OT: Printer Recommendations

[duff_duffy]

Any go printer shopping recently? Looking for small home printer that can copy and print wirelessly from MacBook and a chrome book. Occasional color, low volume printing. Not too concerned with cost, reliability top concern. My wife teaches piano out of the house and needs one to print music now and then for students. Hoping someone here may have some insight. Feeling lazy tonight and wife asked me to research do of course came here!

[rwsaunders]

I use a Mac and I print wirelessly...just picked up an HP Office Jet Pro 8025...+/- $175. I had a similar HP model before and I gave it to one of my kids. They get the job done. My opinion about printers and I know that I’m not alone, is that they give away the hardware and make it back 100 fold on the ink.

[SpeedyChix]

Brother MFC-L8900CDW has been great for us. Can print via network wirelessly, AirPrint from the phone, it scans, it copies, it prints, it faxes. However it doesn't slice or dice like a Veg-O-Matic.

It's laser printer, uses toner, we buy the high capacity toner cartridges ahead when Staples has there deep discount going on or similar sale on the home/biz account. Trouble free

[MikeD]

I use Canon printers and use generic printer cartridges to save money on ink. Seems to work well with Mac and Windows. My next printer may be one that works better with Linux and has low ink costs; maybe Brother.

[slowpoke]

You want a laser printer. Ink cartridges dry and clog up. Brother seems to the company still producing decent products. HP got gutted by MBAs.

[roguedog]

Originally Posted by slowpoke

You want a laser printer. Ink cartridges dry and clog up. Brother seems to the company still producing decent products. HP got gutted by MBAs.

So sad and true, it's funny.

Have an old HP 4000 LW that's more or less chugging along. Hooked up to a raspberry pi for wireless to bring into modern era. Yay for pre-gutted HP quality.

[Ken C]

We have a Brother MFC-J895DW that has been great. So easy to print from a phone or a computer.

For the volume of printing you suggest I don't think you need laser. We use our for about the amount of printing you suggest and I have not had any issues with clogging or drying ink.

I also had an older Canon ink jet that printed better photo quality, than the Brother, but it did not have an app that allowed printing from a phone. I wouldn't hesitate to purchase a new Canon. Otherwise, the Brother does everything better including scanning quality, ease of use, ink usage and price, and speed of printing.

[Pinned]

Brother laser printers are the absolute best. I'd skip color / photo and just do that at Staples or a local print shop on the rare occasion I need it.

[oldpotatoe]

Originally Posted by Pinned

Brother laser printers are the absolute best. I'd skip color / photo and just do that at Staples or a local print shop on the rare occasion I need it.

Agree..and it 'might' be a good idea to get one that scans also..I bought a lower end Brother laser..the sales lizard at BestBuy said it scanned also...it didn't, so had to but a stand alone scanner......

[Wattvagen]

after throwing out a few inkjets, i bought a black only samsung laser printer a few years ago and it changed the way i think about home printing. i will never buy another inkjet printer again. it continues to surprise me at how excellent it is.

used to see pretty infrequent use, mainly boarding passes, but now that my kids are homeschooling, it's getting a lot of use and running like a clock. using generic toner carts from amazon and they work fine.

[benb]

I have been really happy with Canon, though the current printer I have is kind of not where our needs are moving towards.

The two Canons I've had over the past 17 years have been an i9900 and a Pro-100. They are both 13" wide 8-color inkjets. I gave the i9900 to my Father and it's still going FWIW.

I used to print LOTS of photos, and do competitions. I don't do so nearly as much, our printing has shifted way more towards documents the last 3-4 years. I print a ton of sheet music myself these days. I should probably be getting some legal sized plain paper and exploiting the fact my printer does that.

In any case both these 2 Canons have been super trouble free. The Pro-100 works flawlessly with iPhones, Macs, PCs, etc.. I have it wired in the network but it also has Wifi. The only issue we've had with it was my wife's fault. She was printing like 50 4x6 photos and accidentally put a cardboard backer that was in with the photos into the paper tray. The printer fed the cardboard with no issues but was set to photo paper. Cardboard can't absorb ink like that and the ink splattered inside the printer.. we had to run the cleaning cycles MANY times to get all the ink out. But in the end it didn't take a service visit.. which is a huge testament to the printer.

In the end no matter what type of printer you get there's a strong correlation between price & quality. The cheap consumer stuff is utter throwaway junk designed to make money on ink and assumes you will just be buying another one really soon. Spend a little more and it will pay off in terms of less hassle, lower running costs, and much better reliability.

Laser printers are not really consumer focused.. you can't compare them to $100 trash inkjets that try to do it all.

[saab2000]

Originally Posted by duff_duffy

Any go printer shopping recently? Looking for small home printer that can copy and print wirelessly from MacBook and a chrome book. Occasional color, low volume printing. Not too concerned with cost, reliability top concern. My wife teaches piano out of the house and needs one to print music now and then for students. Hoping someone here may have some insight. Feeling lazy tonight and wife asked me to research do of course came here!

I had the same needs about a year ago. I ended up with an HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M281fdw. I love it.

Highly recommended. I don't need to print often but when I do I want it to work with zero hassle. This one delivers on that requirement.

[Spaghetti Legs]

Another vote for Brother. I have J8700W that is 6-7 years old. Occasional printing, a lot of scanning without any problems. I use a Mac and print wirelessly from that, iPhone, iPad. I'm not so sure about Chromebook. I think I've done it in the past from my kids' school laptops but it involved setting up a Google online account and seemed needlessly complex, but I guess that's how Google makes money off those things.

[benb]

I hate HP FWIW.. we've had a few of those too, and I've had plenty of office experience with them too.

The big expensive office laserjets back in the day were good but their cheap inkjets & MFDs for the home are the most consumer-hostile printers out there. They suck down ink, they build the print heads into the cartridge which raises prices and means you're throwing away unnecessary eWaste, black opaque ink tanks so you can't see if you're being cheated, they gang multiple colors into a single unit so you are throwing out some ink when one color runs out, software has been accused of trying to make you replace tanks when ink is still remaining, etc.. and then they install an absolute mountain of unnecessary crap ware onto the computer.

Regarding HP inkjets making your replace the print head every time. That's for avoiding clogs.

But compare the Canon inkjets I've owned. The Canons have replaceable print heads as well, but you only replace them if they actually need to be replaced, not every time an ink cartridge goes dry. And in all the years I've had Canon inkjets I've never had a single head clog or ever had to replace a head.

I have to keep my mouth shut about HP a lot of the time. My FIL was a career DEC employee who finished his career at HP. But even he mostly hates HP now.

[makoti]

I also need a printer, and hate ink drying up on me. I use more ink cleaning the jets than I do printing, so was looking at a laser.
Brother seems to be a popular choice here. Has anyone gotten a refub from them? they have several at decent prices, and for the volume (very, very low) I do, they would be a good option.
Any refub experiences with Brother?

https://www.brother-usa.com/promotio...sort=relevancy