The Great Cheapest Printer Hunt

siren13577

Just a quick one, can anyone provide me with a list of four or so printers that I would be best off buying? I had a read through but am very confused (post pregnancy brain and lack of sleep), all we need it for is printing off documents, no fancy photos or pictures. It seems to me that epson or canon is the way to go but I'm unsure, cheap ink is a must please.

How does this one seem:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Canon-Pixma-iP3300-Photo-Printer-BRAND-NEW_W0QQitemZ260256298206QQcmdZViewItem?hash=item260256298206&_trkparms=72%3A12%7C39%3A1%7C65%3A12&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14

or should I avoid it? Sorry to be so clueless, thanks to all in advance.

Cheers!

murphydavid

siren13577 wrote: »

Just a quick one, can anyone provide me with a list of four or so printers that I would be best off buying? I had a read through but am very confused (post pregnancy brain and lack of sleep), all we need it for is printing off documents, no fancy photos or pictures. It seems to me that epson or canon is the way to go but I'm unsure, cheap ink is a must please.

How does this one seem:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Canon-Pixma-iP3300-Photo-Printer-BRAND-NEW_W0QQitemZ260256298206QQcmdZViewItem?hash=item260256298206&_trkparms=72%3A12%7C39%3A1%7C65%3A12&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14

or should I avoid it? Sorry to be so clueless, thanks to all in advance.

Cheers!

If you think it a good use of time you can save a lot of money by refilling the cartridges. I do, and my investigations resulted in my buying an Epson stylus Photo R240 and a cartridge chip re-setter. Because the re-setter is very cheap. The jet mechanism is in the printer and not on the cartridge. Epson had to put the chip on because their cartridges have a very good clean ‘restart’ after being filled.
I have found Cheap printer = dear cartridges. So if like me you use the ink with gay abandon refilling is a winner.
Hope this is of use???

wednesday2212

There is a full comparison of every HP inkjet printer here. http://www.recycleinkcartridges.co.uk/

Just click on the more ink for your money link and it gives you a full break down ml for ml on the cheapest printer. I think the Epson, Lexmark and Canon will be coming next.

tifrap_2

There is now an ISO standard for claims of prints per cartridge. The standard takes two forms: ISO/IEC 24711 specifies the test procedure and ISO/IEC 24712 defines the types of pages to print - so any manufacturers claims cited as ISO/IEC standard should in theory be consistant. But does it pan out? Well the american magazine PC Mag did a test on the standard and found that makers claims where the standard was cited were within 90% accurate (often within a few pages at a 500 page average).

the article is here: pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2183959,00.asp
(sorry can't post links yet)

So if you can identify a projected print per cartridge number quoted as ISO/IEC - it should be a fairly accurate indication.

There is another website that claims to calculate true printer costs based on manufacturers claims over a 5 year period - the site is American, but can be used to get a rough idea of what manufacturers and models are the most competitive. it is here: printer.com

I am currently trying to identify wether it is more cost effective to go for a printer that has individual colour cartridges rather than an all-in-one colour cartridge - To me it seems logical that only replacing the one empty colour will be cheaper than having to replace them all due to one colour being depleted. seems that only epson and cannon use this approach.

This thinking is backed up by my main printer, an Epson R2400 a profesional a3+ lightfast, waterproof printer which takes 8 cartridges plus has options for 2 types of dark black. It is almost as good as having your own darkroom, but a whole set of cartridges for it costs over £110 - in reality though, i only need to replace a single cartridge occasionaly, so its running costs aren't too bad, bearing in mind that it is for high definition images and not for dashing out a quick letter.

PrinterSavingExpert

I can tell you now the single most important factors prior to purchasing a new printer is page volume and page coverage. If you want to source the most efficient device then knowing how many pages you print on average per month and the average density of each image is key to cost efficiency. Only with this information are you able to calculate your Total Cost of Ownership (Cost of device + lifetime cost of supplies) over your perceived lifetime, normally 3-5 years for example.

In my experience most people can't be bothered to put the effort in and simply prefer to trust an industry professional to come up with some efficient recommendations and the end result is the following:

The UK spends £3.35billion a year on print hardware (printers and supplies) and approximately £1billion of this figure is directly attributed to overspend primarily due to consumers purchasing the wrong devices at the outset. There are (as of today 27/01/17) around 1,800 print hardware devices on the market from approximately 30 different manufacturers and there is not one single supplier who caters for all of them, so when it comes to cost efficiency you either do your due diligence or trust someone else to do it for you, whichever way you choose the average overspend per unit is almost 30% per sale regardless.

I am currently in the process of creating my own PrinterSavingExpert blog to help and guide consumers towards maximum efficiency and I do offer a free service to help people find their most efficient devices if they're prepared to do a little research to find out their usage volumes. I can even help with some tips to sourcing this information relatively quickly and even have data collection software which can gather this automatically for any device with network capabilities should you have multiple machines.

As a new subscriber to MonerSavingExpert I am not allowed to post links so happy to help through this forum if required :j

About Me - With 28 years' experience in every facet of the print hardware industry from repair engineer, thru service, marketing, sales and managed print I have seen it all. I have more industry information at my fingertips than most and am dedicated to helping consumers identify and ultimately eliminate print hardware overspend. Hopefully a thumbs up from Martin :money: