sRGB colorspace. I get most all my prints at 16 x 20 to take advantage of a 20 x 24 inch frame and they cost $6.00 and change. Not all Sam’s Clubs do the work in-store, anymore so you’ll have to check around but I highly recommend them.
My everyday printer is a Canon mp490 that I got from Microcenter several years ago for about $30 dollars. Print quality is excellent and it’s built like a tank. In fact, it survived a four foot fall onto concrete and, aside from loosing some plastic exterior body parts still works fine.
I too design and make my own Christmas cards and print on 100 lb. card stock. Last year I was just about out of color ink and had to do somewhat over 50 cards and a run of over 100 full page full color invitations to our group’s Christmas party so I bought a Samsung color laser printer from Microcenter. The output was gorgeous. Nice saturated colors, crisp detail, everything one could ask for, except...
Forget about printing on card stock, even 60 lb. weight. The heat of the unit that fused the toner to the paper desiccated the card stock, resulting in a card that was permanently curved from its trip around the rollers. I had to gently roll each sheet in the opposite direction and there was still some warpage when I stuffed them in the envelopes. I also had to load each paper one at a time or the unit jammed. After needing to buy a toner cartage for $60 and realizing that I would need to spend a total of $300 to replace all of them when the demo carts ran out. I took it back to Microcenter a few weeks after the one month return period ran out, explained my situation and they gave me a full refund for everything.
A few people on this thread have mentioned buying new printers when their ink ran out. Get something that has low ink costs from the start - mist printers ship with demo tanks that have limited capacity and require the user to replace them with new cartridges almost immediately.
I agree with everything you said, and Sam's Club is where we have had our cards printed for the past several years. I typically order a set of non-OEM cartridges at the same time that I buy a printer. I usually install these first so that I won't be mixing inks when the demo tanks run out. I always find out the cost of replacement cartridges before I purchase a printer. I prefer cartridges that are clear and made to be refilled, but lately the firmware in almost all new printers has been updated to not accept refillable and resettable cartridges so I also bow make sure that firmware that will work with these cartridges is available.
The printers with large refillable tanks are very tempting to me, but quite expensive... they get you one way or the other.