[Don_S]

Can anyone recommend a reliable printer?  Preferably not HP but I won't rule them out.  I have had two HP printers fail without being used very much.  I am reluctant to reward HP with more of my money. 

I do not print photos.  Primary use is document printing and scanning. Since I do not use one heavily, I would prefer keeping the price low but not to the point of buying the least expensive.

Thanks,  Don

[cliffy]

Brother.

I've had no issues with Brother laser multi-function units.

[cody69]

Was just in the same boat and just went through an exhaustive printer search.
Similar to you, I made up my mind to not purchase another HP, Inkjet in my case.
Went with Epson 3640... loved everything about it except reliability. It died in 6 months, of a problem I wasn't aware of until after purchasing.
After researching all options that matched my criteria... color inkjet, scanning, printing, copying, there seemed to be no clear winner. Every option had it fan club as well as share of negative reviews.
I ended purchasing a Canon Pixma printer. No idea how it will stand test of time, I've had it for only 3 months.
Good luck.

[gregfisk]

Well, we run reams of paper through our printers on a monthly basis and the most reliable by far has been our HP's. I own an alarm company so we have a lot of accounts and this adds up to boat loads of paper so we work our printers hard.

We bought a Brother, which one of the salesman at Staples recommended about a year ago and I hate it. The DB levels of that thing when it's running is criminal. We are in a small office and when that thing turns on even before printing you can't talk on the phone, then it runs for another 20 or 30 sec. after it's done printing. The model number because "hey" they might not all be like that is HL2270D. The only redeeming quality is it still works although personally I hope it dies very very soon.

We just bought a new HP office jet pro 6830 for about $70.00 or so and compared to the Brother it's dead quiet. We haven't had this one very long, maybe 3 months so I can't say how long it will last, but it works well and is easy to use. Compared to the color lazerjet we had before which lasted 13 years the ink cartridges are super cheap. This particular model which is new has a larger black cartridge than the color cartridges which made a lot of sense to me.

Just something interesting to add. We had an HP 2200 for almost 20 years and the only reason we had to get rid of it is we couldn't find any available drivers to work with our new computers. That printer weighed about 25 pounds but what a work horse it was.

Good Luck with whatever you end up with.

[MaxCast]

I use a HP office jet 6000.  First one lasted about 2 years and I bought the extended warranty for like 12$ and they gave me a new one.  This one is about 3 years old now.  Works great.  A little annoying with its self cleaning/aligning function but it works every time.

Have a HP photosmart 110 at home and it works great from two pc's and printing from phone/tablet.  All wirelessly.

Have a Brother multi-unit at work.  It's our second one in about 15 years.  Not too shabby considering our environment.  Ha, before the Brothers we had a sharp laser fax/copier only.  Paid $4k for it back in the day. 

[GentleBender]

Can anyone recommend a reliable printer?  Preferably not HP but I won't rule them out.  I have had two HP printers fail without being used very much.  I am reluctant to reward HP with more of my money. 

I do not print photos.  Primary use is document printing and scanning. Since I do not use one heavily, I would prefer keeping the price low but not to the point of buying the least expensive.

Thanks,  Don

I am not a fan of HP printers either for various reason. What is your estimated pages per month? That will allow better tailored suggestions. Do you want inkjet or laser? I've been using Epson Workforce for multifunction inkjet printers and Samsung for multifunction laser printers. The Samsung multifunction printers do not have great Mac support though. Printing is fine, but the scanning support is not great compared to how they work on Windows.

[Don_S]

Thank you all for your feedback and suggestions.  Please keep them coming.

I only print a couple of pages a month except at tax time.  Then I print a copy for my files and a copy of my state return to submit.  I e-file my Fed return.  I also do a Christmas letter to no more than 8 people.  I will go for months without printing anything and then print a couple of boarding passes or store coupons. That is why I am so discouraged with HP printers.  They do not get used enough to use up ink cartridges.  A ream of paper lasts me 10 years or more. That should answer any questions about what type of printer I need.

My first one blew chunks of the serrated belt.  Second one insists there is a paper jam even though the pages all came out fine and there is nothing stuck.  HP tech helped me reset like it was new but now it insists that the packing cardboard needs to be removed and the printer restarted. Over and over.  Tech and I gave up at that point. Carcass went to Goodwill for e-waste recycling.

I forgot to mention that I would like to avoid printers with more than two cartridges (black & white, and color).  I think I saw some in the past that had multiple cartridges for color.  I only print B&W gray-scale and fast/economy.  With the last HP that was more than adequate quality.

[Doublej]

I use a $50 Brother MFC unit with third party ink cartridges. The UI is a bit long in the tooth but works fine. I would definitely buy another Brother.

[GentleBender]

I can't recommend any inkjet printers with sporadic printing like that. The ink will dry out before you use it. Are you using PC or Mac?

[audio.bill]

Inkjet cartridges tend to dry up and need to be replaced unless they are used on a regular basis. Laser cartridges avoid that problem, so while they are more expensive to replace they are more suitable for users who print infrequently. Since you stated that you only print in black or grayscale, I would suggest that a B&W laser multi-function printer is best suited to your needs. I currently run a Samsung model which suits my needs, but there are also good choices from HP, Canon, Brother, etc. Note that it is common for laser printers to come equipped with only a "starter" toner cartridge, which is not a full cartridge but supports anywhere from several hundred to a couple of thousand pages. The replacement toner cartridges have a much higher capacity but can be costly, however they rarely have to be replaced until you run them out of toner.

[BobM]

I had a Canon about 10 years ago and like it a lot, but then something broke and I picked up a more expensive model when I upgraded my desktop system, and it lasted for about 4-5 years. All of a sudden I got an error message that said I was using an incompatible print head. A little internet searching and I uncovered that this happened in models about 4-5 years old, and it was a software glitch not a hardware issue. So getting a new print head would not fix it. What the heck? Canon support said the same thing.

So a lot of searching and looking into Epson's (expensive ink and old technology) and Brother (lots of people like these) and HP's (lots of people switching away from HP maybe because they are more expensive to buy and run) and newer Canons. I bought another Canon (MX922) for less than $100 with the idea that I like their print quality, they are not expensive to run, and for $100 I can use it for another 4-5 years and not feel guilty if it breaks down again.

Good luck with your decision.

[gregfisk]

For such little use you are going to need a laser printer, as mentioned above the ink will dry up. The Brother printer I mentioned earlier is a black only laser printer but like I mentioned, it is really loud.

[jpm]

As most have noted, inkjet printers are a false economy. There have been multiple tactics by manufacturers to make their money on the cartridges - I stopped keeping track.

After selecting a shortlist of laser printers to compare, make sure you check the expected page count and cost of toner cartridges.  Also check availability of 3rd party / re-manufactured cartridges. As they have in many other sectors, Monoprice has been getting in on the toner game lately.

Personally, I've had great luck with Dell multi-function color laser printers. From time to time you can get very good deals like the recent 2665dnf @ Staples for $200.

[GentleBender]

I have also had good experience with Dell MFC printers, both color and mono. Be careful with third party toner, not made to exact manufacturer formula and can shorten the life of the printer while giving you bad printing results. I find buying the extended size toner cartridges are the best deal in the long run. YMMV

[MaxCast]

So, ink does not dry up in laser printers???  That is good to know.  My Dad prints about as much as Don and he always complains about it not working.  So he replaces the ink, lol, which equates to about $39.99 per copy.
Thanks for the education.  I'm passing it on.

[gregfisk]

I have also had good experience with Dell MFC printers, both color and mono. Be careful with third party toner, not made to exact manufacturer formula and can shorten the life of the printer while giving you bad printing results. I find buying the extended size toner cartridges are the best deal in the long run. YMMV

This is good advice, we have tried after market toner and it can and does cause problems. Then you have just wasted money on something that doesn't work well or not at all. Value wise the large volume toner cartridges are definitely the way to go.

[srb]

So, ink does not dry up in laser printers???  That is good to know.  My Dad prints about as much as Don and he always complains about it not working.  So he replaces the ink, lol, which equates to about $39.99 per copy.

Laser printers use toner which is a dry powdered "ink" that is deposited on the drum with an electrical charge then fused to the paper with heat from the fuser.

I've found that most low-use ink jet printers can be kept from drying out by printing several documents or test pages per week.  I have one Windows computer where I created a task in Task Manager to print a sample document every 3 days.

It was mentioned that most all printers come with "starter" ink cartridges or toner for a limited number of prints.  That's true, but at least in the case of laser printers, you might be able to get more prints out of them after they throw a low toner error.

I was given a brand new budget Brother HL-2140 laser printer and after ~ 300 pages the toner light came on and it wouldn't print.  After Googling this, I first tried a software solution that didn't work (sequence of holding down buttons and power switch) but then tried a solution which was putting a piece of masking tape over a sensor hole in the side of the toner cartridge.  I have printed another ~ 200 perfect pages since then.

Also in laser printers like the Brother that use a separate drum and toner cartridge, the drum is also a "starter" piece, recommended to replace along with the starter toner cartridge (the regular replacement drum is supposed to last for ~ 5 toner cartridges), but the starter drum has been known to last through 2 or 3 toner cartridges.

Steve

[Johnny2Bad]

I bought a printer last year after Christmas time ... January something. So the very first thing I would say is NEVER buy computer or consumer electronics you do not absolutely need TODAY before the holiday season, when every manufacturer holds it's highest MSRP's (which equals the highest wholesale cost, so directly affects the deal you can get at retail) because it's about 50% of every brand's annual sales volume.

I had one of the low-cost Brother B/W Laser printers, used it for about 5 years, paid $C80 for it at Staples, bought a toner cartridge at the same time, also about $C80. For some reason, the same model printer sold in Canada had a 700 page "starter" toner while the ones sold in the US had a 300 page cartridge installed, but I managed to use the starter cartridge up and had installed the full toner (5000 pages) but only had maybe 200 pages on it. It was a great printer and I had no intention of replacing it.

By accident, I stumbled upon a Brother Colour Laser printer at Staples online (they didn't even sell this model in stores) for $C99. Model HL-3140CW.

So I bought it; sales taxes and shipping came to $C119, (which was at the time about $US 97.00).

USB2 and WiFi (no Ethernet), and since it was a MSRP $450 printer, and not a loss-leader budget model, it came with 4 *full-size- 3200 page* toner cartridges, so I'll probably never replace one. Like the B/W, a toner cartridge is $C117 per colour.

I sold the B/W printer with the large toner installed for $100. So the new printer cost me nineteen dollars.

It is very quiet, wakes and prints in about 20 seconds, and prints much faster than the old B/W it replaced. Both were good printers, by the way.

I have a high-end Epson 6-colour photo inkjet for quality colour work ($650, plus I'm on my second set of inkjet cartridges, about 300 8x10 *extremely* high quality prints per set) and if you are not printing photos the colour laser is all you need.

There is no comparison in per-page costs between inkjet and laser; if you don't NEED inkjet then get a laser printer, even a B/W one. If you do need inkjet, get one specific to your needs and get a laser for all everyday printing. The mistake is using an inkjet to print out eMails and coupons for the drive-through. Very expensive, plus you are wasting inputs that are better used for the photo printing you bought it for in the first place.

Hot Tip: you can set your print preferences with any colour printer to only print B/W, which means you only replace the one black ink/toner cartridge because your actual colour printing is limited to when you deliberately specify colour for some reason (eg a few pages for your monthly duty cycle for colour inks, plus a few others), which will be a fraction of the total pages printed for the lifetime of the printer. You will replace the colour cartridges once, maybe never, but in any case no more than your actual need for colour ink.

Also: when you are shopping, figure your cost at the cost of the printer itself plus a complete replacement of inkjet cartridges, or laser toner. Then do your comparison shopping paying attention to whether your particular model comes with a starter cartridge or a full cartridge. With inkjets also look at the size of the inkjet cartridge or the page count of a full-size laser toner. This way you are not tricked into false economy; you may find a $50 inkjet + ink / $100 laser + toner is not such a good deal while a $100 inkjet / $200+ laser offers the same ultimate pages printed, and probably is a better printer to boot, for essentially the same cost over a reasonable time.

I've always bought Epson photo printers; zero failures and overall reliable operation as in "I went to print and it printed without any fuss".

I've owned one HP inkjet which was a high end $2000 model with PostScript (basically, a computer inside the printer, but perfect font quality) which was reasonably robust, but had issues with ink drying out in relatively short time ... less than a month. The cartridges were $30 each and were huge, easily 5x larger than your average 21st century inkjet.

I've only owned Brother lasers, totally 100% reliable, printed every time, no jams, etc every time I needed it. Quiet, not sure what the other poster had who complained about noise but definitely not a problem for me ... the colour laser has been plugged in and on in standby for 18 months; you can't even tell it's on, and isn't very loud when woken up (20 seconds) and printing. Would buy again.

Bought my first printer in 1995 and have owned one or two at all times since. Still, over 20 years, that's three inkjets and two lasers, and all five were working when retired (or still in use).

[aldcoll]

I have had HP and now a Canon 3 in 1 that have been good units.   My BIGGEST Gripe is even though we only print GRAY-SCALE on the back of scrap paper I have yet to figure out why the darned things still drain the color ink.  And if that isn't bad enough the thing shuts down when the color cartridge is empty.   And yes Color isn't used in Grayscale....  or is it?

Happy hunting, I think I will look for a Black and White but I am sure that will cost more.

[Johnny2Bad]

I have had HP and now a Canon 3 in 1 that have been good units.   My BIGGEST Gripe is even though we only print GRAY-SCALE on the back of scrap paper I have yet to figure out why the darned things still drain the color ink.  And if that isn't bad enough the thing shuts down when the color cartridge is empty.   And yes Color isn't used in Grayscale....  or is it?

Happy hunting, I think I will look for a Black and White but I am sure that will cost more.

Greyscale could easily be a 4-colour operation; some early inkjet printers only used 3-colours to mimic black and didn't even have provision for a black ink cartridge, the result was a muddy grey print colour. Also check if your printer allows you to load your printer with only black ink.

Any reason why you can't force either the printer driver or the system print settings to print only B/W?

The reason I have always chosen Epson has less to do with the hardware and more to do with the software.

HP is some kind of Cold War Psychological Torture Test when it comes to support; the support website is easily the worst contraption ever foisted on an innocent consumer. Not worth the effort. The hardware is good to excellent, perhaps the best out there, but even great electronics sometimes need a little help, and that is where your love of HP will end, guaranteed.

Canon again has great hardware, I would say equivalent to Seiko-Epson, but the software is not as good. Having said all that, even Epson falls short in the print software department, it just falls less short than the others out there.

And then there are those who not only get hair-pulling software, they get to enjoy crappy hardware to boot. Lexmark, for example. Run, don't walk from them.

I know they take up more space but I always only buy single-purpose devices. Scanners and printers are too important to leave to compromise, and if you think print software is an issue, Lord help you if you have to deal with manufacturer's scan software. Don't get me started on OCR, where 95% accuracy is considered good. Well, you could get 95% OCR accuracy in 1995, what is everybody bragging about?

(You can fax from any computer, it's 100% a software feature).