On a budget and looking for something cheap (to buy and run) to do the odd job app, form, essays etc, not huge volume.

If there’s something that does decent colour photos I’d pay a bit more for that too.

I see Kodak are advertising theirs as cheap to run.

just brought a printer myself. Was looking at the Kodaks for the reason you stated. However, unless you are printing quite high volumes, the cost savings they quote for ink will be small.

How much do you think you want to do photo printing? For all the other things a laser would be better but image quality is not as good as a good inkjet. I’d suggest a budget laser then get your photo prints online (which will be cheaper and better than any home printer)

Just got a Canon Pixma MP272 from PC World for £30.
Seems to work well, and it’s a scanner as well. For that price you can’t go too far wrong!

I just thought the odd home-photo print would be handy – but do the bulk stuff online as you say.

I’d also assumed laser is £££?

Seems to work well, and it’s a scanner as well. For that price you can’t go too far wrong

…until you see the price of cartridges?

I’ve always gone with Epson inkjet printers, mainly because of cheap and readily available compatible cartridges.
Any prints needing real photo quality have been ordered on-line.

I’d suggest a budget laser then get your photo prints online (which will be cheaper and better than any home printer)

Cheapest, best quality for black and white will be a second hand HP laserjet. You can pick up barely used ones, for sub £100 and they’ll run forever. Replacement cartridges can be picked up for c£25 and do many 1000’s of pages. eg item no. 200495988879 at £95 or 390313063942 at £73. Repairable/rebuildable if they do break.

Whatever you do, don’t buy an HP under any circumstances – they are unforgivably poor and very expensive to run. Mine very nearly went out the window yesterday in a fit of rage. Suffice to say it is bound for the skip as soon as I get to the shop for a non-HP replacement.

epson r240 if you can still get them.

Set of non-epson cartridges for £4 will print 30+ A4 glossy photos

a second hand HP laserjet

As an aside, if anyone’s got an LJ2100 / 2200 kicking about, I’ve a brand new cartridge here they can have.

samsung ml1660 – just bought one, and seems to do the job well, although I think replacement cartridges are expensive

don’t buy an HP under any circumstances – they are unforgivably poor and very expensive to run

Are you talking about cheap, consumer, HP printers or their corporate laser printers? There’s a world of difference between their ‘home’ ranges and the high volume stuff (“laserjet 4000 recommended duty cycle up to 65000 pages per month”). There’s a reason most offices are full of them.

We had a cheap Samsung laser before the HP. Like that one it cost about £50 and, also like that one, came with a 1/3 filled toner cart (or something). Replacement carts are £55 and do 1500 pages.

You can buy a genuine 10,000 page HP cart for £50 and remanufactured for half that.

I’ve got a Samsung ML1610 (I think)which is fine for documents, cartridges cost but do last a long, long time.
The other printer is a Canon iP3600 which is used for colour documents with images and photos.
Cartridges or refills are going to be the biggest expense, all Canon cartridges will cost about 50GBP a new printer about the same. 😕

I’m with DS i have an Samsung ML1610 cheap to buy and run, I leave mine for weeks at a time and can still print – unlike the dried up inkjet cartridges! When i do use it I do large volumes of 250 pages or so 3 or 4 times a week. you can get replacement after market cartridges for them cheap from ebay and they have worked well for me.

I run two HP laser jet 4500 printers in my office. I paid £50 each (with networks cards in) and they have been faultless in the 5 years I’ve had them.