Printers...what is the best one

Hey guy's I need to buy a printer and I was wondering what is the best one? I have heard good things about HP printers and they seem good too (also affordable). I am looking for an All-in-one that can do auto duplex printing. I would like top stay in the 200-300 dollar range. 300 is top top end. I want one that is good and and will last. I am not sure what is good and whether the office ones or photo smart ones are better or whatever. All I want is an all in one that is good and will last and must have duplex printing.

 

1- What kind of stuff are you printing (B&W vs color and what kind of print quality do you need)?

2- What's your print volume approximately (like how many pages per month/year)?

3- What features of the all-in-one do you need? 3in1 or 4in1 (aka do you need a fax)?

 

I dont need Fax yet but I want it for the future also i need color and B&W. I want every feature I can get minus I could careless about wireless or a stupid tablet/web browser attached to it. As I said earlier I need duplex printing. I dont need crazy print speeds....I just want a feature rich printer of good quality. I just want one in the 200-300 dollar range...less is better but I dont mind paying a little extra for something good.

EDIT: I also want a auto feeder on top.

 

hp officejet pro

 

which one? there are several and why those...what about the photo smart...they seem to have most of the same features

 

Cnet liked the Epson Workforce 845. I bought the lower end model, 545 for $65 when it was on sale at Office Depot. Great printer for my limited needs at a steal of a price. Note that 545 does not auto-duplex.

 

All 4in1's have an auto-feeder on the top except a few Brothers.

Also, the main appeal of the Photosmart is the print quality over the Officejet which is more geared towards high volume printing. If you're not in need of anything particularly fancy the Photosmart isn't a good investment since it has 4 separate ink cartridges as opposed to 2 on regular inkjet printers. This will increase ink cost refills from 50-60$ to 80-100$ so if you don't need above average print quality I wouldn't go with Photosmart printers.

Now if you need higher volume printing, I'd go with the Officejet 6600A series (the current 6xxx series with the older one being the 6500). You don't need the 6500A Plus since you don't need wireless you said.

You don't need the 8600 series since that's more high end and does additional features such as accommodate multiple paper size trays and whatnot.

The Workforce from Epson is another good candidate. The print quality is better than the Officejet and it's faster however the main tradeoff I've found is that they consume ink at a faster pace than the HP so ink consumption may be more costly.

 

i would like the ability to print high quality photos though...kinda learning towards the photo smart....can you give me your opinion of a photosmart and an officejet and an epson that fits my needs

 

If you want the ability then that's fine, but get ready to incur the costs. Like I said, refill for Photosmarts or any photo printer is in the 50-100$ range vs the 30-60$ range for your common office printers. And do not lots of printers won't print if all the cartridges aren't full (aka even if yo only wanted black it might not print if there's no color ink in it).

Also note photo printers are typically slower; they average around 10PPM whereas the Officejet can go up to 35PPM for the same "average" quality print.

If you want the Officejet, go for the 6600A (not the Plus). Ink will average around 100$ for all 4. Yield is about 500 pages since they're XL sized.

If you want a Photosmart, I'd personally go for the 7510 which has all 4 features. Ink will average around 70$ for the full set of 4. The yield however is about 150-200 pages.

If you want an Epson and are looking for photo quality then I'd go with the Artisan series. The 837 is a good value and ink is about 80$ for the full set as well. Yield is about 150-200 pages as well.

 

what about an epson office one

EDIT:Also which do you feel will last the longest? and not break lol

EDIT: also were those prices for factory ink or after market ink

 

The Workforce 845 mentioned above is good. It's faster than the Officejet too if that's of any concern. Like I said though ink will deplete faster from my experience.

As for "last the longest", that mostly depends on you and how often you print. Like I said, office printers (such as the Officejets and Workforces) are made for volume printing so they're more robust for large amounts of printing. That being said, any printer over 200$ from what I've seen is pretty well built quality-wise and unless there's a manufacturer fault of some kind it should last a while. Print heads are attached to the cartridges so no issues there and the mechanisms aren't usually prone to failure in my experience.

These days the main reason to change printers isn't because yours broke but because either your ink got too costly or you want to change the features (ex: switch over to laser or get a different quality printer).

The prices I gave are for factory ink made by the manufacturer. If you want to use generic brands or other such methods to refill your ink that's your own choice but I can't really find price estimates for that.

 

ok thanks...i find it hard to believe an ink cartridge only give 150-250 pages. I never remember my dads printers being that low. So an office printer will give about 4x pages per dollar compared to a photo printer. Thats a huge difference but I am really tempted to have the ability to print good photos. The printing speed means nothing to me really. I wont print high volumes...at least i dont see it happening so i think a photo printer would be fine on cost per page but its hard to justify that. Well thansk for your help i'll go checkt he printers out and look at reviews.

 

Well mind you the ink I listed for the Officejet is a high yield (XL) ink cartridge. Typical inkjet ink cartridges nowadays do about 200-300 pages so it's a bit less than your average inkjet cartridge for photo printers.

High yield ones if you can find them (usually have XL or mention of being high yield) will do somewhere between 2 and 3 times than standard ink cartridges more depending.

Also, the Officejet has good print quality by all means it's not bad. It's still a very good printer just that yes, it's not poster quality printing like the Photosmarts but for 4x6 photos it'd do the job perfectly well (I think the HP Officejet 8600 has a 4x6 photo paper tray actually).

 

alright a couple things. the photo smart has duplex print but does it do duplex scanning/copying? Also the officejets have edge to edge printing...the photosmart doesn't right?

Also the officejets have 12000 pages per month compared to the photosmart has 1250...thats a huge difference in reliability. I dont foresee myself printing a lot due to cheapness and such but its a tough call.

EDIT: also whats the difference from the 6600 6700 and 8x00...its liek a 50 dollar difference in price...why not get the 8x00? sorry forget if its a 6 or 7 lol

EDIT: the epson photo printer looks better but its way more money...i am sure the HP one would work fine. Still need to look at the office ones in which one I would want. Do you know between epson and HP which one has better prints for Office printer?

 

Like I said, the office printers are built for high volume print so they are more robust as a result to accommodate this need.

And IIRC, both have borderless printing but up to a certain size. I'd have to check the specific model but I'm pretty sure the Photosmart does till at least 8.5x11. Do note that it takes a LONG time to do borderless (we're talking 5-10 min for a single page depending on the printer ).

And no, they don't duplex scanning. You'll have to flip the sides if you want to scan both sides.

As for the differences, I don't remember them all specifically, but it's really just features. Some have wireless, some have eprint, some have embedded card readers and so on. I know the 8600 series have more than one paper tray to accomodate different paper sizes too. Well if you want to get the higher end ones you can, but I don't think there's much more than those added features so if you don't need them you might as well put the 50$ towards ink or better quality paper or something you'll use.

Umm for the office printer I don't think there's any noticeable difference in print quality between both series. We've had a demo of a Workforce and an Officejet and they both seemed good prints.

 

One clarification about printer cartridges. The Epson Workforce series (and many other office grade inkjet printers) use 4 separate cartridges (black, cyan, magenta, yellow) rather than 2 (black and color). So when one color runs out, you don't have throw away the remainder of the other colors as you would in a typical all-colors cartridge. Now when you look at cartridge costs, this 4-cartridge method looks more expensive, but you get many more pages per dollar.

 

the photosmart has 5 cartridge...i dont get what the photo cartridge is for though

 

Yeah some of the Officejets use 4 cartridges too. The only thing I'd need to confirm is whether the printer will print if one is empty.

That's where the pain is for most people; they only wanna print black yet their color is currently empty and the printer won't print if not all cartridges are in the printer and have ink.

 

true i would see that annoying but for me i wouldn't really care. I am looking towards the photosmart one due to the better picture prints and what not. It looks really good and pcmag said it had one of the better photo prints. I am tempted to get the 8600 due to the higher reliability and much lower cost of printing but I rather have print quality and pay the extra cost. Its not too bad. HP says its like 10 bucks for 300 prints or like 17? for 750 for the XL ones. I can afford that so no biggy. I am sure if i do some shopping around i can save a little money.

Again thanks for all your help you guys have been life savers. This will go nicely with my scansnap s1500

 

I see. I haven't needed to replace any of my cartridges yet.

 

does HP do any discounts when you call in like dell?

EDIT: do you think 40 bucks for the 3 year warranty is worth it? the printer is only 150 bucks.

EDIT: Also does the photosmart come with ink when you buy it?

EDIT:

what do you think of this?

http://www.4inkjets.com/RMHP564XPbb-HP-Ink-Cartridge-Black-Color-Compatible?printer=

or this
http://www.amazon.com/Polaroid-CB325WN-Replacement-Cartridge-564XL/dp/B006MDZDII

 

bump did you two see this? or know anything about it?

 

I have no idea if HP does discounts sorry.

As for warranty, that wholly depends on you. If you tell em your volume of printing isn't very high, then I don't think you risk wearing your printer out and manufacturer defaults usually appear fast enough within the first year.

As for ink, yes all modern day printers come with what's called "starter cartridges". They're usually partially filled cartridges so you can test the print ability of the machine with, but they're not very plentiful. Range is somewhere between 25-100 pages depending on which model/manufacturer or inkjet printers.

I've never really used 3rd party ink so I can't comment but if it says that it's compatible I don't see why not I suppose. I'd probably stick with a branded one like Polaroid if you really wanna avoid HP though. Bad printer cartridges are a mess.

 

i dont doubt they will fit and run...i was more concerned about quality. I guess i could always use the after market black for regular prints to save money and use HP for photos

 

Most printers are made in the same type of factories in china. (poor quality control) There is not much of a difference quality wise. Go with whatever fits your budget.

 

def not true

 

If you can find a cheap Xerox printer, go with it. The quality cannot be matched.

 

I also have one got it for $55, it has a lot of features but it sucks ink, where did you buy your refill kit?

 

This site above has cheap ink but unsure of the quality. plus you can get ink at a decent price from HP by using their print rewards and coupons.

I am going to use HP ink for the color and photo black and use the 4inkjets black ink for documents since i could care less what documents look like


EDIT: Well i added 1 of every ink product from them to give it a shot. I'll due a review between HP ink and their ink. I got the re-manufactured cartridges and the refill kits so i'll give it a shot...75 bucks here I go.