Anyone recommend a printer?

[Cole D]

I used to have an HP inkjet PSC printer/scanner/copier from 2003/04. That was a pretty good printer, and I didn't usually have too many problems with the ink. I took the cartridges to Walgreens for years to refill them. But after Walgreens stopped offering that, I went and tried to find a new cartridge and found only Office Max carried that number and they were $40 for just the black. This was in 2014.

So since the printer was old and I figured the cartridges were becoming obsolete, I decided to get a new printer. This one is also an HP inkjet printer/scanner/copier. It has Wifi and a touch screen, but it feels cheaper built than the older one. The other thing is I hardly ever use it but when I need to print forms and such, and whenever I do it says it's out of ink. I've tried unclogging, blotting the ink cartridge to get it to wick the ink back out, but no luck. I never had this issue with the old one.

We have laser printers at work and they seem to go and go, and I've thought about getting one. I'd prefer a color one, but I could probably live with black and white because I rarely print in color (I only keep black ink in my inkjet and never replace the color ones).

I've also noticed there are expiration dates on ink cartridges, which can cause them to stop working. Is this true with laser toner cartridges?

I also still have the old printer that I replaced 5 years ago but like I said it was getting nearly impossible to get cartridges for it even then. Partly I miss my old Apple ImageWriter II dot matrix printer. Very noisy, but the ink ribbons lasted forever and were so cheap. Maybe that's why you don't see dot matrix printers anymore, because they couldn't make money on ink cartridges.

So what printer do you have and would you recommend a laser printer?

[fancollector12]

Laser printers are faster, but quality isn't as good (at one of my jobs we have a Canon laser printer that replaced a multifunction inkjet (my boss got fed up with it not working, and just got the Canon last year, as it's more reliable for what we use it for at work). We have an HP OfficeJet 8610 inkjet here at the house, and they have a newer model out of it now (not sure of the model # of the newer model). It's got Wi-Fi, the ability to print from your phone, and is a fax/copy/scan/print combo. I'd recommend it.

[Parkman]

I've had an HP LaserJet for about nine years. No problems with it at all. I got my parents one too, no issues at all!

[Jordan U]

I highly recommend getting a laser printer, especially considering how you use the machine.. Infrequent use and long-term storage periods will cause all sorts of problems with ink cartridges that are by design unlikely to be encountered with toner cartridges.. Unless you're printing pictures, you're almost always all-around better off with toner.. Cost per page is about half that of ink..

I've had a Brother MFC7360N machine for many years and it's been a fantastic printer.. The scanning and printing functions are excellent quality and the unit overall has never experienced any sort of malfunction.. It's a more simple machine with fewer features, but as I've found to be the case many times, simpler machines work better and more reliably.. Unfortunately it seems they don't make it anymore, but there is a newer model in production, the MFCL2710DW.. I can't personally comment on the machine, but it carries a high rating in the Amazon reviews..

WiFi, touch screens, 2 side 'eco-friendly' printing, printing from phones etc.. are (in my opinion) all gimmicky features put on the box to make it sell.. They're all low-cost, poorly executed and unreliable functions that end up not being used by the end user due to frustration and lack of productivity.. I'd avoid units that heavily advertise those things.. Focus on the features that are actually relevant to the pages coming out of the machine such as DPM quality, PPM rate, page yield per cartridge, cost of cartridges, etc..

Another word of caution about WiFi printers: they tend to wreak havoc on wireless networks.. Wireless printers act as if they're a wireless router and transmit on the same frequency band as your existing wireless equipment.. If it happens to be operating on the same, or an overlapping channel as, your router, you will likely experience speed and reliability issues when the printer is turned on.. I personally abhor WiFi and refuse to use anything other than a wired network, but if you don't have a wired setup, I'd recommend you connect the printer either directly to your router or directly to your computer, and avoid connecting the printer wirelessly to your network..

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Jan 19, 2019 4:40:27 GMT -5 fancollector12 said:

Laser printers ... quality isn't as good.

Unless you're printing complex color graphics, that's just not so..