Printer Question

[Phill Tibbetts]

What brand printer are you all using and your satisfaction with it? I have had HP for years but the last 2 only lasted about a year. I use HP mostly because of the instant ink program. I have been considering the Epson with the bottles of ink. Wondering if anyone on here uses that brand and their satisfaction with it. TIA

 

[Red Dave]

I've long been an HP user, but several months ago we needed a new one. Our 15 year old HP was giving trouble. I asked my IT knowledgeable son what he recommended and his reply was a Brother printer. I wanted an all-in-one laser printer, scanner and copier.

Have had it about 4 months now and no complaints. It has worked as it should, no problems so far. I've had inkjet printers and they always seem to be troublesome. The ink dries out and quits working. I have no experience with one with bottles of ink, only cartridges.

 

[Texasmark]

Currently running a Cannon TS3722. Had mostly Cannons, HPs, and others I forget the names. Cannon has served me well over the years. The TS 3722 is just a basic single sheet (at a time) copier/printer at a reasonable price with fast shipping from internet sellers. Ink not a problem.

 

[TheBartman47]

Old HP LaserJet printers... if they're jamming, it's always an easy fix too. Usually new rollers, but if it's 15-20 years old, it will be time to clean the page-stop solenoid. Takes me about 15 minutes to open it up and make the repair and put back together. I've repaired at least 100 of these in my day job and they keep running like the Energizer Bunny.

 

[Fawteen]

Another vote for Brother. I have a B&W laser that does 99% of my printing, cheaply on a per-page basis and toner doesn't dry out.

I also have a Brother color semi-laser that uses toner vs. ink and does very nice color prints on photo paper. Again, no worries about ink drying up in the nozzles and causing issues. I'm on the same color toner cartridges as it came with several years ago.

 

[Jack345]

Brother laser for past 5 yrs no problems.

 

[Stephen Newell]

What brand printer are you all using and your satisfaction with it? I have had HP for years but the last 2 only lasted about a year. I use HP mostly because of the instant ink program. I have been considering the Epson with the bottles of ink. Wondering if anyone on here uses that brand and their satisfaction with it. TIA

I'm using an Epson ecotank. For the most part I'm happy with it. Been using it a couple of years with the ink that came with it. By this time I would have used a couple hundred dollars ink cartridges if I still had the HP. The biggest complaint is it doesn't print with as high resolution as the HP. I used to print bank deposit slips you couldn't tell the difference than the original. It also won't print photographs without white lines in it no matter how much you clean the heads. Black and white photos can be tolerated but color pictures are unusable. Another issue is the computer in it. If a piece of paper jambs it goes completely nuts. You have to delete the drivers and re-install them before it will function again.

 

[Blue Jay]

I've had a Epson ET-2800 for several years now and only had to buy 1 bottle of ink

 

[olddavid]

Canon TS3120. It serves me well, but operation isn't always intuitive. An electrical orange wire nut accidentally dropped into the feed and jammed it up. I thought it would surely be damaged but after I got it out it resumed normal operation.

 

[jimg.allentown]

Personally, I would stick with HP. Note that HP printers are just badge engineered Canon printers. Open one up and see if most of the labelled parts don't have Canon part numbers and branding on them.

Now, having said that, I will also say that laser printers have it all over ink jets in terms of cost per printed page.
Yes, toners are expensive. But, they don't "dry out," if you don't use them every day.
Typical ink jet cartridges will print about 200 to 400 pages depending on coverage. Laser toners will print about 8000 pages given the same coverage.

Something to know about ink jet printers:
Canon and HP printer cartridges come with a new print head built into the cartridge. That means that if you let it sit for too long, and the ink dries in the print head, you can either try to run the cleaning utility - which gives you a 50-50 shot at it working - or you can just replace the cartridge.
Epson printers have the print head built into the printer, so if it dries out, you can spend a LOT of ink unclogging it. I made that discovery the hard way. No more Epsons for me.

Cost wise, lasers win.
Resolution wise, inkjets have the edge.
Speed wise, lasers win again.

So, unless you have need for higher resolutions or have space limitations, laser would be the better choice.
This is my opinion based on experience going all the way back to 9-pin dot matrix printers. I have owned a LOT of printers. I have repaired a lot of them as well. YMMV

 

[Duner Wi]

We have an Epson Ecotank ET 2803 for a few years. I think it best to print something in color periodically. Original install was with computer with Microsoft operating system. After initial install we now print from Linux computer, Apple products and Android phone. I never had to reinstall driver after a paper jam. I did one update to the firmware and could not get it to print from any device after that. Finally did get it to print from an Apple device and have not installed a updates to firmware after that.

 

[chvet73]

As a retired CAD instructor who printed over a half million pages stay with HP. Except for Xerox which was very expensive HP products in both printers and plotters outshined any other brand. In 35 years we went through several printers and for the most part HP rarely failed. I still use HP at home. On the other hand the absolute worse printer I had was a Brother.

 

[Phill Tibbetts]

Looks to me like all have their up and downs so I will probably stick with the HP brand. My wife prints a lot of color pics so the Instant Ink really save us a bundle of money. Never have to worry about running out of ink as they make sure you have extras on hand. Thanks to all for the input.

 

[Ray,IN]

I always ran HP printers, my last was running great until the last HP update. Then it stopped feeding paper. All the HP suggestions didn't work. Today it sells for >$800 if you can find a new one. I set it aside and bought a Cannon TR8600s, and it's worked well so far..

 

[JD Dave]

I vote for a HP laser printer. I have 4 with no problems. They have a large selection of machines. Ink jet printers are dinosaurs and no matter what make, you're going to have problems.