Need a new printer and there are various offers about at the moment.
Last time round we bought an all in one Epson SX515W and it has never been right from day one. Connecting wirelessly was nigh on impossible, it was repaired under warranty three times and been exchanged once. It will only print a decent picture by manually force feeding single pieces of photo paper otherwise it jams. Always run on genuine ink and decent paper. Utter garbage after the previous Epson D68 which was great and we've recommissioned that as a stop gap.
Wanting a printer that is an all in one, around the same print quality/resolution as the aforementioned Epson SX515W that is less than £100.
Any pointers would be gratefully received...
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And this is the issue..
>> Epson SX515W
I've had one for ages, hauled it around the world, dropped it and used make do cartridges. Its never given me a problem, has always printed well and is shared wirelessly by anyone on the WiFi.
I think all the printers around today are pretty good when they're made properly. But unfortunately quite often they are not.
For me its pretty much go down to the local PC World or similar, kick a few tyres, buy one which feels ok, the ink price is ok, and the purchase price is ok.
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This question has been asked a few times, most seem to recommend Canon, our all in one MP970 has seen a lot of use by SWMBO, runs well gives little trouble and prints well enough with aftermarket inks.
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Yup Canon. On my second, not because the first one broke, but because I wanted one with wireless.
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My Cannon Pixma MP610, all in one, that I have had since it first came out, has a blocked print head, irretrievably so, due to me not using it for this last several months, and so I have been looking at possible replacements. The MG5350 looks to be my replacement. £80 via Amazon.
The C|NET Review concludes:
"The Pixma MG5350 is an easy model to like. It offers most of the features that the average
person is going to need from a printer, but at the same time it delivers documents with
crisp text and brilliant colours.
Photo printing is top notch and when it comes to speed it's among the fastest on the
market. Running costs may not be the cheapest, but speed and quality go a long way
towards making up for this. "
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I cured a blocked print head on a Pixma with multiple "Deep Cleans" and the expenditure of quite a lot of ink
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Any Canon, but this one can probably now be bought within your budget: tinyurl.com/cwqlsa2
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Canon MG6250 as recommended by Victorbox above - £89.99 from Amazon, with free delivery.
In-depth review: tinyurl.com/c3ymlbt
Last edited by: FocalPoint on Thu 27 Dec 12 at 19:00
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Yes. I did look at that one. It uses one extra ink cartridge. I was happy using just the four.
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"For four read five."
SIX, actually.
Unusually, in addition to what you would expect, there is also a cartridge that prints grey.
Last edited by: FocalPoint on Thu 27 Dec 12 at 20:08
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Just out of interest, why do people need such fancy expensive printers? what do you use them for that cant be done by a 49 quid two cartridge canon multifunctional?
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>> Just out of interest, why do people need such fancy expensive printers?
Two useful features on my rather old (but still working) Pixma iP5000 are:
- Duplex printing
- CD/DVD label printing (i.e. onto printable disks)
And I like having separate ink cartridges, including a pigment black for text (larger capacity and cheaper). Also has photo black, and the usual cyan, yellow and magenta. Not sure why you need a printer with red and green inks if it's any good as the others are the primary colours for printing aren't they. Or light magenta and light cyan and even grey.... probably produce stunning prints on the right media.
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Just before Xmas I bought a properly working Lexmark all-in-one wireless printer for a fiver!
I used Martin's Money Tips local eBay deal finder ( www.moneysavingexpert.com/shopping/local-ebay-deals/ ) and found one about 5 or 6 miles away. Collection only.
All set up and now I have a non-wireless HP all-in-one to sell on eBay, after the Xmas torpor has dissipated somewhat.
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Canon Pixma 6250. The price above is cheap. I bought one last summer on recommendation somewhere in the region of £140. It came from Germany as there were none to be had in the UK as they were so popular. Cracking printer.
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The 5 refers to my MP610 and the MG5350. As I said the 6250 has one more.
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The read 5 [inks] refers to my MP610 printer and also the 5350. As I said the 6250 has one more. UGGH this was supposed to be under focalpoint. No wonder I could not see it.
Last edited by: busbee on Fri 28 Dec 12 at 11:25
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Many thanks for the advice. Think I've narrowed the choices now...
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To follow up on this thread here was my printer buying experience saga which, 4th time lucky, is finally finished. We didn’t in fact go down the Canon route as there were more post Christmas offers on other respected brands.
Printer 1 - HP 3055 all in one job. Drivers installed fine, wireless operation fine, everything was perfect until we tried printing some photographs. Couldn’t do borderless prints and left a half inch border down one side so a 6”x4” print really was a 5 ½” x 4”. Checked on HP forums and this was due to a bug with the machine that, as yet, hadn’t been resolved with driver updates. Printer returned to supplier stating that it was no good for printing photos for framing.
Printer 2 – HP 5520- Liking the HP design we went for a ‘lab quality’ version that didn’t have the print area issue. Drivers installed very easily, WiFi connections made. Tried some test prints and was ok. However the wireless connection was lost and had to be re-established numerous times to the 6 feet away router before giving up. Very frustrating as the machine was otherwise up to the job. Printer re-packed up and being returned to supplier tomorrow.
Printer 3 – Kodak ESP1.2. Found this as an alternative and £10 cheaper than Printer 2. Discovered the one brought home was a resealed used printer with printer cartidges already installed, bags missing and the instructions all crumpled. Returned to the supplier. My advice is to make sure that if you buy anything that has a security seal, make sure it is intact. Swapped for same model with no hassle.
Printer 4 – Above mentioned Kodak printer fully installed wirelessly and working fine from the desktop and laptop – success at last...
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All good reasons to have bought the Canon as we suggested.
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Point I was making from the experience is:
1. Why does HP think it is acceptable to release printers with incorrect print area or iffy software?
2. A certain retailer tried to sell a used, reboxed product. It could have been a complete mistake on their part. There was no trouble with the exchange.
Some of the Canon user reviews were not that great when we looked into it. The Kodak is performing as we expected which is all we wanted a printer, regardless of brand, to do.
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>> The Kodak is performing as we expected which is all we wanted a printer, regardless of brand, to do.
Kodak is bankrupt and didn't make enough money selling their inks or printers. So they will quite the printer market in early 2013.
Should have bought the Canon.
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Kodak clain their ink is the cheapest of all OEM brands.
Curry's had wireless Kodaks on offer at around sixty quid t'other day, reduced from over a ton.
I'm getting on quite well with my Lexmark, wireless all-in-one, five quid eBay purchase!
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>> Curry's had wireless Kodaks on offer at around sixty quid t'other day, reduced from over a ton.
Because Kodak is bankrupt and is dropping printers from their product line. Assuming they survive bankruptcy at all.
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I run on 2 second hand HP DeskJet 970CXis but I do not print photos. Total cost was about £8 each! One actually came with 2 original near full cartridges. EBay is your friend. Cheap cc cartridges, duplex printing. Outdated, new original cartridges can be found very cheaply- I think the failure rate over the last 5 years has been about 10% but a saucer of hot water + a piece of kitchen roll solves most problems.
No super smart cartridges that try to force you into buying new ones early.
Stay one step behind technology and buy well built kit for a fraction of the price.
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>> >> Curry's had wireless Kodaks on offer at around sixty quid t'other day, reduced from
>> over a ton.
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>> Because Kodak is bankrupt and is dropping printers from their product line. Assuming they survive
>> bankruptcy at all.
We bought a Kodak for Miss B @ uni and it's been a complete dissapointment. First one failed in warranty - wouldn't print black. Currys replaced without quibble.
Second has now turned up its toes as well. I'm going to have it in bits on bench tomorrow but suspect it will be written off and replaced by Canon.
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I bought a Canon a few months ago. It allegedly has wireless capability. However, I need to enter the wireless key every time I switch it on, then my laptop refuses to accept that the thing is powered up and connected to the router. Which I can see with my own eyes it is. So I have to grab the printer cable out of my desktop's usb socket, plug it in to the laptop, and reboot the laptop and the printer to talk to each other. And also, when I'm trying to use it with the desktop pc via the printer cable, if i switch the printer off and then realise I need another print and switch it back on again, the two don't recognise each other. So reboots ensue. I'm pretty fed up with it to be honest. Piece of junk.
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What is the point of having a wireless printer, and turning it off? Its designed to stay on.
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>> What is the point of having a wireless printer, and turning it off? Its designed
>> to stay on.
Certainly the way I use my Epson MFD at home. SWMBO and both kids can print at any time.
Mrs B would be well hacked off if she had to turn it on and wait for POST etc before printing stuff for tutees.
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Exactly, its stays on, just like the Wireless router.
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But you'd not expect to reenter WLAN details after it was turned off. But agree the point is it stays on or at least in standby.
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Well call me a tight git but I prefer things to be powered down when I'm not using them, and I don't expect that to cause the item a problem. And I only print once in a blue moon.
Last edited by: Alanović on Mon 14 Jan 13 at 14:57
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Me too...my Canon is on wifi but is always turned off unless we're using it.
It never has a problem connecting with any laptop or desktop in the house straight away.
Pat
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Some compatibility/interference issues? How about a change of wireless channel?
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How about electronic products which can be switched on, used, and switched off again. Repeat as necessary, when required, without it taking an hour to try to print one piece of A4. Seems it's too much to ask of all manufacturers since the advent of everything's-pretty-much-only-software.
(But thanks for the hint FC, I'm not having a pop at you.)
Last edited by: Alanović on Tue 15 Jan 13 at 15:34
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How about "none of us have that problem because we use it as designed"?
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Alanovic
I have a Canon Pixma connected to my desktop and Ian's laptop by WiFi.
It remains switched off until one of us wants to print something and as soon as we switch the printer on, it is ready to print.
I think you have a problem with yours but it certainly should be possible to do what we do with ours.
Pat
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New Printer Recommendations - No FM2R
