Can you suggest a colour printer not laser

chickmug

I already have a B&W laser printer with enough toner to last me forever but I need to print out some colour stuff but not phtos.

It will be mainly A4 sheets with quite of lot of colour on each side and usually four page documents on a decent weight paper. My old experience, with ink jets, is that they took a long time to dry and printing both sides was not a great end result and it was easy to smudge the sheets. Unless the technology has moved on.

I don't want to spend a fortune as the need will only be for a few months.

The other alternative is to take a memory stick to a High Street print shop but this will be less convenient as I am 40 minutes drive from the nearest.

Any ideas and what do I need to budget?

chickmug

Anyone pleeese?

RobTang

cheap inkjets are ten a penny these days, they just push out new ones every now again again.

I saw in Tesco today they had a cheapish £40~ HP all in one type printer with a little lcd screen for previews reduced from £100.
Given the print heads are on the carts and ive always found hp printers to be decent, thats what id go for atm

cmatt360

RobTang wrote: »

cheap inkjets are ten a penny these days, they just push out new ones every now again again.

I saw in Tesco today they had a cheapish £40~ HP all in one type printer with a little lcd screen for previews reduced from £100.
Given the print heads are on the carts and ive always found hp printers to be decent, thats what id go for atm

got that as an upgrade for mumsie matt - and she loves it :T really good, solid, build quality and the footprint on her desk is minimal :beer:

BikerEd

I have a HP Officejet Pro L7590. It is a very impressive all-in-one with fax, scanner, Ethernet, memory card slots and double-side printing. It uses separate cartridges for each colour, which can be obtained cheaply from the likes of Choice Stationery. The print quality is superb, as is the double-sided print handling. Having owned it for 6 months I can't fault it.

Bowling_4_Gold

Got an Epson Stylus DX4000 (Printer, Scanner & Copier) for about £40 in Tesco - does the job well and the cartridges are relatively cheap compared to the £35+ for a set of HP cartridges...

Pikeyp

I bought a cheapie Canon last year .. also got £20 cash back on it which meant it only cost £25!

Superb quality , (much better than Epsons) .. possible downside though is more expensive cartridges of course, but when you consider the print head is part of the cartridge , you virtually get a new printer each time you replace them.

Highly recommended!!

sharkie

Get a printer with separate ink colours. Please realise that if you were to coat an a4 page in purely one colour, then you will only be able to print off around 16-25 pages before an average cartridge is empty.

Printing on both sides is still only offered by a few. "Decent weight"??? they are mostly all designed for the standard photocopy paper - 80gram

chickmug

Thanks all for your help so far.

I know doing 2 sides will mean doing it manually which I accept rather than spending more on a full duplexing model.

Can anyone tell me how easy it is to smudge the prints. Not just when they come out of the eprinter but when they are dry?

TheFlyingGerbil

If you buy the official inks (i.e. not the compatible ones) then they are all good quality from any make. It is generally just the cheap imitation inks that smudge and don't come out as vibrant.

P.S. No, I don't work for a printer company, and I'm sure there will be people along telling you how fantastic compatible inks are this is just my personal opinion, but it sounds like you are interested in quality and you get what you pay for.

chickmug

TheFlyingGerbil wrote: »

If you buy the official inks (i.e. not the compatible ones) then they are all good quality from any make. It is generally just the cheap imitation inks that smudge and don't come out as vibrant.

P.S. No, I don't work for a printer company, and I'm sure there will be people along telling you how fantastic compatible inks are this is just my personal opinion, but it sounds like you are interested in quality and you get what you pay for.

In my business we had loads of printers, over the years, but in the end a laser colour and several duplexing B&W lasers. The last inkjets were HP and I never found you could refill without the quality falling right off but we could with the B&W lasers.