Best 3 in 1 Printer?

Hard_food_for_midas

I've seen in another thread Epson XP-225. This still the best for home office use - printing, photocopying, scanning?

Don't need anything too fancy and don't want to be ripped off with ink costs.

Thanks

Neil_Jones

They're all as good as bad as each other, the devil is in the detail on the running costs but typically balances itself out - HPs (and Canon) are usually cheap but the ink is often expensive, while Epsons and Brothers are more expensive to buy but cheaper for the ink.

Kodak printers by the way are a rule until themselves. It is not "glorified cheap printing" as the adverts decree as they're not particularly cheap on ink, though the printers themselves look cheap they're about the same price as Epson.

forgotmyname

They are not made as well as they used to be. My old RX620 is like a brick compared to the newer epsons that weigh virtually nothing.

Tyler_Du

I would be on the lookout for a reasonable priced laser jet, no dried / clogged up print heads when you come to use it. Sure you can get a colour one for < £100. Cheap ink fills as well.

I guess it very much depends on your budget and how much printing you'll be doing

zagubov

I've had HP, Epson and Canon, but Canon seemed to be the most mechanically durable. Do you need it to do double-sided, or staple the paper?

Brand_X

You've basically got three choices:

1. A printer that is economical on ink but is crap.
2. A printer that is good but guzzles ink.
3. Buy a professional commercial printer.*

I plumped for a slightly older Canon Pixma MX925 which is a shameless ink-guzzler, but I solved that problem by buying ultra-cheap ink cartridges on eBay - it was about £15 for 50! And yes they work just fine.


However, there is a big fat ugly fly in the ointment: Let me introduce you to the Canon B200 error message: I bought my printer as a reconditioned unit (a very reasonable £80) which means it was probably first activated a year or two before I bought it; I then used the printer occasionally for two years with no problems.

ERROR B200
1. Turn the power off and unplug the power cord from the power supply.
2. See the manual and contact the service center.

It bricks itself. No amount of pushing buttons does anything; if the ink printer has a fault, it also locks you out of the Fax and scanner. Why does this happen? According to rumour - and it's probably true - Canon, and who knows how many other printer manufacturers, set the EEPROM chip to flag the date that the unit is activated and then after a couple of years generate a false error message that forces you to either pay for the unit to be "serviced" or buy a new one. In this case, the B200 error.

Fortunately there does seem to be a solution - my printer is still working at least for the time being. It's recommended that you take out the printer head (might be screwed-in - check before trying to force it out) and give it a good wash to flush out the old ink, dry it out, put it back in, and then turn the printer back on, but with the front cover OPEN; as the printer head slides left, you slam the door closed before it gets to the middle, and hey presto, it works again. Or in the case of my printer, it did after the fourth try.

So, I am !!!!ed off by the B200 fiasco, but it's damn good printer apart from that, and the ink is dirt-cheap if I buy generic on eBay.


*Which may have the exact same problem.

John_Gray

A friend of mine had an Epson XP-225 - which got bricked during a failed firmware download. Epson technical support couldn't suggest anything to fix it.

Entirely anecdotal, and quite possibly a one-off, but I'll be sticking with Canon MFPs...

Pincher

Ask a student. I had a tenant who found a website that sold cheap cartridges, and he bought a pack of ten (roughly) at a time. It only works for his model of Epson, so you need to know somebody who knows the precise combination that works.

I bought some genuine cartridge for an Epson, in New Jersey, USA, and they seemed to disable the Epson, which was a UK printer. It's just too much hassle to work it out, which is the manufacturer's intention.

I just buy genuine HP cartridges. I go through a set for £50 a year. If I print more, I would try to do something about it.

Keezing

All I'm saying is, I got a lot of enjoyment from taking my HP printer down the local tip and smashing it into the container as hard as I possibly could.

Never again.

#anythingbutHP

elsien

I have a Canon Pixma. Does for me but its main drawback is no document feeder if you're scanning or copying more than one page. Doable, but a faff it's it's something you need to do regularly.

Hard_food_for_midas

Thanks all. I ended up just getting an Epson XP-442. There is far too much consumeristic choice out there - I'm completely baffled and manufacturers have me exactly where they want me - dazed and confused and sell me a device with inbuilt obsolescence. I'll just try hardly to ever use the thing!