In need of a printer that doesn't suck

[James Hall]

The family printer has been having problems forever, and it just gave up its last breath. (It is an EPSON XP-760)

I know asking for a good printer in this era is laughable, but I really am super tired of bullsh*t printers.

 

My question is if there is a colour printer that is reliable, has good driver support, a usable UI, and non-expensive ink/none at all?

Subscription services and all that stuff are a no go!

[Hinjima]

7 minutes ago, James Hall said:

The family printer has been having problems forever, and it just gave up its last breath. (It is an EPSON XP-760)

I know asking for a good printer in this era is laughable, but I really am super tired of bullsh*t printers.

 

My question is if there is a colour printer that is reliable, has good driver support, a usable UI, and non-expensive ink/none at all?

Subscription services and all that stuff are a no go!

Budget?  A friend of mine bought a printer last year, its refillable with ink bottles and is quite easy to operate. It was around  230 dollars though

[James Hall]

Budget is less of a concern, as long as it is reliable and low cost in the long run.

Can actually go ham on the budget.

[HanZie82]

Depending on printing frequency it would either be a good inkjet, or when you print less often a good color laser printer. (Altho the latter wont do photo's to well).

[Tanaz]

What are you printing mainly? Are you printing documents? Do you need color and if you do how detailed does that color need to be? If you only print in color on extreme occasions just get a Brother black and white laser printer. It will save you all the headaches.

 

If you NEED color occasionally the best option is a Dye based Inkjet printer with color tanks and not cartridges like the EcoTank series from Epson. I have an Epson but there is one big caveat with all inkjet printers - if you don't use the colors daily they dry up and clog. So you need to print test CMYK pages every 2-3 days just to be safe. I was printing pages once a week and 2 of my colors got clogged up. If that happens you need to run head cleaning which you can do for only a limited amount of times before a waste tank gets full and your printer gets killed off by a chip in that tank that tells it it's now worthless.( And yes I know there are alternative ways to clean a head I'm just speaking in terms of a general customer's experience).

 

And lastly if you're largely going to be printing photos and you need good color you need a pigment based printer. Those run in the hundreds to thousands of dollars, require expensive proprietary cartridges and need to be used regularly just like dye based printers. But then again if you needed that type of printer you'd probably already know a lot about printers.

9 minutes ago, HanZie82 said:

Depending on printing frequency it would either be a good inkjet, or when you print less often a good color laser printer. (Altho the latter wont do photo's to well).

That's not entirely true. Laser printers are actually way faster when it comes to printing documents that's why all copying machines in institutions use them. They're just mostly black and white (unless you buy a mega expensive one but even then the colors are not good).

[James Hall]

8 minutes ago, HanZie82 said:

Depending on printing frequency it would either be a good inkjet, or when you print less often a good color laser printer. (Altho the latter wont do photo's to well).

We don't print all the time, and exact colour quality isn't the highest concern. One thing to note though, I often need to scan documents/photocopy. Colour is needed.

Edited August 12, 2023 by James Hall

[Needfuldoer]

1 hour ago, James Hall said:

My question is if there is a colour printer that is reliable, has good driver support, a usable UI, and non-expensive ink/none at all?

Color laser printers are infinitely superior to inkjets. Color toner isn't even all that expensive anymore; you can usually get a complete set of four (CMYK) refills for the price of a single first-party cartridge.

 

I just picked up a used Color LaserJet Pro M277DW multifunction workgroup printer. I haven't tried it yet, but in general I've had good luck with HP laser printers. A full set of third party toner for this thing costs $50.

[ToboRobot]

Don't get a multi-function printer, just get a laser printer and separate scanner if you need it.

Have had decent experience with Brother Laser printers, but just with the black and white, haven't splurged on a colour one.  Generally I haven't wanted to print anything with colour, other than photos and I go get them done properly.

[HanZie82]

On 8/12/2023 at 2:07 AM, Tanaz said:

That's not entirely true. Laser printers are actually way faster when it comes to printing documents that's why all copying machines in institutions use them. They're just mostly black and white (unless you buy a mega expensive one but even then the colors are not good).

I think you misunderstood my poorly worded sentence.
It was for the exact same reason you said you need to print a test page ever couple days on inkjet printers.
Laser printers don't have that issue, so if you print less frequent as in some times not for weeks, a laser printer is better as it wont clog.
But i do stand by that the quality on laser printers that are affordable for home use are worse then inkjet printers in that same category.

For the rest 100% agree, with what you said.

[Tanaz]

40 minutes ago, HanZie82 said:

I think you misunderstood my poorly worded sentence.
It was for the exact same reason you said you need to print a test page ever couple days on inkjet printers.
Laser printers don't have that issue, so if you print less frequent as in some times not for weeks, a laser printer is better as it wont clog.
But i do stand by that the quality on laser printers that are affordable for home use are worse then inkjet printers in that same category.

For the rest 100% agree, with what you said.

Yeah then we are on the same page, no pun intended.