Should I refill my black cartridges or buy a laser printer?

PopeSock

I've got a Canon MP600 which is a combo scanner/colour inkjet printer, but I'm not doing a lot of colour printing. I'm just starting on a course which will involve a fair bit of assignment work, mostly in black and white. I don't plan on ditching my MP600 completely, but I don't think it's going to be all that cost effective to keep buying original black inks. Which leaves me with one of four options:

a) Buy third party black inks. This would be a bit cheaper, but still not super cheap.

b) Buy a chip resetter, and some ink refill kits, and refill them myself.

c) Buy one of these continuous ink system things, but then again, that could possibly end up wrecking the printer.

d) Buy a black laser printer and use that instead. But then again, I could get stuck with a laser that's not that cheap to run, so some shopping around would be in order. I don't want to spend more than £100 on a new laser. Although there do seem to be some pretty cheap colour printers out there for just over a hundred.

Any recommendations as to what I should do?

zee_2

look up ebuyer.co.uk good comp. have samsung laser ay vg price ,toner is only 1/2 full on new ones , but full new ones are about £32. which is a few pounds less than printer,

niceguyrichy

I can see black refills for around 5/6 quid a shot, so really you just gotta sit down and do some math and figure what's going to be cheapest long run.
I have a Pixma 1000 I use for printing mostly my crosswords, and I can still get refills for that for like one pound fifty delivered if I shop around, so I reckon a cheap (or freecycle) printer is your best bet

RobTang

zee wrote: »

look up ebuyer.co.uk good comp. have samsung laser ay vg price ,toner is only 1/2 full on new ones , but full new ones are about £32. which is a few pounds less than printer,

I have that laser for a few years now (or a similar model anyway), still printing on the orignal toner cart, I dont use it a lot but it has gone though a few reams of paper.
Its ok for cheap copy and drafts but Its not good for really high quality stuff as the heat used to set the toner tends to crease the (admitidly cheap) paper I use =/

Otherwise its fantastic.

AirCooledHeaven

PopeSock wrote: »

d) Buy a black laser printer and use that instead. But then again, I could get stuck with a laser that's not that cheap to run, so some shopping around would be in order. I don't want to spend more than £100 on a new laser. Although there do seem to be some pretty cheap colour printers out there for just over a hundred.

Any recommendations as to what I should do?

I have a samsung B+W laser printer and an Epson D120 colour inkjet. The cost to run the epson is crippling. In comparison the samsung costs nothing to run. You can buy a samsung laser for 50 quid, a compatible toner cartridge is 25 quid and good for 3000 pages. I estimate I'd have to buy well over 100 quids worth of epson cartridges to print the same number of pages.

andy2004

Looking at the cost of printers, the Epson D120 is only about £3 less than the SX200 i recently bought, cartridges for the SX200 cost £14 for 12 cartridges, depending of where you get them they will either have 12ml or 18ml in them each. as a small note that not 3 full sets of 12, you can mix them, example 2 x red, yellow, and blue, and 6 blacks, or 1x red, yellow and blue and 9 blacks, or you could just ask for 12 blacks. as long as theres 12 catridges.and with the use of inksaver with a setting of 25% no difference between 0% printer without inksaver, you could save even more.
Cost of printer D120 according to espon homepage £49.99 seen advertised for £48 pc world.£45 if ordered online. webexclusive.
SX200 £49.99 Comets and pc world., you might be able to get another £5 knocked off if they have their printer discount still going.
10% off when ordered online at comets, you can collect at store
Use discount code 10MFPRINT
http://www.comet.co.uk/shopcomet/category/1970/Multifunctional-Printers/n/1001970+4294966673
forgot to put where to get the compatibles , ebay shop INK-POWER 12ml per cartridge. INKSHOP24 for the 18ml

AirCooledHeaven

RobTang wrote: »

I have that laser for a few years now (or a similar model anyway), still printing on the orignal toner cart, I dont use it a lot but it has gone though a few reams of paper.
Its ok for cheap copy and drafts but Its not good for really high quality stuff as the heat used to set the toner tends to crease the (admitidly cheap) paper I use =/

Otherwise its fantastic.

Yep, my experience is the samsung is a bit picky about paper, forget anything recycled or really cheap

AirCooledHeaven

andy2004 wrote: »

Looking at the cost of printers, the Epson D120 is only about £3 less than the SX200 i recently bought, cartridges for the SX200 cost £14 for 12 cartridges, depending of where you get them they will either have 12ml or 18ml in them each. as a small note that not 3 full sets of 12, you can mix them, example 2 x red, yellow, and blue, and 6 blacks, or 1x red, yellow and blue and 9 blacks, or you could just ask for 12 blacks. as long as theres 12 catridges.and with the use of inksaver with a setting of 25% no difference between 0% printer without inksaver, you could save even more.
Cost of printer D120 according to espon homepage £49.99 seen advertised for £48 pc world.£45 if ordered online. webexclusive.
SX200 £49.99 Comets and pc world., you might be able to get another £5 knocked off if they have their printer discount still going.
10% off when ordered online at comets, you can collect at store
Use discount code 10MFPRINT
http://www.comet.co.uk/shopcomet/category/1970/Multifunctional-Printers/n/1001970+4294966673
forgot to put where to get the compatibles , ebay shop INK-POWER 12ml per cartridge. INKSHOP24 for the 18ml

Thanks for that, it will be cheaper to stick my epson in the bin based on your info. I used to have an epson stylus 880, great quality and very frugal with ink, when it finally died I just bought another epson without question, big mistake...