New printer recommendation

It looks like my old Epson Stylus Color 800 (refurbished) is finally dying, so I’m looking to buy a new printer.

I want color, I don’t want laser (unless you can get a good color laser for $300 or less, and I’m 99.9% sure you can’t). I have no real brand loyalty, but cost of ink cartridges matters.

I have a (currently) reliable flatbed scanner (Scanjet 4c), so I don’t need a printer/scanner (if it ends up being the best deal, fine). I fax things possibly once every other year, so there’s not really a need for that, either.

I would like one that you can put in the flash card from your digital camera in, to print right from the card

Suggestions?

People seem to say that the HP 7760 is good.

I just recently purchased a Pixma IP5000… Seems good for the money since it has a separate tank to print just regular black ink for text documents. If you’re planning on printing mostly just photos then I’d recommend getting the Pixma IP8500 or HP7760

Cannon Pixma HANDS DOWN

The photos printed on 4x6 paper look just like photos. It is amazing. I just picked up the 4000 at Fry’s for 119- marked down 30.00. Fantastic deal.

I cannot recommend it any better than that. I am currenly working on a photo book of our trip to Europe this summer and I am happily pringing all of my 868 picutures with the Cannon.

Oh, the software they bundle with it is not too shabby either.

I purchased a Canon Pixma iP6000D. Has a nifty built-in LCD screen that allows you to preview photos, crop etc. and card slots so you don’t even have to turn your PC on to print digital photos. It can also print on printable CD’s/DVD’s and has a built-in duplexing unit.

It depends on what you print, really. If you use your printer primarily for images (photos, art, whatever), then nothing comes close to Epson’s printers, especially the new ones (like the R800, or, if you want large format, the 2200), either in terms of image quality or longevity (Epson’s inks are archival). If you print primarily text, then you may want something faster, though.

I don’t care about speed, really. I don’t print many photos, but that is probably 70% a function of me and photos and 30% the printer I have sucks at it.

I’d like to keep it under $250, if possible. Duplexing would be nice, but isn’t essential. I think most of the printing would be text/black, with the occasional photo (of course, if it turns out we like to be able to print photos, we might do more of it).

You can get a good color laser printer for $350, after rebates:

http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=171486

It’s the Samsung CLP-500. I’ve had it for a couple months and am very happy with it. Quality is excellent, it really is pretty quiet (one of the big advertised features). It also advertised pretty good speed. I suppose that’s true, but it does take it a while to warm up first.

The built in duplexing is a cool feature, but not one we use very much at all.

As with most color printers, the consumables can be very expensive. If you’ll print a lot of either color or b&w, you may want to shop around a little. There are similar low end color lasers from a few manufacturers. I think the Samsung was roughly in the middle on cost per page for b&w vs color. Some were cheaper for one, but more expensive for the other. If you’re really going to print a lot, more expensive printers may be cheaper in the long run. But then you probably wouldn’t have been using an inkjet until now either. Any of the laser consumables will almost definitely cost a lot less than any inkjet. But remember to include non-toner parts in any ongoing cost calculations. This printer has a few of those.

Micro Center has a $50 rebate for this particular printer, plus if you apply for their Visa card and use that to pay for it, you can get a $50 store credit ‘rebate’ too.

Abolsutley POSITIVELY do NOT go with HP. That companies quality has taken a major shitdip the klast couple of years, and they’re messed with their printers to force you to change printheads along with print cartidridges to rape you for extra money,

More sped from you would be great, but I went though a whole line of bullcrap with HP all the way to the top, and they do not gives a skinks ass about anythihg but a cheap productuce that they get adi t suppoert

THe guys who made company and mad eit such a brilliant abn engaging place t wor force, got forced off the board of director and left. The CEA Mrm HPO!

Sp go win Canon, or lexmark, Kodak, or lexmark,

<<EDIT>>

Holy cow. I was half asleep when I wrote this! I’ll leave it up so you can all laugh at me.

If cost is a real issue, and you’re going to be doing a fair bit of printing, I’d stick with Epson. I’ve got an Stylus 5400 All-in-One here and just bought a 5600 for my wife’s work, and love both because they’re incredible with print cartridges. I organized this town action committe thing last summer and did a crazy amount of printing and photocopying off a single black ink cart. Never seen ink cartridges last so long as with these Epsons. Photo print quality isn’t fantastic, though, so if you’re going to print pics, I’d look elsewhere.

I’ll second the recommendation to stay away from HP. Did some research before buying the Epson for my wife and heard nothing but bad stuff about pretty much the entire current HP line. Lots of problems, and they’re apparently ink hogs. Replacement carts are expensive in comparison with Epson.

Canons PIXMA range seems the best value for money right now.
Fastest, cheapest, most features and the high end PIXMAs equal Epsons best as far as I can see (I have the PIXMA IP8500) right now and have been playing with the IP4000 and IP6000D.

They look great and they have a lot of nifty features. I like the extra somewhat hidden paper tray, duplex printing and the ability to print on cd/dvd’s. The seperate inks (mine has 8 ) reduces price per print and gives great photo quality. And they’re the fastest non-lasers.

I can’t recommend Lexmark The only thing they’re best at is being cheap. Initially, not if you calculate per print cost, where Lexmark looses bigtime.

HP are usually the cheapest per print (if you don’t count non-original inks, but that’s a whole other issue) and their high-end photoprinters are really good - but if that’s not what you’re after, they’re overkill and I’d still recommend a midrange PIXMA.

Epson makes some good high-end printers as well, but their cheaper printers are slow as fuck. And I still think Canon’s new are just as good in print quality.

edit: sometimes I spell like Hrose

I’d recommend Epson or Canon printers. Get a midrange or better
(price is a good hint - you actually get what you pay for). Both are cheap
to replace cartridges for.

AVOID Lexmark. Please. I have nothing but bad experiences with them.
I have 5 of those in a pile, and all have been flawed in some way, did
not work with anything but Windows (and not even all on XP), plus the
cartridges have an expiry date. Yes, electronic locking of the cartridge
after a certain time. You can’t refill them, and if you don’t print much,
you’ll never even use all of the cartridge before having to replace it.
The cartridges are also way more expensive.

I hear HP also have that time-limit thing. Their cartridges, for non-lasers,
tend to be cheaper than Lexmark, though.

(Note: Prices may vary per country, but the Epson/Canon cartridges
were the cheapest brands in Scandinavia, Great Britain and Ireland
last time I and aquaintances checked.)

There’s a lopt of myths regarding printers.
I’ve never seen any proof of any expiry dates in cartridges. I’m sure there’s none in HP. And I’m pretty sure that would be illegal in the EU anyway.
You can refill Lexmark, but refills and non-original inks/dyes are only good for draft printing and text.
You get bad colors and photos that won’t last.

I agree with most people here.

Lexmark are the spawn of satan, and should never be bought. Their consumables are horrifically expensive.

HP has a good reputation, but I’ve been having a few bad experiences with them. Specifically, their drivers are crap. They are incredibly picky about installation. I had to re-install Windows XP to get one computer to accept the drivers.

Epson and Canon are both pretty good. My parents have had an old workhorse Epson for years with no problems, and the school I work for is installing Pixmas and they are excellent in quality, even the 1500s. Epsons have better inks, but Canon are faster, and still print quality images. Your choice.

Of course, the above only applies to inkjets - don’t have enough experience with lasers to make any comments.

http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/compare.aspx/colorlaser?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd

I would get me the small DELL C 3000 color laser. It is defo not as good as a photo inkjet, but costwise it will rock!

Dell is Lexmark with a new sticker on the front.
My advice - don’t.

Actually the new Epsons–the R800 and (I think) the R300–are much faster than previous offerings, though I’m not sure how they compare to the Canon printers. The R800 has phenomenal print quality–they’ve gone to eight ink cartridges (all seperate, so you never have to throw out good ink when one color runs out), adding red and blue to the cyan/magenta/yellow mix (which extends the color gamut), along with gray, black, and a special matte black for doing prints on matter paper. The matte black is really cool… it retains all of the value range that you normally get on glossy paper. Normally, when you print images on matte paper, they flatten out a bit, and lose some of their saturation and punch. Matte prints on the newest Epson printers look every bit as good as glossy or semigloss prints.

For images, there really isn’t any other consumer printer that even comes close in terms of quality, but it depends on how much of a stickler for detail you are. If you just want to print the occaissional vacation photo or whatnot, the difference in image quality may not matter to you (the truth is, most of these inkjets make good prints–it’s just a matter of degrees). I do a lot of digital art, so I’m sort of anal about color, and I want archival prints; as far as I know, Epson is the only company that offers archival inks even in cheaper consumer printers. HP also has archival inks now, but I think they only use them in their large-format printers. Prints with Epson’s pigmented inks will last for decades (or upwards of 80-100 years, on special paper). On most inkjet printers, you’ll be lucky to have prints that last more than a few years before some of the colors show considerable fading.

Get the Canon i960. It prints great photos, text and is fast. And I got mine for $150.

The good Pixmas are faster than the R300 and R800, but we’re talking the difference between pretty fast and pretty damn fast, so it doesn’t really matter.
I’d say that the colours on the Canon PIXMA IP8500 is just as good as on the R800, but you’d have to be anal to notice the difference, and I think it’s a matter of taste.

HP does archival inks now too - I think their B&W inks were recently rated to 115 years. Canon is close too.
Interesting thing I learned after playing with the SONY DPP-FP30 is that some of those dedicated small size photoprinters have lousy lasting colours. One would think that a printer good for nothing else, would compete with ordinary developed film, but the SONY is rated to just 4 years - good colours though.

Yeah, I think people who are buying those printers to fill the family photo album are going to be somewhat pissed off when they realize exactly how temporary their prints really are. I’ve had certain colors (usually blues or reds) drop out of prints that I’ve made on my university’s HP printers in as little as a year and a half. I have a row of test prints from my Stylus Photo 785EPX (on the Colorlife paper) that I left sitting out in a relatively sunny spot when I bought it, two and a half years ago. They haven’t faded at all. And this printer still uses the old dye-based inks. The new pigmented inks are much more fade-resistent.