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I have a very old HP laser printer that I liberated (legitimately) from an an old school build that I was managing (it was a small school with 30 teachers and each had their own office printer, thats another story) thats given up the ghost and looks expensive to fix. No plans to buy one as the cost per page would be huge.
I seldom print anything off but when I do its a pain not having one, talking the occasional A4 letter, parcel return info etc. no graphics or colour.
What do other non printer owners do/use???
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Just bought an HP scanner printer for £27 from Currys.Works perfect.
I have an ancient Canon inkjet printer. It's ok but as it get's used so infrequently, twice a year, it insists on doing a massive self-clean cycle and wastes loads of ink doing that.
Almost tempted to get a cheap laser printer as they can be had for £90 new, probably even cheaper secondhand.
We have two, a 10 year old Brother laser monochrome for day to day stuff and a similar age Epson inkjet colour for occasional use (using generic rather than Epson ink cartridges- £1.50 per cartridge is more acceptable than £18.50)
Me. <br />HP printer thing used only occasionally mainly for kid’s homework. That will be coming to an end in a few years. So, it’ll probably be my last one.
Just bought an HP scanner printer for £27 from Currys.Worksperfect.
Yep, always cheap as chips to buy but if used 6 times a year the cartridges dry/fail or whatever and you end up spending £15 to replace, to print off your single sheet of A4, repeat every 3 months or so...
Nope. I can use one at work if I need to, but I can't even remember the last time that was. Everything which used to have to be printed out - tickets, boarding passes etc - seems to be app/digital wallet based or they just email you a QR code or whatever now. Even the postie will bring you a label now when he picks up a parcel (at no cost as far as I can tell!)
lol. You'd bloody hope it works if you've only just bought it 😂 Won't last though, cheap inkjet printers are built to fail.Just bought an HP scanner printer for £27 from Currys.Works perfect.
What do other non printer owners do/use???
They come into my print-shop at 4.55pm on a Friday demanding their vitally important documents be printed straight away! 🤣
I'm after a cheap wireless one that I can send docs from my phone to print.
In the height of the 2020 WFH revolution I picked up an HP mono laser for about sixty quid.
Gets used once a month at most. Prints a perfect page every time, within a minute of being plugged in.
I am absolutely done with inkjet printers. THere are very few situations where a home inkjet printer does not have an extortinate cost per page printed.
Yeah, and I use the HP Instant Ink thing so pay very little, sometimes nothing per month.
People who don't have a printer at work to misuse.
After years of frustration with various brands of inkjet I gave up and bought a Brother mono lazer for about £100 - it’s been faultless, works from both laptop and mobile devices. The problem with inkjets is that unless they’re used regularly, they clog and waste ink going through head cleaning routines.
Recently had similar issues.
Just decided to make life easy and buy the which? Best buy and be done with it.
Life is easy again. It just works. Wireless print from a phone is brilliant, printed tons of colouring in sheets for the kids.
Similar to above, we have a HP printer/scanner.
OH has it on an instant ink subscription which I objected to on principal but TBH it works and unlike it's predecessor I don't have to battle with it, generic cartridge's, endless pop-up's, just press print (even the wireless printing works from my phone!) and occasionally a box of fresh ink turns up in the post. TBH for £2.99 a month it actually seems like good value purely for the lack of any faff!
Yep, always cheap as chips to buy but if used 6 times a year the cartridges dry/fail or whatever and you end up spending £15 to replace, to print off your single sheet of A4, repeat every 3 months or so…
Again, I was skeptical but with the subscription it all becomes someone else problem.
And build quality seems a big leap ahead from their low point a few years ago when yes they were basically trying to sell you a crap printer and a couple of sets of expensive cartridges before it died.
I have an HP Officejet Pro 9010 with HP Instant ink. It's decent when not having the usual printer connection issues
It's incredible how little ink it uses when you are paying a subscription, compared to when you are buying your own cartridges though... /cynic
Yes, cheap HP from Tesco about 4 years ago with the ink on subscription. Zero problems.
One HP on instant ink, one Samsung mono laser an offspring had at Uni and brought home. Both pretty painless.
HP instant ink here. Zero faff and for 3 quid a month I can print off as much as any normal human needs to. Syncs to home and work computers and phones without issue.
Pretty basic Brother colour laser, HL-3140CW. Seems to work well. Had it about 8 years. Runs on cheap, non branded toner. Prints wirelessly. Not fantastic print quality for images but ideal for labels, documents, templates, etc
We've got an old HP that I think is over a decade old now. Still functional, I tend to buy cheapo ink when it comes up. It's not in daily use but certainly weekly gets used for postage labels, event tickets, bits for the kids homework, etc.
It's useful enough that if it broke I would replace it...
HP Inkjet printer with a Instant Ink subscription work perfectly for our home needs.
Got a colour laser with work - thankfully as toners are not cheap. Tend to do bigger work mailings (rare) using hybrid mail https://www.cfh.com/ which is cool as they print pack and post for less than a stamp (unless multiple colour sheets). You either use their print driver or build the mailing.
I just use the local print shop. Ideally not at 4:55 in the afternoon just before it closes 🙂
I think I've printed maybe 4 pages of A4 this year? Certainly not worth having a home printer for that.
Yep, we have a Brother colour laser too, bought it about 5 years ago when there were silly cashback deals on them. Had gone through quite a few cheap inkjets that usually cost a fortune in ink and broke after a few years.
Don't have to think about it at all. Spends most of its time in deep sleep (well under 1W) and wakes up when we print. Put some paper in every few hundred sheets, toner every few thousand. Windows, Macs, phones, etc just find it and print with no driver faff.
Local library does printing for 10p/sheet which probably works out better if it's very rare usage. I find most of the parcel services now can do printing the label for you too.
I have HP Laserjet 2015d in my WFH setup, it seems to be only printer that family, in-laws and any other random folk have access to. <br />No idea how old this device is but I saved it from dumpster pile in office move about 10 years ago. Had plenty of driver issues in Win7 ,8 and 10 but Win11 seems OK in that sense. <br />One of these says I have to buy new ink cartridge but so far shaking the cartridge occasionally has been enough.
I've got a Brother (printer that is) in a box under a pile of junk somewhere.
I've got an old printer/scanner.
Mostly used for postage labels. Probably would buy another it it broke. Likely not a scanner though. That function on a phone is good enough now for what I need.
we just bought a xerox colour lazer printer for home use as the old epson scanner/printer was knackered and just a hateful object generally. The build quality on the new one is far nicer, prints fast double-sided, not much more you can ask for
They come into my print-shop at 4.55pm on a Friday demanding their vitally important documents be printed straight away! 🤣
A few months back I had to print some shipping docs for some equipment and our (elderly, rarely used, massively temperamental) printer rolled on its back and died.
I emailed our local print shop and asked them nicely, and lo, by 0845 the next morning the docs were printed ready for me to pick up.
When I got them (3 or 4 sheets of A4) the lady said: "£10.85 please", and I handed over my card and asked for a receipt -- I didn't care about the cost due to how last minute it was and the fact I was planning to expense it anyway. She looked at me funny: it turned out I'd misheard and it was £1.85 😀
OKI network colour laser printer, cheap from Aria years ago, hardly ever used, but saves a lot of hassle when it is.
I have a reasonable Canon thing, it replaced the previous version of the same Canon, i thought it'd use the same ink, apparently not...
But the last one was bought in 07 or 08 on a half price sale, so under 100 quid. Failed after about 8-9 years, bought a pattern head from a reseller in eastern europe somewhere for 20-30 quid. Got another couple of years out of it then gave it to father in law who still uses it now for printing out sudoku, crosswords and general stuff when the quality isn't that critical.
Got the new version and it's been flawless, stays connected to the WiFi, hasn't dried out, occasionally failed to notice that the ink is empty.
Use it every couple of months to print off a picture of the kids, or an official document.
Another one sick of inkjets never working when needed, I got a Samsung laser printer second hand a while back and it's probably paid for itself in dead cartridges averted by now.
Buy an ex-office HP LaserJet on eBay to replace the one you've got. I had an ancient Laserjet 4000 that I replaced with a colour one that looks like this £130 job on eBay
Original toner is expensive, but refilled carts aren't if your'e on a budget.
Another HP instant ink subscription here, with a HP Envy 7100 series printer since 2020 for kids lockdown homework.
After years of crappy devices and horribly expensive print cartridge replacement this set up actually works.
Replacement cartridges arrive in the post shortly BEFORE required, and have also received a replacement cartridge when the half full one got sticky and started leaving stripes.
i buy what ever is cheap b+w laser jet so i dont have the inkjet dried up ink issue.
my last one i bought when i started uni (20 years ago! ) and we only replaced it last year as it got knocked off the desk and the papertrays got mangled.
Moved to an HP with wifi and can print from phone its a revelation.
We don't use the printer often but when we do its invaluable.
have just taken delivery of an EPSON EcoTank ET-2810 - £140 with load of ink. The missus ordered it, so i've no idea if it's going to be any good, but will certainly be better than my 20year old Cannon MP492 that went through ink cartridges every 5 mins.
This Epson thing is wifi and that appears to work quie well having set up apps on phones and registered it on the wifi network to appear as anpother printer. It scans, prints (slowly i might add).
This printer comes with ink bottles that you use to re-fill, i thought that quite neat. anyway that's what i;ve got, i was going to get a lazer but apparantly i procrastinated too much (i call it research and waiting for the sales)
Similar to most - tired of failing inkjets as they would dry out due to lack of use.
Bought a Brother Laser printer (mono, scans, lives on the wifi, connects to every device in the house).
I think it's about £10/printout so far given how much use we give it....but i expect it to just tick along for a few years...
I hurled ours out of the back door in a bout of entirely justified rage. As it arced gracefully through the air it slowly opened up its vulnerable centre parts to reveal an unknown (to me) scanning facility with an A4 sized sheet of non-tempered glass.
Took hours to clean up. There may have been regret.
Still use one. Mostly print map extracts which can be heavy on yellow so switched from HP to Epsom so I only need redo one colour.
Who still has a home printer?
Nope, had 3 over the years but they always clogged up as I only used them for printing a few returns labels per year. Why don't the printer companies include a isopropyl alcohol cleaning mechanism to clear the print heads after occasional use?.
^ Rhetorical question btw, that would kill their business model.
Brother wireless laser b&w printer.
£150 from Amazon a year or so back.
Prints from any device from which you'd want to print in the house either direct or via Mopria print app.
Still on the starter toner.
Worth every penny imo for sporadic use. We print the odd set of entry/instructions documents for events, entry forms and other odds and ends.
Another happy Brother HL-3140CW Colour Laser Printer user here. Bought it back in Jan '19 as I changed jobs and my previous home printer was going back to my previous company with the rest of my IT stuff.
Still going strong, doesn't get loads of use, just 'works'. I only paid £113 from Mr Bezos back in the day, like everything it's doubled in price since. I'd still recommend it, pattern toner works and it's a reliable old thing.
No.
If I can, I use the printer at work.
If not, the local library does printing for 10p per sheet.
The only thing I’ve used it for is printing return labels and a lot of places have now gone to a system that you don’t need them.
Can’t see me buying one anytime soon.
Cheap wireless mono laser that does apple print from phones.
We use it so infrequently that inkjets just dry up. It's used primarily for parcel labels. Given most places can now bring a label or print them on demand in the shop, I suspect this will be the last one we have.