Hi guys just looking help on finding a printer? Im not interested in these stupid all-in-ones! I just want a printer than can print sheets in colour, be good at printing text and have good priced refils. Im sick of buying epson printers that drink the ink and fall apart! Ideally I really dont want to spend much. Thanks Mark
It's hard to buy a good printer on a budget - cheap injkets are cheap rubbish, which is why I went for a colour laser (well, that's essentially what it is). I now have this, which I bought for £95: Brother HL-3040CN I also have a Samsung mono laser (ML-1210) which I use for bulk text printing.
If you want a quality printer that isn't laser, the best thing to do would be to buy an all-in-one. Canon are meant to have the best range of all-in-ones.
Brother DCP J315W We sell loads of these where I work. We do compatible inks for £7.70 a full set, so that meets your cheap refill caveat as well By the way we've never had issues with Brother compatibles unlike Epson lol
We have trouble with people who buy compatibles for P50s. Not because they're troublemakers, but because epsons seem to like compatible cartridges less and often chuck them out being "incompatible". Plus I don't think the OP wants an epson given what he said. On a side note, standard epson inks have 7.5ml in the black. Brothers have 30ml in the black
Epson make some very nice printers... they just don't excel when it comes to the budget end of the market. Our Epson D120 broke soon after we bought it, and it is now redundant.
I noticed there's currently no love here for Hewlett Packard. I know the ink is a bloody robbery and refills are crap, but my Deskjet 5940 has lasted since Christmas 2005 with only a weak paper roller to show its age. I'd definitely buy HP again if my priority was long-term reliability and good prints over cost.
iv been useing my epson p50 for allmost 2 years without even a paper jam or serivce i had an epson r285 before my current one and that lasted 4years
I had an HP Photosmart 7762 which was great for everything I needed it for. I gave it to the in-laws the other week and bought an HP OfficeJet 6500n which is an All-In-One jobby, it's wireless (which is the main reason I wanted it so the missus and kids could print from their laptops and I can from my iPhone). It cost me £100 I think and then I found that HP offer cashback so after sending my receipt to them £40 was sent to my bank account. Refils do cost around £40 for all 4 cartridges though, which are all XL (3 colour, 1 black). I'm a very happy Cookie.
I'd go for HP, had one cheap one for 3 years and never went wrong. Ink was well priced on amazon too. My new Canon printer is better, but the ink costs more. I've tried 2 Epson printers and they were both useless.
I hear the Kodak's have cheaper ink but I have had a Canon all-in-one (MP610) for years and it is just fantastic. Costs about £8-£9 per cartridge (genuine) and there are five of them (CYM, black text (large) and black photo). I've never tried refills with it as I probably don't print enough on it. If you are printing loads of text only, go for the Samsung laser mono.
I spend a lot of time looking at this sort of thing at work and page per print the HP Officejet 8000/8500 work out to be amazing value for money. The inks at first glance are expensive at around £14 per colour and £21 for the black but the colours do up to 1400 pages each and the black does up to 2200 at the standard ISO yields. Bought one for the father in law last month and did a comparison on the price of inks, the printer he was replacing cost 5x the price of the HP. HP regularly do promo's on these too, last month £30 cash back and 3yr warranty FOC making the printer £40 odd quid. BARGAIN. Laser printers struggle to compete with this when you factor in the purchase price of the printer the price of the toner and the price of the electrickery. In general the more you pay for the printer the cheaper the ink (or the higher page yield) I knocked up a quick excel sheet with the price of the printer, price of the warranty, price of each colour ink, yield of each ink, annual estimated print volume and a few roundup formulae to give be a cost of printer and consumables then another column with the power consumption on. This will soon show you which will be cheaper over time.
Kodak inks are around £12 but they are tri colour and only do 420 page yield. Avoid tri colour inks where you can as you bin the ink when one of the colours are empty regardless of whether the other two colours are full
Ive got a P50 which i bought because of the massive amounts of pictures i have to print for work, Its fitted with a CISS system which costs around £65 to fill (all inks) but thats for 250ml bottles of each ink. Quality is great just need to remember to do a little maintenance before every print run. I do get incompatibility problems every now and again, but usually easily solved, cleeaning contacts etc. For the money its a great printer imo.
I've got a Dell V105 all in one you can have for £10 + P&P, Has an almost full Black cartridge, but needs a new Colour one as it wasn't supplied with one. I've got a Dell 1320cn for my Network, works a treat, No issues with Dell Printers in all honesty. Sam