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by woleium 890 days ago
Never buy a consumer print device. The enterprise kit from HP is still good.
6 comments

I have a 16 year old usb printer from them that I bought for 120 euro or so at the time. Still works great. Good value. I buy some toner for it every five years or so and that's about it. It doesn't get used a lot.

Basically, don't buy an inkjet printer (of any type) unless you really need one for photos or graphics work. And then only buy one if that's a regular thing. Otherwise, outsource to professional print shops in your area. It will be better and cheaper.

For normal office stuff, a laser printer is just easier. The toner lasts for ages, doesn't dry out. And if, like me, you rarely need a printer, it's nice when it still works after just sitting there for half a year of not being used at all.

HP has two tiers of consumer print devices. Bottom of the barrel & "Home, Home Office and SoHo". Second category is good. First one wears down fast.
I print well below 100 pages a year. What would be the price per page using an enterprise grade printer?
If you get a used one, might not be that bad.

But a consumer Brother is probably the way to go. Always search the model number and see what people say.

My $100 brother laser printer I bought 6 months ago has printed everything I asked (dozens and dozens of pages) from Windows, Linux (well supported linux drivers!) and our families mix of apple and android phones.
I have a similar story about mine, but it’s nearing seven years old and just keeps doing what it does.

It doesn’t even have WiFi or AirPrint, but brother has an app that can print to it when you’re on the same network with an iPhone, which is surprisingly convenient.

HL-2170W and iPrint&Scan

Brother is pretty much the only printer brand I still trust. So far, no bullshit of any kind.
Mine died after printing three pages so your mileage may vary.
I'll share my example. I bought a Brother DCP-L2540DW (networked, full-duplex B&W laser, scanning with ADF) in 2015 for ~$120 after tax. I've gone through one toner cartridge for ~$50, so total cost excluding electricity is ~$170 for me. I've printed ~3,700 pages so far, so average price per page for the printer has been ~$0.046. I get paper for ~$0.03/page, so total price all in was probably ~0.076/page. This will continue to go down, the printer's current drum life is still >8,000 pages and should last me at least several more years.

With ~100 pages/year that would have been ~900 pages so far. At 900 pages, that probably would have been fine with the included toner, so toner costs don't count. Assuming you turn it off when not printing so energy costs are negligible. That brings it to ~$0.16/page (with my ~$0.03/page paper) printed.

Printing at the FedEx shop is ~$0.23/page for B&W. The public library nearby has B&W printing for $0.15/page. So with ~100 pages/year its cheaper than a chain office shop but more than the library at this point. A few more years will shift that closer and eventually beat the library price.

I've just given up on the economics of photo printing at home. It seems to me you really need to print a lot of photos to compete with the ease of photo printing at most photo stores in the US. You'd need a really good photo printer to match most of the quality of online stores, so you'd need a pretty good printer with nice ink and paper. In-store pickup at a number of places usually means like an hour turn around or so.

Note though that overall my value for my printer is higher than just the printing. As mentioned, it is also a scanner I've scanned ~1,000 items with it.

Not sure exactly where the line lies between "consumer" and "enterprise". But, anecdotally, my employer (which is a pretty big enterprise) has small HP laser printers which cost a few hundred dollars (<500) with duplexers and wired network cards. The model is M402 or similar.

They've always worked perfectly on both Linux and Windows and need no maintenance, just remember to turn them on. Most of them are still on their original toner (we don't print that much).

Newer models seem to come with wifi, but I have no idea how well that works.

This is the secret to a great printing experience. Buying a no-frills laser printer, preferably black/white only.
I have the $80 Brother black and white networked laser printer. It’s been great. No hassles. It just works.
i got a free unit off of craigslist, nineties HP laser. Ive never changed the toner or added more paper than it came with. I did buy a pi for it to use as a cups server though.
At a 100 pages per year, your cheapest option is probably a bus ticket to a Kinkos.
I almost never have to print and in the rare exception I do I go to the library.
I'll just never buy a printer without an ink tank again.
Ink tanks are better but still not great. If the cartridge had the print head, at least you will replace both if there's a problem anywhere in the cartridge. If it doesn't, such as in all eco tanks, it can clog, especially if not used in a while.

Laser printers are just better. I can't think of a reason for inkjets anymore that's not niche.

Inkjets can print photos
IMO you're best off avoiding products from any company that sells garbage at any tier, whenever possible. They're taking advantage of people and creating large amounts of e-waste.