Can anyone recommend me a good, cheap printer?

Ok, I need a decent, but cheap, printer for uni.

of course, being a student, i dont have too much money to play around with so I need a decent inkjet with decent price refills.

thanks in advance for any advice

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Canon Pixma range. I've got an ip1500 (£49 4 years ago) that just needs new cartridges, but otherwise is working fully.

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Everyone knows that million-to-one chances happen 9 times out of 10; indeed, it's a common requirement in fairy tales. If the human didn't have to overcome huge odds, what would be the point? Terry Pratchett - The Science Of Discworld

GPGSL S5 Race driver for IED.

Colour? Photo? How many pages roughly per month?

If you're not printing photos, you can get some decent little colour lasers now that work out way cheaper than inkjets.

For inkjet, Canon Pixmas are indeed awesome though. The iP4x00 range is especially good.

gav Wrote:
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> Colour? Photo? How many pages roughly per month?
>
> If you're not printing photos, you can get some
> decent little colour lasers now that work out way
> cheaper than inkjets.
>
> For inkjet, Canon Pixmas are indeed awesome
> though. The iP4x00 range is especially good.


Just mainly text and not a lot of pages a month , it would still need some colour once in a while though.

I'll look in the canons, as we have one downstairs, a mp500 and its fantastic.

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I'm really happpy with my HP C3180 but I require a fairly good print quality so it may not be for you. Cartridges are around 18 quid for a set of colour and B&W and print about 500 pages depending on quality settings.

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matt3454 Wrote:
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> Just mainly text and not a lot of pages a month
> , it would still need some colour once in a
> while though.
>
> I'll look in the canons, as we have one
> downstairs, a mp500 and its fantastic.

If you're not printing much, stick with inkjet, that way if you need a photo printed off, you've got that option.

Cartridges for the Canon Pixmas, whilst being on the small side, are quite cheap. B+W and Colour cartridges will set you back no more than £20 combined for genuine ones.

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Everyone knows that million-to-one chances happen 9 times out of 10; indeed, it's a common requirement in fairy tales. If the human didn't have to overcome huge odds, what would be the point? Terry Pratchett - The Science Of Discworld

GPGSL S5 Race driver for IED.

I work at Cartridge World so if you like the looks of one then just give me the model number and I'll tell ya how much it is to refill and to buy new . Whatever you do, DONT BUY EPSON OR LEXMARK! I can't stress this enough to customers who come in asking for printers. They're always the people who come in and complain about their printers or the cartridges.

Epson are a pain in the arse unless you use them constantly as the nozzles will start to block and with the nozzles being in the printer and not on the cartridge it's very hard to fix. Also, the newer models have unresettable chips which means you'd struggle to find anything other than extortionately priced genuine inks (and theres usually 4 or 6 of them lol).
Overall : 3/10 - Good quality on high settings but not worth the hassle at all.

Lexmark will gladly sell you a printer for as cheap as £25 but then expect you to pay about £40 for the cartridges once the ones that come in the printer (which are only starter ones and dont last two minutes) run out. Even the refills can get expensive. The print quality can be alright but it tends to be one of those where it depends what mood the printer is in lol.
Overall : 2/10 - Cheap printers, horrendous cartridges. Not always reliable either.

HP are alright, but with the new printers they do, the cartridges hardly hold any ink and you'll find yourself replacing them pretty regularly. Still, the print quality is always good even on the lower settings and you'll find most places stock plenty of these because they're the preferred office brand. The F380 is quite a good one.
Overall : 6.5/10 - Decent, but not the best value wise

Canon are excellent. Fact. The print quality is always superb no matter what settings you use and generally the cartridges are cheap and last you a good while. What you need to make sure though is that your printer takes the single ink systems (i.e. the black and individual colours) instead of the block colour ones because recently Canon have done something and printers wont accept refilled or replacements of these. Try looking out for something like the iP4500 or the MP520.
Overall : 9/10 - Best quality. Best value ink. Printer may cost a little more than average but it's more than worth it.

Brother are quite an overlooked make to be honest, the dark horse so to speak. They're selling some models like the DCP-135C for next to nothing (about £30, and this is a printer, scanner and copier no less!) and the inks are really good value. They hold a decent amount and are quite cheap to buy/refill too as well as being the individual ink system so you only have to replace the colours that have ran out.
Overall : 8/10 - Very respectable printers. They do the job and are good on ink but photos are a bit of an unknown.

Also, I saw gav recommending a laser printer earlier in this thread but I'm afraid this is one of the times I'm going to have to disagree with him (sorry mate ). The only time it's worth getting a laser printer is if you run a business or you have a stupidly high number of pages to print (as in thousands). The initial outlay for a colour laser printer is generally from £100 upwards, they tend to be quite bulky machines and although the cartridges do have a better page count you're looking at between £30-70 for a cartridge.

As I said though, and I can't stress this enough, dont get a lexmark or an epson! You'll thank me for it lol. Just remember to give me the model number of the printer before you get it and I'll tell you what the inks are like

EDIT: Dell are just Lexmark printers that have been rebranded so the same applies there in that respect. Also, dont get a Kodak or Olivetti printer either because the cartridges are a nightmare to find!

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Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/20/2008 07:43PM by Fincent.

I'll be using you as my printer source from now on Fincent.

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Everyone knows that million-to-one chances happen 9 times out of 10; indeed, it's a common requirement in fairy tales. If the human didn't have to overcome huge odds, what would be the point? Terry Pratchett - The Science Of Discworld

GPGSL S5 Race driver for IED.

Fincent Wrote:
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> Also, I saw gav recommending a laser printer
> earlier in this thread but I'm afraid this is one
> of the times I'm going to have to disagree with
> him (sorry mate ). The only time it's worth
> getting a laser printer is if you run a business
> or you have a stupidly high number of pages to
> print (as in thousands). The initial outlay for a
> colour laser printer is generally from £100
> upwards, they tend to be quite bulky machines and
> although the cartridges do have a better page
> count you're looking at between £30-70 for a
> cartridge.

I was only going to recommend it if it suited, which is why I was asking of the use. Fact of the matter is though, that unless you print next to nothing, a laser will always work out cheaper in the long run, even if you are paying larger sums for the printer itself. You'll see from my 2nd post I recommended against it though.

They're utterly hopeless for anything other than documents/labels/that sort of office-type thing.

Been looking at the Canon Pixma iP2600, cheap and got a good review in the PC Magazine i read.

The only problem is that the colours do not come individually. Is this really a problem?

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/20/2008 11:50PM by matt3454.

Nah, the cartridges are so cheap it doesn't really matter.

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Everyone knows that million-to-one chances happen 9 times out of 10; indeed, it's a common requirement in fairy tales. If the human didn't have to overcome huge odds, what would be the point? Terry Pratchett - The Science Of Discworld

GPGSL S5 Race driver for IED.

I have an epson dx3800 and the ink runs out every 2 seconds and also needs head cleaning (multiple times) if you don't print very often (which i don't) which wastes even more ink. It also head cleans itself when it magically decides to, even if it doesn't need it. Unofficial cartridges work though it wastes the ink so fast i wouldn't recommend the printer. Scanner on it is quite nice though.

Maybe get a ink bottle conversion kit for an inkjet?

H E L L O

from personal experience: Canon - awful (this was a few years ago though so things are mebbe different now) - had two seperate printers and both died after 4 pages... took them back and got an Epson (similarly awful), my mum has a HP which is ok IF (and that's a big if) it loads the paper properly (which is seldom), and i've got a lexmark, which i love to bits... quality is perfect and carts last forever

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