What printer for 'light use' home printing?

[woohoo]

OK, completely unscientific and anecdotal (ish) experience. I've had 3 HP Deskjet printers fail in the past 5+ years. The first lasted 18 months, the second 42 months and the third 6 months (currently waiting for a warranty repair. I stuck with HP because I had (foolishly) built up a stock on compatible cartridges and the cost of dumping them versus buying a new, but discontinued, HP printer was marginal The first 2 HP failures were blocked and unrepairable print heads and the last one was the print cartridge mechanism coming off its rails.

I've been lent one of my offspring's Canon Pixma printer which has had 4 hard years use at Uni and is still going strong. Given that I've avoided having a stock of spare HP cartridges this time, I think I'll be going down the Canon route the next time my HP goes tits up.

 

[nickyboy]

HP Deskjet 3520 from Tesco. Currently available PC World for £50. Similarly light use (probably on average 2-3 pages a week). Wireless function is very useful if you have more than one device you need to print from. Ink usage seems OK, probably a set of cartridges per year and we might go 2-3 weeks without printing anything with no problems.. Scan and photocopy facilities

TBH, cheap printers are much of a muchness

 

[Gravity Aided]

Use this, cleans everything, and makes a fine screwdriver as well.
http://www.beerliquors.com/liquors/grain.htm
Can also be used instead of meths to fuel your alcohol stove.

 

[ufkacbln]

I find a cotton bud dipped in a little IPA works even better

Really?

View attachment 58479

You are both in error I am afraid......

Drinking the IPA is my recommended option

 

[Supersuperleeds]

Another Canon Pixma here, cartridges are a lot cheaper than most other brands

 

[beatlejuice]

Be careful if you don't use the printer regularly. I have had to scrap two Epson printers because the ink dried up in the print head. If your colour printing usage is low then get your local Boots to it.

 

[I like Skol]

Just ordered a HP Envy4500 from John Lewis. At £50 they are a touch dearer than the lowest web prices but when you consider the 2yr warranty they give I reckon it's a good price. We will be signing up to the HP ink contract as it seems good value once you read and digest the T&Cs.

 

[jay clock]

For scanning I have given up on "scanners". I now us an app called Cam Scanner which will save a photo taken of all my receipts, invoices etc and save it as a pdf which I save directly to Dropbox.

When I get on the train I lay the ticket out on the table and have it direct to my laptop in less than a minute. I can then print that out if essential (but rarely is - most clients want pdfs these days)

 

[pawl]

I'm going to put a word in for Kodak, because of customer service. We bought a Kodak printer in 2008, it had a serious problem immediately, they diagnosed the problem over an internet chat and sent a replacement part immediately. Very painless.

6 years later (February this year) the printer started messing up. It's printerhead needed replacing. After much googling I eventually located a very expensive replacement on Amazon market place, with very bad reviews. As a last ditch effort, I went to the Kodak site and once more had a chat support. After a bit of to-and-fro to diagnose the problem, and he confirmed I only used brand inks - they sent me a new printhead for free!

It gets the kind of usage you are looking at, ink is fairly cheap and doesn't seem to dry up, and support is excellent. Of course, you'll have to pick the right model, you don't want an 2008 one.

Kodak Agree

 

[S.Giles]

We have two printers.
One is a Canon, used for photos and charts etc. The other is a monochrome laser printer and gets used the most.
When both my husband and I were at college full time (HND's), we used it constantly. Then the kids would also print off homework etc.
The toner cartridges lasted well over a year. A handy feature is being able to print double sided, so saving paper.
Now it gets occasional use and I haven't had an issue with it.
Oh and it's wireless too so I can print from my laptop

The above is good advice. I switched over to a Brother ML-2510 Laser printer years ago and never looked back. The toner cartridge will print at least 3000 copies before replacement (<£20 for a generic one). Also, in comparison to an inkjet, it's fast. I do a lot of 30-50 page double-sided print jobs, and can't imagine using an inkjet for them. The toner is in powder form, so there's nothing to dry up.

I still have an Epson SX 435W inkjet, but use it mainly for the scanner, since I rarely need to print in colour.

Steve