Best economical printer

dori2o

Looking for a new printer as the ink costs for the current one are more than the cost of the printer itself.

It's only for home use, mainly black/white printing but with both kids now at High School and the eldest starting to do project work there will be a need for colour.

Given the cost of colored ink I'm after a printer that doesn't cost the earth when it comes to replacing colored ink.

It it cheaper to have a printer with 1 cartridge for all colours or is it better to have one that has seperate cartridges for the 3 colours (magenta, cyan, yelow)?

Any advice appreciated. I'm looking to keep the spend below £100 and if possible would prefer a 3 in 1 type printer.

Any and all advice appreciated.

steviebabes

I have an Epson XP-225 3 in one, about £40 and the cartridges are £2.50 for 8 on ebay. It works perfectly, no need to pay more.

ballyblack

do you really need colour ?

with most printers you can print black (greyscale) only

Double_V

HP LaserJet 1320 best printers for home use.
It's old model, but I would recommend it.

spud17

Double_V wrote: »

HP LaserJet 1320 best printers for home use.
It's old model, but I would recommend it.

Haha. Agree.

Picked one out of a skip about 2007 complete with brand new toner.
The tab to work the microswitch was bent over, probably when installing the new toner.
A spot of superglue, and it's still in use for quick unimportant stuff, and still with original toner.
I have yet to try it on Win 10, but it works with Win 8.1 64bit.

[Deleted User]

I have a Brother HL-1112 Compact Mono Laser Printer, currently selling at Ryman for £40, which happily uses compatible toner cartridges, which print ~ 1,000 pages, and can be had for well under a tenner each, from Amazon.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_2_16?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=brother+hl-1112+toner&sprefix=Brother+HL-1112+%2Caps%2C220

clangnuts

Bought a cheap HP mono laser about 8 years ago for £39. Still on original toner.

Double_V

spud17 wrote: »

Haha. Agree.

Picked one out of a skip about 2007 complete with brand new toner.
The tab to work the microswitch was bent over, probably when installing the new toner.
A spot of superglue, and it's still in use for quick unimportant stuff, and still with original toner.
I have yet to try it on Win 10, but it works with Win 8.1 64bit.

I am using mine with Windows 10. Works perfectly fine.

dori2o

Thanks for the help.

I opted for the Epson XP-225 in the end and I'm very happy. I managed to get one from a local independent shop which was closing down for £29 brand new.

Checked online for replacement cartridges and can get a full set of the XL cartridges for £9. Can't go wrong there.

Regarding asking why I need to use colour, I don't personally except for the odd photo/picture, but the kids both need colour for school work.

My eldests Art homework was to take and print out 10 photographs, or draw 10 pictures of things that show texture, so she did some of both. We went to the local wood and walked through taking pictures of various different textures and she took some rubbings. The photos had to be in colour.

She came home yesterday all smiles as she got top marks for her work.

Now she has to use these pictures/rubbings to make a picture from them. The end results should be fantastic.

Given a new Colour cartridge for my old printer costs £16 - £22 (Black is around £14-£20) then I've saved myself a fortune by spending £29 on a new printer for which the cost of replacement inks is less than 1/3 that which I was paying.

HappyMJ

dori2o wrote: »

Thanks for the help.

I opted for the Epson XP-225 in the end and I'm very happy. I managed to get one from a local independent shop which was closing down for £29 brand new.

Checked online for replacement cartridges and can get a full set of the XL cartridges for £9. Can't go wrong there.

Regarding asking why I need to use colour, I don't personally except for the odd photo/picture, but the kids both need colour for school work.

My eldests Art homework was to take and print out 10 photographs, or draw 10 pictures of things that show texture, so she did some of both. We went to the local wood and walked through taking pictures of various different textures and she took some rubbings. The photos had to be in colour.

She came home yesterday all smiles as she got top marks for her work.

Now she has to use these pictures/rubbings to make a picture from them. The end results should be fantastic.

Given a new Colour cartridge for my old printer costs £16 - £22 (Black is around £14-£20) then I've saved myself a fortune by spending £29 on a new printer for which the cost of replacement inks is less than 1/3 that which I was paying.

re: printing photo's -- It's cheaper printing the photo at Boots or other similar service and you get a much better quality printout.

Why? The inks are £9 each set and you get "up to" 10 pages of full colour print. The quoted 400 pages on the ink has 5% ink coverage in economy mode. A photo is 100% ink coverage and quite thickly printed. You could get four 4 x 5.33 photo's on one A4 page. You've also got to buy the photo paper at £8 for 255gsm photo paper for 30 sheets of paper. Boot's charge 11p per 4 x 6 photo which would be £13.20 for 120 photo's compared to £35 when you print 120 slightly smaller photo's at home. As you need to clean the nozzles more often at home as the printer is used less then much more ink is wasted. Use the printer at least once per week no matter what or you'll have to go through more than one cleaning cycle next time you use the printer.

dori2o

HappyMJ wrote: »

re: printing photo's -- It's cheaper printing the photo at Boots or other similar service and you get a much better quality printout.

Why? The inks are £9 each set and you get "up to" 10 pages of full colour print. The quoted 400 pages on the ink has 5% ink coverage in economy mode. A photo is 100% ink coverage and quite thickly printed. You could get four 4 x 5.33 photo's on one A4 page. You've also got to buy the photo paper at £8 for 255gsm photo paper for 30 sheets of paper. Boot's charge 11p per 4 x 6 photo which would be £13.20 for 120 photo's compared to £35 when you print 120 slightly smaller photo's at home. As you need to clean the nozzles more often at home as the printer is used less then much more ink is wasted. Use the printer at least once per week no matter what or you'll have to go through more than one cleaning cycle next time you use the printer.

I agree, but for homework she doesn't have to have high quality photos, just standard print settings on plain paper, so long as they are colour and not greyscale.

For proper photo's I generally wait until I have 50 or so pictures I want printing and then follow the instructions held elsewhere on this site to get free prints done by signing upto a photo print service and getting the 'first' 50 or so prints done for free and just paying for the p&p.

Thats what I'll do for the pictures we took yesterday (Saturday) during our visit to Comic-Con in Blackpool.