UKH

Hi

Looking for recommendations for a small home / office printer.

Mainly used for letters & scanning docs.

Will not be running day & night producing pamplets & Antifa posters

Ta!

I've got an HP Envy 5540 and it's fine.  I prefer the type of printer where the printhead is on the cartridge because they invariably end up clogging up, and the cartridges can be sent back for recycling so it doesn't cause waste to do it this way.

With your requirements I would consider a Laser printer rather than an Inkjet.  Inkjets are dirt cheap because the refills are not. If you need colour and go Inkjet look at the cost of the consumables rather than the cost of the printer. There is a way of refilling Inkjets on the cheap but that's another matter.

Al

I'd second this. If you don't need colour, go for a laser with built in scanner. Plenty of them are wireless if that is useful.

I have an Epson all in one unit, I wouldn't recommend them: 

The thing has probably only printed less than 20 pages of text and has emptied a couple of ink cartridges, because it regularly 'cleans' itself. When a cartridge is at low level it not only disables printing but all functions including scanning. 

Also the drivers are some absolutely god awful bloatware. It has lived in a cupboard for the last year or so and only comes out when I get absolutely desperate, last time I needed to print something I decided it would be easier to make the 50 mile round trip to the office than to do battle with the rotten contraption. 

Interesting. Ours won't work and whilst I accept that the cartridges may need replacing couldn't understand why it wouldn't scan.

Like you I have just been managing without, but with working from home I could really do with getting it up and running again.

How disappointing... I expected another Pritti scandal.

yes, blue passports being printed at least

I've inherited a Canon MG3650 and it's been better than I expected - integrates better with Windows, is neat at 2 sided printing and scanning has been painless too. 

I managed to get a B&W laser printer for less than the cost of a set of colour cartridges for my HP deskjet one black Friday.

There is currently a shortage of office supplies, including printers. Prices are through the roof.

By contrast, I have an Epson WF7610 all-in-one and it's perfectly fine. This is an A3 printer, and is now a few years old, but I'm sure there will be an up-to-date equivalent. Works wirelessly, is reasonable efficient in terms of ink use (although I also have an inkjet for longer print jobs). I'd happily get another one if and when this one dies. 

We have an Epson WF-2630, provided by my wife's company, as she's home-based and needs to print a lot of presentations. It works fine for what we want - fortunately, her company also provide the consumables, which is handy, especially for the home schooling.

Scanner not the best, but does the job.

I do find that, if left for a while, the print heads need cleaning, or it prints blurry bits.

Another vote to go laser.

Also, consider whether you really need a scanner. If you’re only doing the odd document once in a blue moon your phone can do that for you now. Not photos, document scanning - it applies perspective correction to ‘flatten’ the doc out, auto cropping to the document border and processing to remove shadows etc. IOS can do it natively but there will be an app or something for Android too. 

Lazer printer is the best bet. 😀

I use my phone to scan documents and have them converted to PDF's, no mess no fuss.

Edit I bought a Samsung M2026W a couple of years ago for around £80. Fec me they've gone spendy all of a sudden.

Argos website have some reasonably priced bad boy mono printers with lasers and shizzle.

Here's a sample

https://www.argos.co.uk/product/8144913?istCompanyId=a74d8886-5df9-4baa-b77...

I've had a lot of inkjets and what happens is the price of the cartridge's goes up over time normally by a lot, the knock of ones often leak and cause problems. Inkjet printers also just don't seem to last that well and the quality deteriorates as well. My last buy atleast 2 years back now was a black and white laser and so far so good and the ink is lasting well.

I’ve an HP printer that does that. I don’t use mine much at all and yet the ink disappears so quick. Recently I wanted to do a black only copy but it wouldn’t do anything because the light magenta was low. I tried to use a magenta new one in it’s place but it wasn’t fooled frustratingly for me.

Also, HP don’t like you using non HP cartridges, so it insists that you acknowledge warranty is voided if you continue (when it’s prob 10 year out of warranty anyway) and then acknowledge something else irrelevant to trying to do a black copy.

I use a syringe and inks to inject into the old cartridge instead of buying new cartridges.  When I first did it the printer produced an error which I ignored.  I've been doing this for at least 15 years.  It's saved me a fortune and paid for the printer several times over and the results have been fine.

Al

I've been running a fairly humble "domestic" Brother all-in-one inkjet for five years and it has lasted well. However I can't guess at the ink consumption as the company pays for all that. It's probably awful! I am genuinely surprised that the hardware is working so well after all this time. It's pretty good at printing photos too.  It doesn't see HEAVY use. 

I also had a Brother colour laser thing which was barely used (mainly due to user error regarding connecting it to the office WiFi, I admit). But it recently died, despite having seen maybe 5% of the useage of the inkjet one, and costing 3.5x as much, and being more "industrially" specified!

Most modern inkjets require "resetting" for that to work. I.e. they will only report decreasing amounts of ink to the printer, you could refill it and it will still report empty. For some printers that is cheap and easy, for others you literally need to replace the chip on the cartridge.

Mind you, that is the case for some of the cheaper laser printers as well.

That doesn't surprise me. If everybody had caught on to it they would have gone bust.

Al

A few months ago a friend was asking a similar question, I don't recall the exact criteria but I had a look around and, for reasons I've forgotten (but presumably a combination of decent reviews, price, and availability at that time, when printers were SCARCE) I settled on recommending (with no personal experience of it) the HP Envy 6220. He couldn't buy it as the only availability was Argos click and collect (via the Argos eBay outlet(*)) and he was too far from any collection point to make it worthwhile. But one to consider, if you want cheap and cheerful and aren't going the laser/mono route. 

* NB eBay outlets for major retailers have often had stock of stuff that their own websites showed as "out of stock". 

I bought an Epson ecotank model last year. There are no cartridges, you just fill up reservoirs with bottles of ink. You can buy 2 years unlimited printing at the time of printer purchase for around 40quid. Don't have to look hard to find them on sale separately either.

It's been fine for the printing and scanning so far.

A lot of people on the thread quite rightly warning about the price of inkjet cartridges. 
I have no experience of this personally but I gather that there are "ink subscription models" which may be a lot more "fair", I don't know, I haven't looked into it and this is not a recommendation or "marketing" but for example

https://instantink.hpconnected.com/uk/en/l/

How long will they run that plan for?

now that is a good question ! I do not know 

I'm thinking of pulling the pin on an ecotank. Expensive outlay but cheap to run, is that a fair assessment? Have you crunched any numbers? We'd be mainly printing school stuff and the occasional map from my mapping software (so good detail is important). 

Thanks. 

I have an ecotank as well. Very economic. 

Printing not outstanding. But perfectly acceptable. Scanning fine.

I have the old l355 model. Newer models meant to be better. 

Yes. Cheap to run. Ours is a number of years old. In first lockdown I was printing about 10-15 pages a day for my daughter. Didn't really notice the cost, but not done numbers.

Printing OK for maps, but not as good as old 6 ink Canon that cost a lot to run. Newer ones may be better in terms of print quality. 

Thanks, OK is good enough.