New printer recommendations-Home Use...

[Imola Ghost]

We really only need:

Printing
Scanning to computer
Wireless Print/Airprint
Larger Paper tray (wife would like one that holds more that our current @50-ish)

We've usually gone to HP and my wife is wanting to use the HP Instant Ink. I do use Instant Ink at my shop and don't use it enough to determine if the cost of the subscription is worth it or not as I don't print that often there.

I'd prefer one thats not a throw away after a year or so it should be built well/decent. Our current HP Envy N120 is built like a tank (heavy) but we've ALWAYS had trouble with it scanning, printing as time has passed and now it constantly has a message on the screen saying please restart. Can only get rid of it after we have unplugged it and deleted it from the printers on the computer and added it again. Weird.

 

[HDFan]

I've had a number of printers over the years (Brother, Dec, Lexmark, HP) and have come to the following conclusions:

1. Go with laser if you can. Color isn't that great, but continually hassling with ink jet refills, clogged jets, etc. for me wasn't worth the aggravation. In contrast my Brother black and white printer (only) kept trucking away for years and I never had any problems with it. Inkjet black prints run from 2 to 7 cents, Laser 2 to 5 cents, per page, so if you do a lot of printing of black and white you can pay for the printer with the savings in ink.

2. You get what you pay for. I bought cheap personal printers and had continual problems with them, eventually replacing all 3 within 3 years or so. I have had a low end business printer (HP LaserJet Pro 200 color MFP) for ~5 years now and haven't had any problems. You pay more for the printer, but you save in reliability. The breakage rates for printers are quite high, compared to other appliances (see below).

But I confess I don't do very little printing, mainly scanning and faxing.

Reliability from Consumer Reports in descending order of reliability: https://www.consumerreports.org/products/all-in-one-printer/brand-reliability

Estimated breakage rate by 3rd year:

Black & White Laser: Brother (5%), HP (8%), Canon (10%)

Inkjet:

Brother (13%), Canon (14%), Epson (20%), HP (20%)

Color Laser:

Brother (13%), HP (16%), Canon (19%)

 

[kschendel]

I'd suggest a Brother multi-function laser. We have two Brother monochrome laser printers, one multi-function and one pure printer, and they both just work and work.

 

[kohlson]

I've owned a lot of printers. In general I've been happy with HP laser, but I note that Brother and Epson are well regarded, too. When the kids went to school they got HP 4500 (about $50-60) which wifi/scan/copy/duplex/color. Doesn't hold much paper. The kids still work great, so we bought one for our house, and the printing function doesn't really work (Installing a new HP cartridge results in the message "unrecognized cartridge"). That said, we print in laser mono and use the scan/copy feature of the 4500.
A long way of saying that if you have the space, consider 2 devices. Someday I may get around to buying another $50 ink-based scan/copy/print device.