Inkjet or Laser?

Smag

Hi I have a bog standard (one of the cheapo dell that crop up from time to time) printer, which seems to eat up cartridges for fun and in turn cost the earth to replace. I even tried to refill but wasn't impressed.

My wife is at Uni so needs a decent quality output for her assignments and the kids are both doing projects which entail copious amounts of printing out pictures, so I would really appreciate some advice as to the best printer to buy for the job. I have heard that laser printers are good and efficient on the ink but expensive or should I invest in a decent inkjet?

I am not bothered about these photoprinter models with screens and memory card slots etc.

Thanks in advance for any advice given and if you have a recommendation all the better as there seems to be so many out there!!

Steven

lee634

Yes Laser is more expensive to buy and running costs are high as well, but the quality can be better.
I personally have an epson stylus photo R300 i has got the memory card slot but not the Picture display screen you can pic then up for just over £80 online.
they have 6 Cartridges which can be replaced separatley which is always a bonus,
shopping around you can get non epson cartridges for a couple of pounds

Hope this is of some help to you

IvanOpinion

Unless you have high volume output I think a laser is probably overkill. Like lee above I have an Epson (although it is an R200 .. obviously I am not as well off ). I get replacement ink cartridges for abour £15 a set from 'choice stationary' (not the cheapest I have seen but the ink quality is good). Recent reviews seem to point towards HP having good balance between spped, print quality and reasonable running costs.

Make sure though that you can get replacement cartridges ... I read somewhere that you can only buy original cartridges for certain Canon models.

Ivan

lightstorm_2

Laser Printers every time.The Cartridges may be slightly more expensive initally but they can be easily refilled for under £10.Mine has a 5000 page output.Inkjets are a rip off.It's often cheaper to buy a new printer than renew the cartridges for them.
:rotfl:

TOBRUK

My wife is at Uni so needs a decent quality output for her assignments and the kids are both doing projects which entail copious amounts of printing out pictures, so I would really appreciate some advice as to the best printer to buy for the job. I have heard that laser printers are good and efficient on the ink but expensive or should I invest in a decent inkjet?

I can't comment on a laser printer, but I can recommend the Epson R300, it is absolutely brilliant. It would be ideal for your wife for her assignments, it has first class photo quality, it does have memory card slots where if you have a digital camera would be handy as it automatically loads the pictures and you can save them on your computer or just print out.

It prints CD/DVD's - I use a lot of this, if you buy printable disks the R300 has software where you can design a cd or dvd cover where you can also import a photo on it etc and it will print on to the disk. This is also a great feature especially if you have home movies, films you wish to keep and so the dvd is printed.

This is my second epson R300 actually, my last one eventually gave up BUT I wore it down to the ground as I was printing software and covers for my nephew - it was like a factory here! I can't tell you how many 100's I printed, so really it wasn't surpring that it died on me!

The ink cartridges (there are 6) will print until they are empty - you get reminders every now and then, things like 'cyan cartridge has less than 5% ink left would you like to change now or remind later', but it will print up until one of the cartridges is completely empty.

You can get epson compatible cartridges which are a lot cheaper, but for me (because I want the best quality) I only buy Epson original ink cartridges BUT I have found a couple of sellers on ebay which sell the original cartridges (and use them regularly) where you can buy the whole set for around £20.00!

This would also be ideal for your children and their work for school, to be honest it does a lot for the money. It also prints thick card, and you have many settings e.g. gloss paper,photo paper etc.

This printer is available (although epson is bringing a newer model out/or out now) for about £82.00 at ebuyer, I've just checked. The R200 is an older model but does print cd's also and you can get this one for around £60.00.

IMPORTANT
Whichever printer you decide on, make sure the INK CARTRIDGES are included. The reason I say this is that I discovered that some were selling the printer without, and so they were making a packet (they were removing the cartridges!) - the ink was almost as expensive as the printer!