Printer for Student

Tall_man_2

Looking at buying a printer for my son who is at Uni. He wants a economical printer with cheap running costs for printing projects/work etc. If its not cheap to run he doesn't want it.

I'm looking at 2, The Cannon Pixma iP2600 and the Epson Stylus S20, both cost about £34.

I'm not an expert and have spent ages trying to get a staight honest answer.

Any ideas on what one to go for or any other suggestions round about that price.

Cheers

fatnbald

The reason the printer is £34 is that they sell them at a large loss to get you to pay the huge mark up cost on replacement cartridges, I estimate that inkjet ink is around £1000 per litre at a charge of around £15 for a 15ml cart (rought cost of a HP black cart for one of my printers), Some of the older models can be picked up for peanuts off ebay and use 45ml carts which are around the same 15 ish pounds to buy but 3 times the capacity, that is why the printers were £100 to buy at the time.
So get a printer for a fiver off ebay (or even try freecycle) and make sure it can use the 45ml carts, as long as you do not want to print high quality photos it should do most college/office type of printing no problem.
Another option is to buy your carts from ebay where sellers have the ones that are either from multi-paks being sold with no boxes or the ones which are 6 months from the date on them.
You could always try re-manufactured cartridges but I personally have never had much luck with them and avoid them like the plague now as it is too much hassle to find one does not work when you need it urgently.
A few tips on running the printer, unless you really need high qual prints only print in draft, be careful of some programs that change the qual to best without you being informed, also watch the likes of HP and their warnings of the ink running low and needing changing when it will usually run for a lot longer before finally running out.

But as the man said, inkjets are not cheap to run

[Deleted User]

A lazer like the Samsung ML2240 Monocrome Lazerjet is going to be cheaper to run. It comes with a toner cartridge that'll do 600-800sheets and replacements that do 1,500 sheets are about £40.

It only does monochrome though, so if photos need to be printed you might want to look elsewhere.

Conor_3

Tall_man wrote: »

Looking at buying a printer for my son who is at Uni. He wants a economical printer with cheap running costs for printing projects/work etc. If its not cheap to run he doesn't want it.

I'm looking at 2, The Cannon Pixma iP2600 and the Epson Stylus S20, both cost about £34.

I'm not an expert and have spent ages trying to get a staight honest answer.

Any ideas on what one to go for or any other suggestions round about that price.

Cheers

Hmm..The Cannon uses a single cartridge for all three colours so usually it'd be discarded purely for that fact however there is an ink tank kit you can get which attaches externally to the printer and allows you to top it up with your own inks which you can buy in bulk.

The Epson S20 uses individual cartridges for each colour.

So, IMO, unless you also get the optional Ink Tank for the Cannon, it's ruled out due to the fact it is a tri-colour cartridge which means that if say cyan runs out, you've got to change the lot even though there's plenty of yellow and magenta left.
If you are happy getting the ink tank kit, go for the cannon as it'll be cheaper than the Epson in the long run to run due to the cost of the ink even if you buy non genuine Epson cartridges.

Whatever you look at, avoid those that have all three colours (cyan, magenta, yellow) in a single combined cartridge.

esuhl

Before buying a printer, I always have a look on eBay to make sure that there are lots of people selling cheap cartridges. My Canon printer's replacement cartridges are about £15 each... or I can get a pack of 10 for the same price off eBay.

Of course, that won't tell you how long the replacements will last, but it's a start...

Laser printers are usually the cheapest way to print. The printer and toner cost more initially, but work out cheaper in the long run...

Our Canon iP4500 has lasted ages so far - we've had it a few months and I still haven't replaced any of the cartridges. The Epson ones I've had in the past would probably be on their 2nd or 3rd set by now!