Cheapest Printers

ooobedoo

I am looking for a cheap printer that has the cheap cartridges, don't need an all singing all dancing one.

Just for basic printing

saintscouple

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hjb123

im after a cheap printer too to print stuff off my laptop, but we have a printer on the main pc in the house, its one of the fax/scan/print/copy ones but I was after the absolute basic to have in my room with the laptop

the cheapest I have found so far is £18.74 from argos

CrazyIndianZA

be careful, the cheapest printers sometimes have the most expensive cartridges. Its a bit wasteful to the enviornment to throw your printers away (even if its justified). When I bought a canon printer about 2 years ago, the review I read stated that the cartridges were good value for money as opposed to say lexmark.

Steve-o

As CrazyIndian said, cheap printers can often be very expensive for printing, so choose with care.

Lexmark printers are usually very inexpensive (for the printer itself), but the cheaper ones use either a black cartridge OR a colour cartidge at any one time. This means that if a colour cartridge is fitted it makes black by mixing the coloured inks up.
The result is a non-dark black, which drains the cartridge pretty fast. Any printer that uses the colour cartidge to make black is not good for photo prints, and very bad economy.

Printers that have separate cartridges for the individual colours work out more economical, because only cartidges that run out of ink need replacing. I think I saw an Epson D92 in Tesco recently for about £40, which uses separate ink cartidges.

As for ink cartidges, Tesco (and probably the other stores) supply own-brand copies for less than the original makes. The ink quality won't be as good as certain branded inks, depending on the purpose, but you wouldn't notice any difference for general printing.

Another option to consider is refilling your own cartridges. It can be a bit messy, but a kit (from Tesco, Asda, PC World, etc) can cut costs dramatically.

Steve-o

hjb123 wrote: »

the cheapest I have found so far is £18.74 from argos

That HP D1470 seems to be a two cartidge system (black and colour), so that makes it better than a single cartidge printer. If the inks are cheap enough, I'd say it's a bargain.

Kevstir

HP and Lexmark printers are cheap to buy but expensive printers to run, there cartridges have the print heads built in which makes them expensive, epson and cannon have a separate print head that's made to last the life of the printer, this means there cartridges are just ink tanks, this makes the cartridges cheaper, the printers are a little more expensive but works out cheaper in the long run.

Kev

Sylvester

HP D1470

http://www.pcfuel.co.uk/acatalog/HP-DESKJET-D1470-ink-cartridges-hp21-hp22.html

Anyone ever used PC Fuel?

Cartridges from £8.48 to £10.68.

Remanufactured gets you alot more than new - are the remanufactured ones any good?

Looks a decent basic printer at under £20 if you don't want anything fancy!

Nazitf

Kevstir wrote: »

HP and Lexmark printers are cheap to buy but expensive printers to run, there cartridges have the print heads built in which makes them expensive, epson and cannon have a separate print head that's made to last the life of the printer, this means there cartridges are just ink tanks, this makes the cartridges cheaper, the printers are a little more expensive but works out cheaper in the long run.

Kev

In general about how much cheaper are the ink cartridges? I'm not really sure how often I will need to replace the cartridges, but for people not printing huge amounts would it be better to go for an HP? I feel that the printer will break (or I'll spill coffee on it :rolleyes: ) before I break even!

fatbelly

Also £18.74 from Amazon

caren_prangley

hi

I always get my cartidges from phoenixdirectuk.co.uk. I recently had a black cartidge for a epson stylus C44 at £3.89 which i think is a true bargain, colour wasnt a lot more and you get free delivery