The Great ‘The Most Economical Printers’ Hunt

Rule 1. NEVER, EVER, BUY A LEXMARK. In my experience the refill costs are horrendous as their cartridges come complete with a new printhead as well as the ink. It was going to cost me over £40 for proper Lexmark replacement cartridges for my £35 printer.

Rule 2. BUY A CANON. Spend as much as you want to, or can afford. In my experience, they generally use simple ink tanks, the print quality is fabulous and they seem to be very reliable. For what it's worth, Canon inkjets are ALWAYS very highly rated by Which? magazine.

I use cheap compatible inks as I don't need the best quality. I have bought proper Canon refills from http://www.valueshop.co.uk/ and they were very reasonable. If you are printing photos you would probably be better with the proper Canon inks.

If you are considering laser devices rather than ink-jet you can get a cost-per-page analysis from www.ameiva.co.uk. On the assumption that their calculations are reasonably accurate you can then do an analysis depending upon the number of pages you anticipate printing over, say, 3 years and what type of printing you will be doing (eg mono, moderate, medium or heavy colour usage, etc). You will need to check the size of the toner cartridges provided with the machine (they are often smaller than the most economical high capacity toners) and decide whether you will use the 'hi-cap' toners in the future.

As an example, if a machine comes with toners lasting for (a quoted) 2,500 sheets (manufacturers normally assume just 5% covereage - fine for black print, probably not for colour) and you reckon that you will print 15,000 sheets over 3 years you can calculate that you will need to buy toner for an additional 12,500 sheets.

Whilst the usage of the initial toners has assumed 5% coverage you can be more accurate with the follow-on toners because Ameiva show the cost per page assuming 5%, 15%, 20%, 40% and even 90%. So, simply multiply the cost-per-page for your estimated coverage by the additional sheets you reckon you'll use, add the purchase price, and you will have the total cost over 3 years.

What this has shown is that many initially cheaper devices will actually cost you much more over their life.

A final point with laser devices is the additional costs for some of the other parts. Some printers will never need such replacements during their useful life, others may need them fairly frequently and yet others may automatically replace such parts every time you change toners (I think HP may do this). By the time these extra parts need replacing it is likely that it will actually be cheaper to buy a new printer (good old throw-away society!).

Old mid-90s lasers are often bombproof, cheap to run and frequently given away from offices... my current printer is an HP Laserjet 4 which was an office throwout. It's made in 1992 but built like a tank (weighs 20kg), and the black and white laser prints are as good as anything a new printer would produce. It's done 100,000 sheets in its lifetime and is still going strong. Many older printers are thrown out due to paper feeding faults, but if you look on the net there are often roller kits available for £10-15 to fix this. Toner is about £15 a pop for 7-9,000 sheets and includes a new drum.

My previous printer was an Apple Laserwriter Select 360 - printer cost a tenner secondhand from a college where it had done 144,000 sheets. It printed 7,000 sheets in my time on the original toner cartridge (the one it had already been using in the college) and then succumbed to a paper feeding fault that I couldn't find a fix on the net for (it wasn't as popular as the HP so not much about it on the net) But three years of printing for a tenner ain't bad, and toner doesn't dry up.

Cost comparison of consumables for different HP lasers.

Using an HP printer have found WH Smith & PC World re-manufactured brand cartridges totally useless.

Recently found the refill ink that you inject £6 for 3 bottles of black ink from Asda (effectively 6 refills) works perfectly.


Also set the default settings to the most appropriate for your use … ‘fast draft’ and may be ‘print using black only’

I think there are a lot of redundant printers around which could be reconditioned and put to good use. Yet the cost of getting them mended is prohibitive. I've managed to acquire two printers for free - an Epson Stylus C62 and an HP deskjet 6122 - from generous friends who have upgraded and had no use for their old printers - the problem is that I seem to have jinxed them: both printers stopped working soon after I'd started using them. I've tried looking at the help section on the manufacturers' websites for hints of how to repair the damage but have not found the answers I need.

I would prefer to get one or both of the printers mended rather than buy a new one; however I have not been able to find an affordable printer repair service. I understand that printer repair firms need to charge a call-out fee and can't guarantee to repair the damage I seem to have done to the printers - however I'm a struggling self-employee on a tiny, tiny budget. Can any Moneysavers suggest an affordable and reliable printer repair firm, preferably in London?