Cheap printer, cheap ink

Skyline

Skyline

Emmet Brickowski
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Dave
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Looking for a cheap printer that will take the 3rd party cheap ink.
Printer would be used very occasionally for letters, maybe a few times a year for the odd 6x4.
What do have, what do you suggest?
 
I would suggest a brother laser printer, but unfortunately they are not good for pictures.

Third party toner's are cheap on Amazon.
 
I'd second a laser printer, in your scenario you'd go for years without having to change cartridges.
The down side is a colour one is going to cost you around £200 to buy, though you will not have to refill it for years and it won't dry up like some inkjets.
 
I've had a few colour laser printers (samsung and Lexmark) over the years. They go through toner a lot quicker than you would expect, and faster than a typical mono laser, plus the refils were often as much as the printer. Lexmark was the worst of all, with poor reliability and excruciatingly expensive toner. Samsun was OK but print quality wasn't always as good as one would like.

There's 2 ways to pay for ab inkjet printer: up-front or via cartridges. Epson ecotank printers are great, but about £175 upwards. The least bad value way of printing is to have one of the deals where you pay a small fee - say £2.99/month - and you can print 30 or 50 sides each month. As the ink runs out they pre-emptively send you replacements. We had this with both Epson and HP, but HP printers tend to be troublesome, and I'd recommend Epson instead.
 
I was really looking for something about £60 and would take cheap 3rd party inks.
it would only be used once or twice a month, Couple of A4 size paper
 
You could get an Epson expression home XP 2200 OR 3200 all in one for less than £60 and a set of inks for £5-6.
Basic machines not the fastest or the best but fine for occasional use.
 
Epson are great for photos and you can buy 3rd party inks but the print head dries out if you don't use it much and cleaning cycles use a lot of ink.

One idea is to buy a mono laser printer and use an online service or your local supermarket to print the odd photograph when you need.

For reference, I have all three. Mono laser, colour laser and Epson photo printers, all over a decade old. I use aftermarket toner/ink in all of them. The lasers will sit happily for months unused and just work. The Epson is a pita (see above) but can't be beat for image quality.
 
At the moment the Epson Expression Home XP-4200 is winning. 60 quid and cheap ink on Amazon
 
Skyline said:
At the moment the Epson Expression Home XP-4200 is winning. 60 quid and cheap ink on Amazon
Click to expand...
Agree. I have an Epson Expression XP-442 and use Amazon cheap inks, as this printer is used only used for occasional colour documents/maps/&c.

Anthony
 
I recently bought an HP with free ink (from Amazon) for 6 months and for £2.99 a month ongoing, I get "free" ink, which is posted before I need it. So far, it has worked out much cheaper than buying ink that had "dried out" as I'm a 40 or so pages a month user. Not photo quality but fine for general use.
 
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