I’m fed up with not being able to print from home because the cartridges of my inkjet have dried up through sporadic use.

Can anyone recommend something which:
– Doesn’t mind being left a few weeks between prints (laser?)
– Isn’t too big
– Can print from iPhone / Android without the PC needing to be on
– Preferably has a scanner built in
– Preferably does colour
– Preferably will make me handsome, rich and 25 again.

Budget isn’t too much of an issue within reason – I have a feeling compact size is going to be the biggest deal-breaker.

We have two (one for work one for home) Epsom WF 3620. Wireless, colour printer, including scanner. You can also buy large use (cheap per print) cartridges. Seems good to me.

Every single home printer is crap

Sorry, but thats the truth of the matter. You just get degrees of crapness depending on how much you’re prepared to spend. Any half-decent printer will cost a fortune and take up half the room.

I know thats not what you want to hear.

What is it you want to print? I’m a graphic designer so do loads of printing, and I haven’t owned a printer for years.

You’re best off finding out who locally has a decent digital print set up and use them. Digital print is so high quality and cheap now, I can’t see how the arse hasn’t dropped out of the home printer market completely

I’ve recently got one of these:

http://store.hp.com/UKStore/Merch/Product.aspx?id=B3Q11A&opt=B19&sel=DEF

Colour laser with scanner/copier. Can print from Android phone and Chromebook. No idea about iPhone.

It’s got generally good reviews on Amazon. I’ve only had it a couple of weeks so no view on long-term reliability.

“Every single home printer is crape”

It depends that you want from a printer. Want to print out a few word docs or a boarding pass and scan the odd document. Home printers are fine.

Where do we get the copies of our company literature? A graphic designer and their print house.

We got a cheapish laser. Been happy with it so far. We give it so little use that injet ink was always drying up and not working, I don’t care that this was a little more money cos it works and wasn’t really that much anyway. Brother HL3150CDW FWIW. Yes it’s wifi though no scanner.

Binners speaks the truth. Fortunately I have some decent printers at work; if I didn’t I’d just buy a cheap mono laser to keep at home to print out an e-ticket or whatever a couple of times a year.

The only printer I’ve had at home that was worth a damn is a Canon 610 something or other, been working for years now, not sure if they have a model now which fulfils your criteria but it’s the only one that wasn’t a raging pain in the rectum/ugly plastic paperweight.

Binners probably nails it.

Though for those late night moments when the youngest declares she needs to do a project for school the following morning I’ve had no real issues with my Canon printer. And it even keeps printing once the warnings start appearing from low ink (Epson, I’m looking sternly at thee, yes I know my cyan cartidge is only 50% full, I just want to print a f**** black and white letter).

I’ve had a Canon MG5550 for a few year now and meets all your requirements. Frugal on ink and genuine replacements are cheap enough. The current MG6450 gets PC Pro A List for yet another year

Preferably will make me handsome, rich and 25 again

It’s good but can’t perform magic 😀

I was sick of the constant battle of fake inks not working just when you HAVE to print something and the stupidly high prices for genuine cartridges. We plumped for a HP HP ENVY 5640. So far seems good. Prints directly from an iPhone and iPad and has a Instant ink deal where you pay £2 a month and they then send you replacement ink when needed. Holds both A4 and photo paper at the same time. So far so good and no more bloody battles with ink cartridges that the print just happens to decide it no longer likes. Its not the smallest of printers but everything is enclosed so you don’t have paper hanging out.

Having something that prints so easily from an iPhone every time is really handy for the kids.

http://store.hp.com/UKStore/Merch/Product.aspx?id=B9S59A&opt=BHC&sel=PRN

Home printers might not be any good for large batches or high quality print, but they have their place. Mostly when you just need the odd thing printing now. I’m about a year in on a Canon MG3550. Ideal for those little print/scan/copy jobs. It’s been moaning that ink is getting low for a month or so but it’s still printing and the quality is still ok. But at least I could get new ink in stock ready for when it does finally run out.

Although the cost of small colour lasers is coming down all the time, I might go with one next time round.

I’ve been impressed with the HP Officejet that my dad bought – as with most home printers it gets very little use, but always prints OK and has a lower cost per page than cheaper printers.

It is on the large size though.

Another laser user here. Brother DCP-9020CDW. It’s very good, but it’s HUGE. Looks like they have brought out a cheaper version without the scanner document feed, model 9015. Works from apples, PCs and androids. Wifi and wired networks, duplex. Cheap-ish to run, set of colour toners lasts us over a year six months for black and white. they are about £52 for all four, in compatibles. We’re quite heavy users for home use as we use it for self employed work, running community groups, kids homework and working from home too.

Binners may be right, but people like me only really need to print crap stuff, postage labels, word documents etc. The kids prob want to print off photos of them and their friends to take into school. My main criteria for a printer (as I’m also looking out for one) is wireless so can print from iDevices, cheap to run and compact. Only one that has caught my eye so far which seems to fit the bill is the Canon Pixma MX475.

binners – Member
I can’t see how the arse hasn’t dropped out of the home printer market completely

Cause no-one can be arsed going to a print bureau to print out their flight confirmations or e-ticket? 😆

Home printing is expensive in comparison, but for the 4 or 5 times a year you need something printed, it’s awfy convenient.

Maybe I wasn’t very clear in my original post. My main gripe with ink jets is that they clog and / or dry out if not used regularly, rather than the fact that they can get through ink quickly through genuine usage or report that ink needs changing too early.

Am I right in thinking that laser is the only way round that right now?

Cannon mx900 is performing OK for us, about year in.

Snide ink, 2 paper trays (1 for photo paper) cd printing, wireless, prints from phones, tablets etc, scans and copies as well. Big bugger though.

I’d never own another Hp printer. We had a cheap A3 Hp printer in work, total pita. Slow noisy wireless was sporadic. Hp printer at home died after 2 years, hardly used (may have been the death of it) always used proper ink, we were forever doing head cleaning on it before a print, frustrating.

Ultimately I guess Binners nails it though

This was my response to the other printer thread (4 months ago):

“I recently bought one of these: Brother HL-3140CW

I am an infrequent print user at home and got fed up with the Inkjets constantly drying up.

The laser sits in a cupboard for weeks at a time and wakes up when I send something to it and then prints off a document without grumbling!”

I have had the printer well over a year now and it has been a revelation. It just works – simple! I had so much pain with inkjets.

I kept my old multifunction inkjet for scanning (but have only used it once in that time!).

I have not had to buy any toner yet, the oem stuff is expensive but clone products have good reviews on Amazon.

Huta just get a mono laser printer they are cheap and the quality is ok.

They can be switched off and left for months and still print ok.

Using a print shop is ok but many have a minimum charge of £5-20 and tend to use a normal office colour copier for walk in customers.

“I recently bought one of these: Brother HL-3140CW

I am an infrequent print user at home and got fed up with the Inkjets constantly drying up.

The laser sits in a cupboard for weeks at a time and wakes up when I send something to it and then prints off a document without grumbling!”

This. Brother colour laser sits for weeks without any printing, then prints in decent quality (or so it seems to me) from any PC on the network without complaint. Daughter prints from her phone, but I’ve never needed to. £100 at John Lewis.

Have an HP Inkjet in my office, which gets used much more, and also has the scanner and copier features. We had a second one for home use, and it just died after a couple of years, hence the laser.

Just don’t buy the cheapo £40 ones. We spent £150 on an HP multi function one and it worked fine for many years, mechanically speaking. We changed it to get cloud print support and hpbinstant ink pricing model as we were sick of ink cost.

Do you really need a scanner? With decent digital camera you should be able to get acceptable results, and aren’t limited to the typical A4 size of home multifunction printers.

I am an infrequent print user at home and got fed up with the Inkjets constantly drying up.

I’ve never experienced this, my previous Inkjet (cheapo HP) lasted over 10 years with infrequent use and the only issue was the the printed image was skew to the paper edge after a few years of wear and tear. I only replaced it as I wanted an A3 printer.

With decent digital camera you should be able to get acceptable results

Scanners (and multifunction devices) are so cheap, and taking decent photos of documents is such a faff, it’s not worth it. If you just want to share some information photos are fine, but for anything formal it’s a lot of trouble.

I am an infrequent print user at home and got fed up with the Inkjets constantly drying up

This used to happen with my old Epson which I bought in about ooh, 1999, it broke in 2001 I think. My first printer in fact. Since then I had another Epson which I replaced for some reason in 2004 ish, I forget why. I think I thought it broke, but found out later it was the cartridges fault. I then bought an HP which was great – I only replaced that because I wanted a multifunction in something like 2006. That’s the one I just gave away a few weeks ago.

Both the second Epson and the first HP are in the loft still – can’t give them away. I think they probably just need ink and they’ll work fine, but I don’t want to spend £40 to check.

Samsung wireless printer/copier/scanner here – paid about £80 for it from Tesco.
It has been pretty good for the last 2 years – print/scan quality isn’t great, but it is perfect for kids school stuff, general family duties.

If we need anything special printing I do it on the huge Ricoh colour laser at work ;o)

I have been using a ricoh sf 242 for a few years. Small foot print compared to the epson I had before. The wireless requirment can be overcome if you connect the network port to a wireless ap or use powerlines.
Beware some lasers come with starter toner cartridges about 1/4 capacity so if you can an extra set of toners it helps.

What kind of prints are you using it for? I use it for reports / documents and a few poster types for celebrations. Photos are sent to photobox / costco.

Never have to clean the heads, refill ink, calibrate heads. It will print bw only and also duplex and the adf was a revelation. Not had to print from android but I see they have an app print and scan 🙂

Never have to clean the heads, refill ink, calibrate heads

In defence of decent inkjets then, I also have never had to do that since the second Epson I had, so ten years of HP ownership.

We had a near the top of the range Canon wired printer that was excellent.

I replaced it with the equivalent wireless one and it’s excellent.

Ink via the internet is cheap enough, does scan and send to PC, photocopy, wireless and print from Mac, phones etc
All very simple to set up and use.

And not much above £100 I think.

After years of disappointments with cheap inkjets 3-4 years ago we got a cheapish Samsung colour laser which has been great and is still going strong. Sure the ink cartridges are expensive but they last ages.