The Great ‘The Most Economical Printers’ Hunt

dplumb

I bought a Brother DCP115 which uses the same sort of cartridges as other Brother units (LC900). Unlike the Epson I had before this has no chip to record the usage so you just replace it when it gets empty and can refill it. This is an all in one unit and I've been very impressed with the print, scan and copy quality. I have used Brother original cartridges as they aren't too expensive and it's nice to support them given the printer is fairly cheap and they chose not to put nasty chips on the cartridges ...

The Epson I had before had design issues, there was a vacuum pipe which cleaned the heads, kept clogging up. I'm not a heavy printer user but this thing would just print faded pages then say change perfectly full ink cartridges!! I decided to ensure the replacement had no silly chips on the cartrdiges!

The Brother just does what you expect, full marks to them. Most of them seem identical engines just with network port, paper feed or whatever.

melbury

simond wrote: »

Personally I like my HP Laserjet 1020 which I got from Amazon for £45 a month back or so, the replacement toner costs about £40, although I believe they're meant to last about 2000 pages per toner (also if you don't use printers that often you don't have the problem of ink clogging up, which I always used to have).

Just checked, looks like they're at £50 on Amazon currently, down from their recommended £80 price

I recently bought the HP1018 from Amazon which is very similar to the 1020. Beware though - although it says 2000 pages per toner, this figure is based on 5% coverage per sheet (a stationery rep told me about this), which isn't really that much!

I have a Brother 2040 printer at work which is similar to these HP's, with the exception that the Brother printer has to have a new drum unit bought for it every so often which is VERY expensive! The HP replacement cartridges incorporate a new drum unit, so overall must be a cheaper option.

koru

If you print a lot, you may find it is worth paying for quite an expensive laser. I went for the Kyocera FS-1030D, which you can get for about £170, online, but I think it will be cheapest for me over several years. Several benefits: toners are very cheap; you don't have to replace the drum; it prints double-sided, so I save on paper.

Toner is about £50 for 7,200 pages, which is less than 0.7p per page.

Crucially, Kyocera guarantee the drum for its lifetime (defined as 100,000 pages). In comparison, I could have bought the Brother HL-2030 mono laser printer on the internet for only £83, but I print about 15,000 pages per year. So, I did some calculations of the cost for 50,000 pages (about 3 years use). In that time, this printer would use 4 drums and 19 toner cartridges, so total cost to me (machine, toner, drums, paper) would be £1,227. In contrast, although the Kyocera FS-1030D would cost £100 more to purchase, it would only need 6 toner cartridges and no drums. So, the total cost of the Kyocera would be only £800! So, by spending an extra £100 upfront, I will save £500 over the following three years.

As a bonus, the Kyocera is a much better printer - faster, better prints. Plus more ecologically sound, as I send 4 fewer drums to landfill (I donate the empty toner cartridges to the local school for recycling).

Paper is probably as big an influence on running costs as ink/toner. A laser will give great results with cheap photocopier paper. If you shop around you shouldn't need to pay more than £2.50 per ream (500 sheets) of A4, which is 0.5 pence per sheet. But you can easily pay twice that amount if you aren't careful.

The other advantage of the Kyocera is that it is a duplex printer, so you can print on both sides of paper. A duplex printer will cost a little more upfront, but will half your paper costs. How soon this will pay off for you depends on how many pages you print. For me it will save about £100 over 3 years.

Landewednack_Lad

I have recently purchased a Brother DCP-135C printer which works well. However I cannot find anywhere that sells cheap ink cartridges for this model (code LC-970). Can anyone help me PLEASE.

JJ112

I agree with the post by Johnts. I have the same canon printer he has just ordered and with two kids it gets a lot of use. The ink cartridges are also available from ebay 'abacus-uk' as well for £1 each, although to get them for this you need to buy between 5 and 10 at a time.

Whilst not 'Canon' original equipment cartirdges they seem to last just as long.

gnomie_2

I have a HP deskjet F380. I try to limit usage, being as im a student and cant really afford the HP cartrage prices. The problem is the official HP cartrages only hold 5ml of ink making it very expensive. Does anyone know of any compatables that print in reasonable quality and hold more ink?

LEICESTERCITYFC

http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/6703174/Trail/C%24cip%3D1500006463.Office%2C%2BPC%2Band%2Bphones%3EC%24cip%3D1500006501.Printers%3EC%24cip%3D1500006505.Inkjet%2Bprinters.htm


Tha above printer seems a bargain!
Hp as opposed to the cheapo Lexmark which after buying last time i wouldn't touch again!
Im sure someone can point out a con in the above HP but if all you want is a standard B+W printer its fine isn't it????

LEICESTERCITYFC

So hp only have 5ml of ink in their cartridges....maybe THAT is the con!!!

likeahippy

I haven't got it yet but there's a time-limited offer I thought you might like. Kodak have brought out a new printer series (5300 and 5500) producing, they claim, excellent quality photo prints and up to A4 with all sorts of features. Most importantly replacement cartridges cost under 10 quid each (2 needed) and they say that you will save around 50% of printing costs with their system using less ink. Don't ask me how but visit their site. http://www.kodak.com/eknec/PageQuerier.jhtml?pq-path=10586&ekreferrer=aff_kelkoo&pq-locale=en_GB

Until 30th November 2007 there's 30 quid off the 140 pound price tag by downloading and posting a voucher with a sales receipt copy.:D

Please be nice, this is my first post!

statusquo44

Hi,

I'm Peter and new to this board, but I had to register as I do have something to contribute to this printer debate. I've not had time to read every post here, so I apologise if I repeat something that someon else has written.

What you have to bear in mind with cartridges is that, not only are they expensive for what you get, but even when you do get the genuine cartridges (and it is always recommended that you get genuine cartridges, because the printed circuits on the patterned cartridges are never as good) they never fill them to the capacity of the cartridge. So you may only get one thats 3/4s, a half or in some cases only a third full (and that has been known!)

Better to suffer the initial outlay of a pair of genuine cartridges and then get them refilled by a reputable ink refilling station. I have a guy local to me. he is a friend, but I'm getting nothing from recommending him to y'all. he does run a mail order service and will fill practically every cartridge you send him to the maximum capacity, it will last a lot longer and if your printer circuit is worn, he'll replace that too for an extra couple of quid. So the end result is you'll be getting a genuine but used cartridge with as much as double the amount of ink you'd get retail for half the price. How sad's that?

Mr Ink
26 Elm Parade,
Elsm Park Avenue
Hornchurch
RM12 4SA

01708 477 474