Home printer recommendations please

Old printer has eventually died and was ropey at best.

Requirement is a basic A4 printer for occasional home tasks. 4 of us will use it, all on IPad/iPhone and wanting to do so wireless so no cables.

would like to limit cost to around £100/£150 ideally.

reccomendations welcome please.

We’ve got a HP Deskjet 4100 and the instant ink subscription.

It works from the PC, from phones, from laptops, it never throws a strop about running out of ink, it just works.

I was late and in a hurry this morning and managed to print a returns label for something from my phone as i  was looking for my keys, and it worked! That would have taken several hours with the old Epson ?

I’m usually pretty anti-subscription business models but this one gets a big thumbs up after all the hours/days/weeks of my life I must have wasted over the years trying to get the printer to work with whatever it’s (apparently not) connected to and accept the 50p cheaper off-brand cartridge.

Cheapest HP from Tesco. Sign up for the ink subscription, IMO.

For intermittent use I got a laser as I got fed up throwing away barely used cartridges with my inkjet. Brother do some relatively small cheap ones that are easy to get compatible toner cartridges for. I’ve had one for a couple of years and it just works. Mine is cable rather than WiFi but I assume the slightly more expensive ones will meet your needs.

The brother laser printer that fits your needs and budget.

I can’t recall what it cost but I’m a total convert to the ink tank rather than cartridge printers – ours are Canons and we have two at work and one at home and they’re so cheap to run. Probably overkill for this but I don’t know how cheap they get?

The ink subscription from HP is all well and good until they stop supporting your particular printer and are left with a useless lump of plastic. Even when you try to get “cheaper” cartridges for it, nobody does them because it was covered by the ink subscription service. Grrrrrr.

Our defunct one is an HP, which was on an ink subscription, it has been troublesome for a long time and now has no connectivity. It is about 7 yrs old though.

Brother DCP-J1140DW inkjet jet because if you do not use it very often it notices and automatically cleans it ink heads so they do not gummed up. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Brother-DCP-J1140DW-Wireless-Touchscreen-Included/dp/B09JWW4V2M

Connects easily by WiFi, print bit so map out fine.

much better than the 10 year old HP deskjet that it replaces which did not like being left unused.

+1 Brother laser – it just works.  I have no problems with inkjets for regular use – I use one most days for my printing business, but leave one for a few weeks unused and it just turns into a world of grief

Just to add that the very proficient IT types on The Register recommend Brother as there doesn’t appear to be a need for ritual scarifice and incantations to get them connected and keep them running.

I’m a HP instant ink fan to. The one in our spare room must be 10 years old, it just keeps chugging on. Very occasional use, doesn’t get blocked.

Unless you have an Apple phone. My missis has to email me stuff to print from my Android, but I see that as an Apple problem, not HP.

^^^^ err..

4 of us will use it, all on IPad/iPhone and wanting to do so wireless so no cables.

yes, all on Apple

Cheap Brother laser. So much better than the Canon Inkjet one I had before. It’s mono, but was only £70 after cashback (£90 from John Lewis, cashback landed in my account directly from Brother a week later). They do a toner subscription but the numbers didn’t stack up for my infrequent use. Can’t fault it.  Good reviews. Initial set up was easy. Easy to print from laptop, phone, tablet via WiFi. It just works.

Timely thread as I’ve just binned a hp 3500? Psc. Scanner worked ok, printer ink was used rarely so it often dried up. The worst part of the HP setup was a bit of software which when installed on to the PC always created a problem with the windows updates.

I have a canon PSC with similar ink issues so I’m inclined to try a brother laser printer or one of their led problematic ink jet printers next. I can probably get away with mono printing for 99.9% of the stuff I would like to print.

I can colour in with crayons any other stuff. Winky eye emoji.

I bought a Brother DCP1610W – a black and white laser with scanner for £82 a few years back.

It’s such a breath of fresh air to have a printer that actually just works, doesn’t dry out, and is cheap to run (£12 for two third party toner carriages that each last 1500 pages or so).

It works via WiFi or wired – I can both print and scan wirelessly using both the PC and also my phone which can be handy.

The only downside is its black and white only – if buying again I might spring for a colour version, although to be honest it’s probably better to just save the cash and pay for professional colour printing when it matters.

4 of us will use it, all on IPad/iPhone and wanting to do so wireless so no cables.

yes, all on Apple

Oops, sorry. 🙂 In which case I’m pleased to have warned you off HP with their shonky Apple compatibility.

One more for a Brother laser printer. It just works. Inkjets exist to make money from selling you ink

Thanks all, think I’m set on a basic Brother laser one, any specific recommendations?

Yeh.

Avoid HP… Hateful things.. Aside from they try to force you to use genuine cartridges.. Horrible app with loads of privacy issues.

Avoid at all costs.

Will get a Brother one on Amazon, thanks folks.