Decent home inkjet printer/scanner

[ric22]

My parents need a new one, because HP make dreadful rubbish, and theirs stopped working.

Any advice would be helpful. Here's a few 'must have' features they want:

1, Not HP- and I second this. Hateful company.
2, Scanner has a feed so you don't need to scan one page at a time.
3, Cartridges aren't stupidly expensive, which usually means good availability of generics.
4, Ethernet connection.
5, Costs under $200ish
6, Can print colour

Many thanks!!

 

[belvdr]

I hate HP inkjets too. Does it need color? If not, I would suggest a laser. I have a great laser printer with all the features you mentioned, and even does duplex printing. It's made by HP, but I have been impressed with it and it's low TCO. I bought it for a song several years ago for $150. I took a chance due to the price. I hear Brother makes some quality units too.

 

[ric22]

I hate HP inkjets too. Does it need color? If not, I would suggest a laser. I have a great laser printer with all the features you mentioned, and even does duplex printing. It's made by HP, but I have been impressed with it and it's low TCO. I bought it for a song several years ago for $150. I took a chance due to the price. I hear Brother makes some quality units too.

Thanks for the reply. It needs colour unfortunately- I amended my first post to state that now. I heard good things about Brother too.

 

[kschendel]

Does it have to be inkjet? If they just need decent looking color, I'd strongly suggest a color laser multi-function. I use a Canon MFC-8280 which has probably been superseded by a newer model; the color printing is nice, if not photo quality, and once you replace the "starter" toner cartridges (super annoying!) the toner seems to last quite a long time. If I were buying today, I'd definitely consider a Brother color laser as well.

I hate inkjets. They are a problem if you print a lot (expensive!), and they are a problem if you don't print a lot (ink dries, jams, need unclogging cycles which uses ink, expensive!). If you need photo or near-photo realism, they are probably your only real option short of the $thousand solid-ink printers; if you just need to print color and have it look OK, I'd go with a laser solution. You pay a little more up front (not as much as you might think); IMO it's worth it to not be constantly re-buying ink, fighting ink blots and clogs, etc etc.

 

[EastHillWill]

Good chance that just about any inkjet is going to give them problems again in a couple years. I finally did the smart thing after eons of inkjet misery and bought a Brother MFC-J4535DW. May find it on sale for 200 and meets all of your requirements. Excellent machine.

 

[wilberforce]

Printers:
Low purchase cost
Low running cost
Good quality

Pick two out of three.

For example here is one that is very low running cost, fair quality (good for documents, mediocre for photos because it uses only 4 (CMYK) inks), but high-ish purchase cost (I have one similar to this):

EcoTank ET-3850 Wireless Color All-in-One Cartridge-Free Supertank Printer with Scanner, Copier, ADF and Ethernet | Products | Epson US

Discover a New Type of Printing Experience.

epson.com

Unfortunately the printer manufacturers seem to want to make money off printers.

 

[wilberforce]

I finally did the smart thing after eons of inkjet misery and bought a Brother MFC-J4535DW.

The MFC-J4535DW is an inkjet printer, so your post is confusing?

 

[HDFan]

1, Not HP- and I second this. Hateful company.
2, Scanner has a feed so you don't need to scan one page at a time.
3, Cartridges aren't stupidly expensive, which usually means good availability of generics.
4, Ethernet connection.
5, Costs under $200ish
6, Can print colour

#5 means that you get a cheap printer which is more likely to fail. After replacing 3 of these I finally realized I had wasted all of that money trying to save $. Bought a higher quality, more expensive, HP LaserJet 200 Color MFP. Have had it for maybe a decade without a single failure.

#3 inkjet cartridges sales subsidize the inexpensive printers. If you aren't doing photos a laserjet will be much less expensive and more reliable over time, depending on usage, at the cost of lower color quality. Gave away my Brother LaserJet B&W when I got the HP. Probably had it for 10 years with nary a problem. The inkjets always had problems. Dried out cartridges, blocked nozzles, etc.

 

[EastHillWill]

The MFC-J4535DW is an inkjet printer, so your post is confusing?

Ah, good catch, posted the wrong model! Will update.

 

[Scott Baret]

Unless there is some very specific reason why you'd need ink over toner, get a laser printer. It will save you a lot of money in the long run and will be of far higher quality.

 

[ric22]

Thanks very much for all the input, guys! Convincing my parents they want to spend £400+ on a laser printer that has the necessary features, which is about 4 times what they could get an inkjet for, is my new challenge. They'd need to keep it for about a decade to break even, which makes it a hard sell.

 

[kschendel]

printerland.co.uk has a Xerox multi-function color laser with scanner document feeder for £288 inc VAT. If they are willing to give up the document feeder, you can beat that. I only looked in one place so it may well be that you can beat that price. I don't think they need to spend £400.

It's their money, of course. In addition to the inkjet supply costs, I'd add the cost in time and frustration of having the inkjet printer clog, or run empty half-way through a job; and that's going to happen no matter what the brand is, IMO. The laser printer is going to just work.

 

[HDFan]

They'd need to keep it for about a decade to break even, which makes it a hard sell.

If you just factor in the cost of supplies and the number of copies made that could be the case. That extra $ is going for the time not spent in diagnosing and fixing problems. Depends how your parents value their (or your?) time and if they can handle print failures.

 

[SjoukeW]

I have a cheap Epson printer (xp-215), running for 10 years and still going strong. Never dried ink, and I don't print much. It doesn't catch sunlight though, that might help preventing it from drying out.
Now I am using cheap ink 10 EUR for 5 cardridges (2 black, 3 color) for more then 5 years and it still works (from the Action ( cheap NL shop) ) . The printer costed 45 euro's or something. Totally happy with it.

 

[Tagbert]

Thanks very much for all the input, guys! Convincing my parents they want to spend £400+ on a laser printer that has the necessary features, which is about 4 times what they could get an inkjet for, is my new challenge. They'd need to keep it for about a decade to break even, which makes it a hard sell.

Any inkjet is going to fail in a couple of years and need to be replaced. The nozzles get clogged and the ink gets everywhere. Laser printers just last a lot longer and usually the supplies are much cheaper in the long run.