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Need another simple printer/copier/scanner but not HP. Advice for digital numpty please.

Mike Reed

pfm Member
Our HP Envy has become erratic and although the inks were always pricey, they doubled about a year ago and the machine doesn't like alternatives. It's done well (5+ years) but isn't used often (maybe that's the problem). My wife installs and trouble-shoots and is sure we need another machine.

There was a thread here earlier in the year about printer recommendations and with discussions about different formats. Our use, connected to a desk-top, is basic, and the Envy did what we need. Looking at Argos, the machines still seem rather cheap (our Envy was £50 a long time ago) so that's not an issue; maybe the ink could be after not being happy with the HP ink durability and cost.

I know nothing about these machines or their spec's and would welcome general and specific advice as to a replacement for our Envy. It sits on a shelf above the monitor, so a front-facing control panel would be a slight asset.
 
Budget? Need double sided printing?

Very generally for home office type work - Brother, for photos - Canon.

Running costs you’d need to know how many pages a month you print and what sort - text, colour docs, pics - but again very generally Brother are about half the price of HP, price per page

Have a look at Printerland or go to Costco
https://www.printerland.co.uk/

 
We bought an Eco-Tank Epson for home use some years ago. It does everything (scans, prints, faxes), plus, the ink costs are ridiculously cheap when compared with HP cartridges.

https://www.epson.co.uk/for-home/ecotank

Photo quality seems OK, but I don't have a basis for comparison.

From the Which? report on the ET-8500:

How much will it cost to print?
Very little. If you were to print 30 pages every month (20 in black text, 10 colour graphics) you’d spend roughly £2.28 a year. For context, some cartridge printers can cost well over £100 per year to print the same amount. So, if you print regularly, you’re very likely to save money over the lifetime of the printer and potentially justify the big upfront cost.
 
Thanks for that, Amber. Shall purchase at Argos as have oodles of Nectar points. Not worried about cost, then, but prefer between £40 and £100. I very much doubt our print run will exceed 100 per annum and don't need double sided; the simpler the better. I note your rec. re. photos or office stuff. As long as it can print out the occasional photo of acceptable quality (maybe for inventory purposes, say), that's good enough.

As we've effectively been HP inl captives, we'd prefer to have access to cheaper but easily obtainable inks, not that our usage makes that such a big issue. Have to add here that the spec's listed for the machines don't really mean much to me but I'm a bit taken aback by those published per page colour printing costs; is it really that pricey? Mono seems okay and most of our printing would be in one colour, though copies wouldn't, I guess.
 
Thanks for that, Amber. Shall purchase at Argos as have oodles of Nectar points. Not worried about cost, then, but prefer between £40 and £100. I very much doubt our print run will exceed 100 per annum and don't need double sided; the simpler the better. I note your rec. re. photos or office stuff. As long as it can print out the occasional photo of acceptable quality (maybe for inventory purposes, say), that's good enough.

As we've effectively been HP inl captives, we'd prefer to have access to cheaper but easily obtainable inks, not that our usage makes that such a big issue. Have to add here that the spec's listed for the machines don't really mean much to me but I'm a bit taken aback by those published per page colour printing costs; is it really that pricey? Mono seems okay and most of our printing would be in one colour, though copies wouldn't, I guess.
Print costs go down significantly the more you spend on the printer. A £200 Epson can be as cheap as 0.5p for colour, usually when someone asks me for a home printer they expect to pay under £100 which makes sense as they usually print in really low volume - you have to weigh cheap pence per page with purchase cost over 3 years - 5 if you're lucky. Printers fail more than any other IT device we look after.

 
We just got an Epson ET2810. It’s fine as long as you use the software on your laptop or phone to control (the display panel on the printer itself is quite basic). The fancier models in the same series have a little screen but were more than 50% more expensive. They all have huge ink tanks compared to the inkjet printers we’ve used before.
 
We've had our Epson 3in1 using the ink tank system for 5 years now and still going strong.
The ink tank system is a tiny fraction of cost compared to cartridges.
I think ours was about £125?
A feature it has that I thought I'd never use is WiFi printing and scanning, dead handy now!
 
Another consideration is to buy a cheap (brother) laser printer and then do any occasional colour printing at shops. We bought a brother laser printer for around $100 in 2014 and we're on our second toner cartridge.
 
Another consideration is to buy a cheap (brother) laser printer and then do any occasional colour printing at shops

Thanks. Learning curve here; didn't know that laser printers used toner, nor anything about the process and costs; obv. no good for (colour) pic's though, and going to my local stationers/printers when I wanted one would bug me; not least as I'd have no idea how that would work. I'm but a simple man, happy as Larry in analogue times and have never really adjusted.

Thanks all for comments and suggestions. The Epsoms seem to be recommended here, but does the larger quantities of ink, presumably costly initially, really justify occasional office use?

The old HP failed last month just after i'd bought a batch of cartridges.

I feel your pain. At least our cartridges were low when the Envy started playing up.

Print costs go down significantly the more you spend on the printer.

More exc. advice which adds to the learning curve. Esp. as being a low user, this approach wouldn't seem appropriate, despite the 'balancing' aspect over, say, 5 years.

I think we had an Epsom a few years back and I remember buying different branded cartridges for it, so presumably there are Epsoms which use cartridges as opposed to filler bottles.
 
Toner doesn't dry out, unlike ink cartridges. We used to have a Canon photo printer which was rarely used and the ink dried before we had a chance to use it. A toner cartridge will sit there for > 5 years unchanged, waiting to be used.
95% of our printing is documents, tickets, tax forms etc so we decided for the 5% of photos we print we'd walk up to the local drugstore / photo store and use their (usually much better) - which opened the option of a laser printer.

The only thing I don't like about the Brother is that the software is not very good and was hard to install - however, once it's working it's working.
 
what are you printing? photos or documents? do you need a scanner?

we use an HP laser jet (prints double sided to save paper) and have a separate Epson scanner.

Previously we had an Epson ink jet and we used more ink unblocking the nozzles than printing.. .
 
what are you printing? photos or documents? do you need a scanner?

we use an HP laser jet (prints double sided to save paper) and have a separate Epson scanner.

Previously we had an Epson ink jet and we used more ink unblocking the nozzles than printing.. .

Personally i use the scanner more and more and the printer bit less as time goes on. In an ideal world i would never use paper.

Fortunately OH works in supermarkets and they still use loads of one sided printing which she fishes from the bin and brings home for recycling.

Not that i'm a tight old git obvs!
 
do you need a scanner?

Most certainly do. Occasionally scan to documents. Like Dweezil, most of my printing in on one-sided paper for my files. They're letters and stuff sent mostly by building societies/banks; they really do waste paper but I don't !

Previously we had an Epson ink jet and we used more ink unblocking the nozzles than printing.. .

Despite using refill inks for our Epsom, we didn't experience blockages (my wife says); maybe the odd one? Too long ago.

Favourite at the mo' is a £60 ish Epsom inkjet pr/cop/scanner from Argos (4 min's walk away in Sainsbury's). The four inks are about the same price; maybe a bit cheaper than HP's 2 cartridges. Of course, how long does each set use? When checking alignment recently, I was horrified to see that my wife had printed out four x one square inch blocks of colour; just to test !!!!.

Why has ink gone up so much (doubled?) within the last year? Is their an ingredient which is more difficult/costly to source or is it a big cartel?
 
I very rarely print anything, maybe the odd recipe from the Internet. We have no paper copies of anything nor do we print anything from banks etc..... I'd say printing is no longer an essential part of my world - I could probably do without

I think I switched the scanner on the other day for the 1st time in about 3 years, to scan some photos. On the off chance I need an image of a document or item, I just take a photo on my phone. A good example is my driving licence, when I needed to send an image of it to my dealer
 
I have an hp tank all in one. Total pos. Half a day to install on windows, 10 seconds on apple. ****ers.
 
We also had a problems over the decades with a several rarely used inkjet printers not working properly when we came to use them (and creating a mess when we tried to clean them). About 4-5 years ago we switched to a black and white laser printer/copier/scanner bought on offer at half price (£75) from Staples when it had been replaced by a newer model. Occasional printing has been faultless ever since.

PS Forgot to mention that we warned off the very bottom of the range models due to high running costs, "for office use" was worth having (or use to be) and that the evolution of the print engines has slowed a lot (our obsolete model has a screen and buttons rather than the touch screen of the newer model but the cartridge and print performance seemed about the same).
 
On the off chance I need an image of a document or item, I just take a photo on my phone. A good example is my driving licence, when I needed to send an image of it to my dealer

Can't see this unless you simply need a photo to send as an attachment. I have invoices and suchlike to keep in my files for tax reasons, tennis rotas to print out and other odd needs. Can't see my camera performing these tasks.

I have an hp tank all in one. Total pos. Half a day to install on windows, 10 seconds on apple. ****ers.

Intriguing, but is there a translation? :)

About 4-5 years ago we switched to a black and white laser printer/copier/scanner

Yes, this is a tempting solution if I could be sure I'd never want to print a photo or whatever. I guess a monochrome pic. might be a compromise, assuming this would be the outcome.
 


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