Help me decide on a new printer (please)

TheVikster

Must be economical to run - budget £100ish (£130 at a stretch) Fancy a wireless all in one. Will be used for general printing and sometimes photos

I think I have narrowed down to 2

Canon Pixma MP640

or an HP PhotoSmart Wireless (£80 down from £130 in Argos) - tried to post a link but can't as I'm new!

I looked at the Kodak Easyshare 5250 but was put off by someone who said that although cartridges are cheap they don't last long... a false economy?

So any advice would be appreciated please as I'm not good at decisions!

I_luv_cats

I bought a HP photosmart C4680 all in 1 for £40 from Tesco. I didn't think it was worth paying for wireless.

The Kodak had a low Which score.

Test flower photo was very good quality.

The ink cost £15 total for both from Play.com (Black cart and color cart 300)

TehJumpingJawa

I too am looking for a printer deal atm.

Ethernet is a necessity for me as it'll be shared across a home network, and is preferable to wifi as my router is a little flakey when it has lots of wifi clients.

HP is out of the question as their ink is far too expensive, I want a cheap to run all-in-one printer. Epson or Kodak seem to be the cheapest printers to run, thanks to extremely cheap 3rd party inks.
So long as the print quality is comparable to my current HP F4280 I'm not fussy.

My budget is a little tighter, as I don't want to spend much over ~£50.

I_luv_cats

Printer Cost of printer 3-year running cost Total Cost

Epson Stylus Photo PX800FW £260 £234 £494
Epson Stylus Photo PX700FW £140 £248 £388
Canon Pixma MP980 £233 £151 £384
Lexmark X4975 £132 £215 £347
HP Photosmart C6380 £134 £172 £306
Kodak EasyShare ESP 9 £194 £76 £270
HP Photosmart D5460 (ink) £68 £175 £243
Canon Pixma iP4600 (ink) £80 £153 £233
Canon Pixma MP540 £78 £145 £223
Epson Stylus Office B40W(ink) £83 £131 £214

Printer cost / Ink cost / Total

zippybungle

I have a Kodak Printer (sorry can't remember the model) but it is the wireless, scanner and printer combo. i've had it about a year and not had any problems *touches wood*. Easy to use and cheap ink.

I've also got a Canon Ip4700 (not wireless) which again is easy peasy to use, the Canon Ink is very expensive, but you can other brands of ink to fit it.

Zippy x

TehJumpingJawa

I_luv_cats wrote: »

Printer Cost of printer 3-year running cost Total Cost

Epson Stylus Photo PX800FW £260 £234 £494
Epson Stylus Photo PX700FW £140 £248 £388
Canon Pixma MP980 £233 £151 £384
Lexmark X4975 £132 £215 £347
HP Photosmart C6380 £134 £172 £306
Kodak EasyShare ESP 9 £194 £76 £270
HP Photosmart D5460 (ink) £68 £175 £243
Canon Pixma iP4600 (ink) £80 £153 £233
Canon Pixma MP540 £78 £145 £223
Epson Stylus Office B40W(ink) £83 £131 £214

Printer cost / Ink cost / Total

Are you quoting from another source, or is this information you have collected from your own experience?
Does it take into account 3rd party inks?
What is the printer utilization over this 3-year period? how many pages have been printed?

Quoting completely unfounded stats really isn't very helpful.

I_luv_cats

The running cost quide is from Which

chippy2u

Go for the Canon MP 640. I have a Canon MP 620 (earlier model of the 640) and I am very happy with it. Printing quality is very good (inc. photos) It's very quiet. It takes compatible ink carts (I use the chipped ones which I buy from 'InKredible', for about £1.50/2.00 each, depending on their special offers) and you don't have to change all the carts at once even the first time, just as each one runs out. If you do have a print head blockage (which I haven't had in the past year or so) you can take out the seperate print head and clean it. Overall, IMHO, a very good all-round printer.

Russel245

I_luv_cats wrote: »

Printer Cost of printer 3-year running cost Total Cost

Epson Stylus Photo PX800FW £260 £234 £494
Epson Stylus Photo PX700FW £140 £248 £388
Canon Pixma MP980 £233 £151 £384
Lexmark X4975 £132 £215 £347
HP Photosmart C6380 £134 £172 £306
Kodak EasyShare ESP 9 £194 £76 £270
HP Photosmart D5460 (ink) £68 £175 £243
Canon Pixma iP4600 (ink) £80 £153 £233
Canon Pixma MP540 £78 £145 £223
Epson Stylus Office B40W(ink) £83 £131 £214

Printer cost / Ink cost / Total

I'm sure you could bring those running costs down if you bought a moderate stock of ink during a deal of some description. And of course amount of usage will play a large factor.

tonynw

One thing to remember is how much ink is in the cartridge ??? a lot of people think that buying an in cartridges is like buying a pint of milk one pint of milk will hold the same amount of milk as another but it is not the same with ink cartridges ?

people think that 1 ink cartrdige is the same as another but they are not.

Epson original TO711/2/3/4 all have 5.5ml of ink in them and are about £6 each the compatibles i buy have 13ml of ink in them for £1.79 each so over double the amount of ink for less than a third of the cost of the original cartridges.

i can buy compat cartridges at my local market for £1 each but they only hold 3ml of ink.

tonynw.

tonynw

TheVikster wrote: »

Must be economical to run - budget £100ish (£130 at a stretch) Fancy a wireless all in one. Will be used for general printing and sometimes photos

I think I have narrowed down to 2

Canon Pixma MP640

or an HP PhotoSmart Wireless (£80 down from £130 in Argos) - tried to post a link but can't as I'm new!

I looked at the Kodak Easyshare 5250 but was put off by someone who said that although cartridges are cheap they don't last long... a false economy?

So any advice would be appreciated please as I'm not good at decisions!

Buy an Epson printer for the folowing reasons

1 any printer can be wireless if you buy a print server.
2 compat cartridges are very cheap.
3 individual ink tanks 1 black and 3 colours some printers just have 2 cartridges 1 x black and 1 x colour the problem is with the colour cartridge is that it holds all 3 inks ( red blue and yellow) so when one colour runs out you have to change the cartridge and you bin what is left in the cartridge of the other colours.
4 Epson not expensive to buy in the first place.
5 even original cartridges are not as expensive as hp/canon or lexmark and kodak.

tonynw