I'm after a printer that's cheap to run

riffy2016

Mostly use the printer for my sons school work and sometimes use colour print.  So what printer would you suggest? 

Cisco001

If you are not printing a lot, you can go for cheap epson/ Canon 3 in 1 printer that takes oem ink cartridges.

If there is a lot of printing, get laser.

P.S. Don't go for HP with subscription

Grey_Critic

Pays your money and takes your choice. I have been using a Canon Pixma 3600 series for years about £40 from Argos.

MyRealNameToo

If you can live without colour then definitely laser, the original toner of my Brother printer got the low toner message after 3.5 years but actually made it to 5 years before the print was impacted. Like many you dont get a full sized toner when you buy the printer and I bought an XL replacement for £25 when the message first appeared. 3 years in on the replacement and no messages yet, who knows how long it'll last.

If you arent printing much laser are better as they dont have issues with ink drying etc. Originally got it to go alongside an Epson photo printer that was great prints but very expensive to run and if you leave it a couple of weeks between prints you wasted a ton of ink running the cleaning cycles to get it to work... it now won't print yellow and no matter the number of cleaning cycles its not improved. 

ButterCheese

It is a bit of a gamble.  We've mostly had HP Deskjets, the 3-in-1 kind.  Scanner is always good.  The printing is fairly good when it works but there have been a lot of mixed errors, though never with the ink.  We've mostly had errors with the printer connecting via wifi.  So we connected it with a cable.  My Dad had the same issue.  His issues stopped when we plugged in the cable, but my partner's one still only prints when it feels like it, often requiring a few restarts.  So I think it's probably software/driver based.  Part of me feels that they do this on purpose and hold you to ransom until you subscribe to their ink package.  But I could be wrong

vacheron

A black and white laser is cheaper in the long run if you don't need colour. 

Failing that any decent inkjet printer brand confirmed to happily accept third party ink cartridges, or with a re-fillable tank.

And last, but most certainly not least:
Avoid ANYTHING that mentions "HP", "INSTANT INK" and/or "SUBSCRIPTION" like your life depends on it! 

ouraggie

I must say, i bought aHP printer a few years ago, with the instant ink. I pay £1.79 a month, so 21.48 pa. For this I get to print 10 pages a month, which is enough for me. If i dont use them all, they roll over until i do. Prior to this i was always having to buy new cartridges, as they would dry out between bouts of printing. I see the £21.48 as roughly equal to the cost of buying 1 or 2 cartridges every year. However, i don’t need to go into town and buy cartridges and  i always have working ink when i need it.

Undervalued

Cisco001 said:

If you are not printing a lot, you can go for cheap epson/ Canon 3 in 1 printer that takes oem ink cartridges.

If there is a lot of printing, get laser.

P.S. Don't go for HP with subscription

vacheron said:

A black and white laser is cheaper in the long run if you don't need colour. 

Failing that any decent inkjet printer brand confirmed to happily accept third party ink cartridges, or with a re-fillable tank.

And last, but most certainly not least:
Avoid ANYTHING that mentions "HP", "INSTANT INK" and/or "SUBSCRIPTION" like your life depends on it! 

Interesting comments without knowing the volume and type of documents the OP intends to print!

Also worth noting both Canon and Epson offer some subscription options too.

Under some circumstances (certainly not all) subscription models can be attractive.

vacheron

@ouraggie @Undervalued On its own, the principle is fine, but what really infuriated everyone is if you stop the subscription, it locks down the printer (which you have paid for), rendering it useless.

there are even reports that it disables the printer when the subscription stops even when there is still ink from previous subscriptions left in the cartridges.

Also, if you try to use third party ink it also locks the printer down. So your options are basically resume your subscription or throw the printer away as e-waste and buy a different one from someone else. 

Undervalued

vacheron said:

@ouraggie @Undervalued On its own, the principle is fine, but what really infuriated everyone is if you stop the subscription, it locks down the printer (which you have paid for), rendering it useless.

there are even reports that it disables the printer when the subscription stops even when there is still ink from previous subscriptions left in the cartridges.

Also, if you try to use third party ink it also locks the printer down. So your options are basically resume your subscription or throw the printer away as e-waste and buy a different one from someone else. 

With HP you can stop the subscription and use genuine shop bought HP cartridges.

With various makes of non subscription printers, firmware updates can and sometimes do make it harder or impossible to use 3rd party cartridges.

That may be frustrating and not "money saving" but these printers are generally sold as lost leaders and the money is made on the ink.

Ink tank printers (which are designed to be refilled from big(ish) bottles of ink are immune from this but generally cost more to start with! 

Grey_Critic

I buy the cartrdges for my Canon from ASDA and no problems.