Cheapest printer and ink

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emperorstevee
emperorstevee Posts: 121 Forumite
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Hello everyone,

I am looking to buy a new or refurbished printer as cheap as I can. The continued resupplying of ink would determine which printer is the most cost effective to buy. Does anyone know a good printer scanner copier (preferably under £35) and a cheap type of ink that can go with it?

Thank you
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  • Cornucopia
    Cornucopia Posts: 16,156 Forumite
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    You can certainly get a new 3-in-1 printer for that price. There are often ink offers with new printers, these days too.

    Also worth looking at is HP Instant Ink (starts from £1.99pm for 50 pages).

    Or you can probably pick up a used printer locally for a few £££, on eBay, Gumtree, Freecycle etc.
  • Neil_Jones
    Neil_Jones Posts: 8,913 Forumite
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    Many of the Epsons cost more but you can pick up the ink fairly cheaply for them. Some Canons take cheaper ink but you have to be careful with these as the Canons that take a black and a colour block tend to be expensive on the ink.

    There's an Epson XP-342 on Amazon, £38 and a pack of compatible cartridges for it £10.50. All the Epson printers complain about non-genuine ink and have done for years - most of the other brands don't.
  • Phil&Michelle
    Phil&Michelle Posts: 106 Forumite
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    Best option is to find a few printers you like then check online to see how much aftermarket inks are. I don't bother the over priced branded inks and have never had any problems.
  • whattochoose
    whattochoose Posts: 694 Forumite
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    Neil_Jones wrote: »
    Many of the Epsons cost more but you can pick up the ink fairly cheaply for them. Some Canons take cheaper ink but you have to be careful with these as the Canons that take a black and a colour block tend to be expensive on the ink.

    There's an Epson XP-342 on Amazon, £38 and a pack of compatible cartridges for it £10.50. All the Epson printers complain about non-genuine ink and have done for years - most of the other brands don't.
    You can buy ink for Epsons printers quite cheaply from Wilkinsons
  • JP1978
    JP1978 Posts: 527 Forumite
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    Printers are cheap, (branded) cartridges are where the money is made. Ensure that any printer you buy has 'compatible' cartridges.

    However, all inkjets use a little of each ink even if you are printing in mono only - if you print in mono only, a cheap laser printer maybe an option. Some of the Brothers, although the toner that comes is a reduced size / starter they are themselves refillable for just a few pounds. Each fill would last thousands of pages.

    I shal be buying a laser colour at some point!
  • psychic_teabag
    psychic_teabag Posts: 2,865 Forumite
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    I think the cheapest/best option does depend very much on the volume and type of printing that you. If you print a few pages of mono text a month, you'd go one way, but if you print several photos every day, you'd probably go for something quite different.

    (I was in the former camp, and found that inkjets were invariably clogged up each time I came to print something, so have completely abandoned that as a feasible technology for me.)
  • Frozen_up_north
    Frozen_up_north Posts: 2,420 Forumite
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    I mostly use a Samsung mono laser, mine is the older M2022, there is a later version of it (M2026) on Amazon for £34.97 it doesn’t scan/copy, it’s just a fast little printer (20 pages/min). Compatible toner cartridges are £12 ~ £13 each for 1000 A4 sheets at 5% coverage.

    Of course, being a laser printer it’s fast and there is no ink to dry out or clog...
  • Strider590
    Strider590 Posts: 11,874 Forumite
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    Generally speaking, the cheaper the printer, the more expensive the ink. At the lower price points the manufacturers actually make a loss on the sale of the printer itself.
    “I may not agree with you, but I will defend to the death your right to make an a** of yourself.”

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  • Neil_Jones
    Neil_Jones Posts: 8,913 Forumite
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    Strider590 wrote: »
    Generally speaking, the cheaper the printer, the more expensive the ink. At the lower price points the manufacturers actually make a loss on the sale of the printer itself.

    That's the way the system works with printers. The business model is based primarily on the consumables that are priced at some obscene amount and the fact printers don't work without ink.

    Epson did go through a stage at one point where a certain range of models (think it was the initial ones that took the number 18 cartridges) refused point blank to talk to any other cartridge than a genuine one and some others had firmware upgrades pushed to them to behave in the same way. This stance for whatever reason was soon changed and it now isn't an issue with the newer printers.

    Printer ink for what it is is fairly expensive, on the genuine cartridges they're like £10 each and all you get is about 13ml of ink if that. Multiply it up and you can get a bottle of some vintage champagne cheaper. Apparently.
  • Cornucopia
    Cornucopia Posts: 16,156 Forumite
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    It seems to have been kept fairly quiet, but HP now have a free ink plan for light users as part of HP Instant Ink.

    https://instantink.hpconnected.com/uk/en
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