My g/f needs a cheap but good printer. The most important thing is cheap ink. Ayn ideas?

Cheers

1 Dont buy Lexmark

2 buy an epson, has cheap carts, reliable but if the jets block you have to get a new one (might be cheaper than a replacement cart).

3 or buy something like a HP or canon one, both are reliable and have low costs providing you/she are willing to refill it.

4 or, if you do a lot of text printing, get a cheap laser. You can refill these yourself too, although using a mask and rubber gloves is suggested by me. No holes to block and you will rarely have to refill it. Mine has done over 3,000 pages since new and I still have the replacement cart waiting to go into it. I was lucky to get 200 pages from the last inkjet so each time I printed out a book I needed to refill it. Dont worry too much about the make and check the price of replacement carts.

5 Remember, dont buy Lexmark.

Youre taking a risk when you refill/use remanufactured or 3rd party carts.  I nearly ruined my £100 canon printer using £1 ink cartridges, not worth it.

HP have stupidly pricey cartridges.  My canon one takes 5 different ink cartridges at about a fiver each, so its pretty reasonable in my book.  Having said that, I think mine was one of the last canons to have simple cheap cartridges, so you may need to do a bit of googling for cartridge compatibility and prices.

I wont be using 3rd party carts again for a while, the print quality slowly degraded over a few months until eventually everything came out really really desaturated with a yellow hue.  Then I had to dismantle it and mess about with rubbing alcohol etc, not great fun.

As with fc9k, Ive had a bad experience with cheap refills/recycled carts, totally shafted the print part of my Lexmark all-in-one jobbie.

If youre only really doing black and white work, not photos, etc, definitely consider a laser. They are far better quality and economical to run.

My thoughts:

Dont buy Lexmark.

Dont buy compatibles.

If its just black and white printing (essays and docs) get a Samsung ML2010 or a Brother and get a 3000 sheet toner cart. Together should be about 90 quid (including new toner as the one you get with it is only a 1000 sheet one).

If its colour all in one you want something like a Canon Pixma MP160 should be OK.

Cheers
Tongy

PS. Dont buy Lexmark

1) Dont buy Lexmark
2) Dont buy hp if you value you clothes or £20 notes.
3) Dont buy Epson if you want something thatll last more than a year.
4) Dont buy a Canon.
5) Get her to buy her own bloody printer.



The Sammy lasers are ok for text & cheap to run.

Quote from: Clockd 0NeAs with fc9k, Ive had a bad experience with cheap refills/recycled carts, totally shafted the print part of my Lexmark all-in-one jobbie.

If youre only really doing black and white work, not photos, etc, definitely consider a laser. They are far better quality and economical to run.

Seems some people have problems with compatibles and others dont. Worst thing that ever happened to me was blocked jets and that was after I had refilled them a few times. Mind most of my printouts gets scrawled and scribbled all over and then binned within weeks.

In the end it was cheaper to go for a laser with the amount of printing I was doing.

I think the thing with compatibles is most of them are fine but some arent, and the ones which arent will knacker your print head. My Canon i450 was killed by cheapo carts.

I wouldnt mind compatible carts if I had a printer with heads built into the carts, if they clog up you just throw them away and dont buy that brand again. No more cheapo ink tank carts for me though.


I also echo what has been said about not going near Lexmark and buying a cheap laser if all you do is text. Samsung lasers are particularly good because they can be very easily refilled. Make sure you get a decent particulate mask though, toner particles and lungs dont play well together and the masks which tend to be supplied with toner refill kits are a joke.

i wouldnt buy anything but a canon

i work at currys part time, and its my job to sell as many printers as possible and so many times people come back complaining about lexmarks cheap printing quality, they only use a colour ink and a lot of the lower end ones, which produces a bad quality black

i would go for a canon, if its a standalone printer youre after

if youre after an all-in-one then maybe HP, but you will be destroyed from ink costs

i have had my canon 2 years and i only use it to print off work from university, so takes a lot of use but probably isnt the most high end printer anymore

Dont buy Lexmark.  

Brother seem okay if you need to get a cheap all in 1 solution, you can get one of those for around £40 from ebuyer or a little more from somewhere like Staples.

id agree with the samsung laser comments, iv had one for 5 years and its solid and cheap

Like everyone else said dont buy Lexmark

For inkjets I would go for Canon.

Whatever else he wanted this has definitely become a dont buy Lexmark thread

its amusing how every time theres a "what printer should I get?" thread, the only real consensus is that it should under no circumstances be a Lexmark. The Canon/HP/Epson debate has got quite heated in the past but at least everyone can share common ground in hatred of Lexmark printers.

Psssst. Dont buy Lexmark.