recommend a printer?

[Farrar]

Not HP. I really liked our little HP inkjet, but then HP repeatedly ruined it by making it update even when I turned off updates. The updates have meant I've wasted a great deal of money on ink that will never work and buying ink that's isn't refills costs as much as a new printer. Not to mention how environmentally cruddy it is. So... I'm done with them. Never again.

 

So... a color printer that will also do copies and print via wifi and won't fall apart too fast. We don't print a huge volume of pages (and I'm not interested in having a laser printer for that reason) but more often the kids are doing projects and want to print images for something. And then occasionally I print or copy a worksheet or the like.

[Jackie]

My experience has been with laser rather than inkjet, but I've had two printers from the Brother MFC line that have been fantastic. The first we owned for several years and it was still working perfectly when we upgraded from b&w to color with a lot more features. The current color all-in-one has been going strong for 5-6 years and has never given me a moment of trouble. I do know the same line of printers has both laser and inkjet.

[mlktwins]

My old HP laser died last year.  I LOVED that thing.  I will buy another one next time around.  I have an Epson Workforce and I'm on the 2nd on.  The first one lasted a year.  Will not buy another. 

[airforcefamily]

This is interesting since we just had to toss our hp printer. It was one of the weird 'instant ink' ones. The idea was that it would automatically order ink when you needed it (we were given it, I didn't buy it). We don't print much so when the year long instant ink subscription was up we were still using the ink it came with. It stopped working despite having ink and required our debit card number to be entered so they could charge us per month to continue using the ink that was already in it. Into to trash it went. What a waste.

 

I'm not looking at brother printers but I'm interested to see what other suggestions come up.

[happypamama]

Love my Canon MX922!

[Farrar]

A lot of the Epson ones seem to be super cheap. Like $50ish. And Canon has a couple of ones in that range as well... Sigh. I guess one just has to buy.  I mean, it's the same cost as replacing the ink, so I guess it's worth a try.

[abacus2]

I recently purchased a Canon MX922 to replace my two Brother printers on recommendations here. It can safely use generic ink making it much more affordable than even my black and white laser printer. It's working great for my needs. I found my brother ink jet would only work with name brand ink. In fact, I was concerned I had ruined it after I tried some generic ink in it.

[mlktwins]

A lot of the Epson ones seem to be super cheap. Like $50ish. And Canon has a couple of ones in that range as well... Sigh. I guess one just has to buy.  I mean, it's the same cost as replacing the ink, so I guess it's worth a try.

 

Our Epson was cheap at Costco -- ink too!

 

I so wish I could link to other posts (am checking into this), but there was a thread in the last few months about printers that I saved.  The title is, "What is a Quality Printer for homeschool" and was started in April of this year.

[nixpix5]

We have a brothers MFC and it is hands down my favorite printer we have ever used. I love the ease of printing from my phone, it can take cheap generic ink from amazon with no issues, it never gets jammed. The best part though is the beautiful color it produces. We had a notary at our house when we were completing our dossier for adoption and I had to photo copy many documents. He was amazed how he couldn't tell apart the original from tthe copy until he looked closely. I can use nicer paper and print out art study materials and it looks so nice. Love this thing :)

[desertflower]

I know you said no HP, but I really like ours.  HP OfficejetPro 8620.  It does everything you are asking for.  Wifi, color, photos, etc.  It too, also has an option to automatically renew ink, but we decline that and buy when needed.

 

The ink will last.  I believe black ink lasts about 1500 pages color ink something like 1000 pages.  My stats could be way off, but I remember printing off a BW book (I can't remember what it is called.  The Writer's Jungle book?) anyhow, it took like 10 mins to print double sided and still my ink lasted a long time after that. 

 

I've had it for a year and a half now.  Got it on sale for $100. 

 

The updates are not often.  My dh said, with regard to our printer, that if you get a popup on the screen to be wary that it may be fake.

 

I hope you find something. 

[Guest]

I did not know that about the newer HP printers. That is disgusting.

 

My old HP deskjet 940C finally went to printer heaven after almost a year of having to settle for pink-and-white printouts. I just grabbed the cheapest thing off of thinkpenguin:

 

https://www.thinkpenguin.com/gnu-linux/catalog

 

because I didn't want to hassle with shopping.

 

They sent an HP 1050 J410 series all in one that got recognized right away and does all of those things with minimal hassle. I think it just uses the same hplip drivers the 940C did but I'll definitely keep an eye on updates and uncheck any boxes if necessary.

 

I'm glad I paid for the customer support. It was obviously well worth it. The 940C lasted from the time I was running Windows 98 so about fifteen years. I didn't use it enough to look into refillable ink cartridges but I'd like to with this one if I get around to it.

Edited June 12, 2017 by Guest

[Miss Tick]

On a board recommendation I bought a Canon MX922 Pixma also. I've used that same generic ink in the year we've had it, no problems. I think it was $85 for the printer on Amazon. I use it for all my color heavy printing - science worksheets and Lively Latin most recently.

[Farrar]

I know you said no HP, but I really like ours.  HP OfficejetPro 8620.  It does everything you are asking for.  Wifi, color, photos, etc.  It too, also has an option to automatically renew ink, but we decline that and buy when needed.

 

The ink will last.  I believe black ink lasts about 1500 pages color ink something like 1000 pages.  My stats could be way off, but I remember printing off a BW book (I can't remember what it is called.  The Writer's Jungle book?) anyhow, it took like 10 mins to print double sided and still my ink lasted a long time after that. 

 

I've had it for a year and a half now.  Got it on sale for $100. 

 

The updates are not often.  My dh said, with regard to our printer, that if you get a popup on the screen to be wary that it may be fake.

 

I hope you find something. 

 

So, this is actually the printer we have (I think it's another in that line). I also really, really like it from a hardware standpoint - it works consistently, it's a good printer that has all the options I like and getting it work on wifi was very easy. But... HP did an update where it invalidated all ink refills of all kinds and all non-name brand ink. And we got hit with it. I downloaded another update that was supposed to fix it, and then a hack. And nothing worked. So I caved and spent a boatload on new name brand inks. They worked. So I went to refill them because supposedly once you had the new ones, it would work again. And they would not work. It was essentially planned uselessness by HP. The machine's software is holding me hostage. Pay us or this perfectly good machine won't work anymore.

 

So... screw that. I'm buying another brand and I won't be going back to HP. And since buying a whole other printer is basically the cost of replacing the ink (in fact, many of the options are significantly cheaper)... I may as well.

[desertflower]

I'm so sorry that it didn't work out for you.  I would do the same if I was in your shoes. 

 

I hope you find something more economical and less of a headache!  :) 

[nixpix5]

So, this is actually the printer we have (I think it's another in that line). I also really, really like it from a hardware standpoint - it works consistently, it's a good printer that has all the options I like and getting it work on wifi was very easy. But... HP did an update where it invalidated all ink refills of all kinds and all non-name brand ink. And we got hit with it. I downloaded another update that was supposed to fix it, and then a hack. And nothing worked. So I caved and spent a boatload on new name brand inks. They worked. So I went to refill them because supposedly once you had the new ones, it would work again. And they would not work. It was essentially planned uselessness by HP. The machine's software is holding me hostage. Pay us or this perfectly good machine won't work anymore.

 

So... screw that. I'm buying another brand and I won't be going back to HP. And since buying a whole other printer is basically the cost of replacing the ink (in fact, many of the options are significantly cheaper)... I may as well.

This is infuriating! I am so glad you shared this so we don't end up with HP. I hope brothers doesn't do this.

 

This used to happen whenever our ATT contract renewal would come up...our cell phones would mysteriously start having issues. It is my conspiracy theory that tech allows this kind of thing to happen more than we realize. Or not..and maybe I am prone to conspiracy theories ;)

[Farrar]

This is infuriating! I am so glad you shared this so we don't end up with HP. I hope brothers doesn't do this.

 

This used to happen whenever our ATT contract renewal would come up...our cell phones would mysteriously start having issues. It is my conspiracy theory that tech allows this kind of thing to happen more than we realize. Or not..and maybe I am prone to conspiracy theories ;)

 

Yeah, they called it "planned obsolescence." I hear you on the cell phones.

 

Someone above said that they couldn't get non-Brother inks to work in their Brother printer, though we had a Brother laser printer for years (it finally burned out, but it was good for a cheaper model) and never had that issue - but this is a newer thing, using the software updates to try and circumvent the ink refill market. I'm pretty sure the business model is to sell the printers at close to a loss and then make the cash on the inks. I feel like I'm in an elementary school DARE advert where the printer dealer is trying to hook me. First ink's free, lady. Next time though, you gotta pay.

[midori]

I have an Epson flatbed scanner for running copies the slow and old fashioned way, and I don't do wifi, but one thing I did look for in the last inkjet printer I bought was a printer that had its ink cartridges separated out into C-Y-M-K. I was tired of having to replace the whole color cartridge just because I'd run out of M, but still had plenty of C and Y left. My current printer uses five cartridges (C, Y, M and two K), but I know some newer models add gray in for a sixth color.

 

I personally have been very happy with the Canon Pixma ip-4700 that I've been using for the last mumblemumble years. (Since 2008, perhaps?) I needed a flexible printer that could print photos on photo paper, images on normal paper, and plain text. When I do replace it, I'll probably replace it with another Canon product that has scanning-and-copying capacity, like the MG7720 wireless printer/scanner/copier, or whatever the next generation is when my Pixma finally bites the dust. But I'm in no hurry to get rid of it.

[Lakeside]

Farrar, what did you end up getting?  

 

We're in a similar situation.  I'm not sure if it is related to any updates or not, but we have an HP Officejet 8600 plus that has been great for years.  When the original ink cartridges ran out we bought some non-HP ink cartridges that worked fine.  The quality of them wasn't as good, but the price made it worthwhile.  They worked fine for years.  We finally ran out of those and have tried two different off brands and neither will work.  It is hard to justify the cost of the HP cartridges, but I don't want to throw out a perfectly good machine.   :glare: