If you want to print in oversized, I can readily recommend the Epson ET 8550.
It’s a 6 tank A3+ photo/poster printer for under €800. If you got the use case for these (say as a photographer or an artist or you just want to print your own posters) then it’s a really good model.
Unlike it’s closest rival in the semi-professional market from Canon, the tanks make ink very cheap to operate, the vast vast vast majority of the printing cost is going to be the paper. It has a damn good printing quality even on mostly dark prints, it’s quite fast for documents spitting them out in 3-5 seconds each so for personal use it’s not meaningfully behind a laser. Quite variable, too, you can take the back off and feed whatever material you want in there with a huge clearance for thick plates to print on.Sure, it’s not something the average user ever needs but if you are looking for something like this, I can recommend it.
Interesting. What’s the total price per sheet on decent paper? I do a few hundred A3 prints a week.
It’s difficult to say as a lot depends on your specific use case and what you print and on which paper.
For my main use case, I bought a 100-pack of relatively inexpensive satin a3+ poster paper (so only 280g, but eh, they get put on the wall with something like poster strips or tack, I hardly need them to be thicker) which comes down to ~78cents per sheet. Ink usage is difficult to measure because my prints differ wildly in how much color is on them but my average so far seems to be ~50 cents per max quality a3+ print. So ~€1,30 per full size print if I want to be slightly pessimistic about it. But some of them were probably more like 85 cents total. 😅
The ink bottles really last a long time. Check your local prices but over here they cost €22 a bottle to replace, the printer has two blacks (one is pigment based for documents and stationary and so on), CMY and a 60% Gray, they all cost the same here but might be different for you. And then of course depends on what you print.
What I sadly cannot say is what A3 would cost, but scaling down you should be looking at roughly 20% less ink costs per print for full-size graphics prints, and then of course the paper you’re printing on. But that’s just mathing it down from my A3+ prints.
Thanks for doing the math. I have a deal with a commercial printer for slightly less, so it appears I won’t be changing. Rather not have the hassle either, in fairness.
Oh that’s quite fair, plus at that volume it helps to not have the risk of the printing process on yourself on top of everything else. 😅
Brother
Also here to shill Brother laser printers
Sort of depends on what type of printer you’re aiming towards. At work we’ve been mainly using HP Laserjet (the more expensive business class types with multiple trays) & those things are workhorses, they do last a good while. I also did work for a guy whose office still runs an ancient HP Laserejet from probably 20 years ago & somehow the thing still works (old enough to still have a parallel port on it haha).
On a related note more recently I’ve been testing a Canon MegaTank color inkjet to replace our dying Lexmark color laserjet, so far everyone in the office hates the Canon.
Same. We have dozens of M477s and M479s in production and few issues. Recently started deploying 4301s and so far so good. I bought an M479 on a good sale a few years ago for personal use and never had a problem. No mandatory subscription, hp account or any of that mess, and the toner lasts a long time. Not sure if it even will expire.
Many years ago we maintained a fleet of 4050s and 2200s (had to purchase parallel port add on cards to use those…) Those were rock solid for many years and very repairable, but at a certain point part availability and time lost doing repairs adds up and we had to move on.
I love my cannon megatank
20 year old HP LaserJet
Honestly, i have 20 year old hp and epson printers and they don’t have this proprietary problems modern ones have
I love HP! They prove that successive generations of technology are not necessarily improvements. I hate my parents HP printer. I thought I taught them better than that but apparently not.
I love my HP printer. Always prints when I ask it to every few months, uses third party toner, 0 issues whole time I’ve had it. Of course it’s a laserjet from 2004 so it’s built a bit different. I wouldn’t recommend a new HP though lol.
Joining the brother bandwagon here
This thread is pretty much all brother 🤣
Count me in as a happy Brother user. I used to think they were the knock off crappy printer but once I started to see more of them poo up and how much better they worked… I just bought myself an all in one laser one. Couldn’t be happier. It works so well, and no bullshit in Linux either. Works there too. Hp used to be the easy way but they’re not so great anymore.
We’re all brothers in Brother
It’s the first printer I’ve owned that didn’t make me want to throw it off my balcony
It’s Brother: https://www.theverge.com/23642073/best-printer-2023-brother-laser-wi-fi-its-fine
We went with their black and white MFC which also does double sided ADF scanning… and I recently had a bit of FOMO when a colour MFC went on sale (ofc, for like three-four times the price, and at that price I might as well just print colour at a local print shop).
Another good thing about the Brother printers is they work on Linux without too much fiddling
Get a laser printer not an inkjet printer
Inkjet printers will crap out if not used constantly due to the ink lines getting blocked with dry ink
I’ve got a brother laser printer and it works great
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Brother. Strong, reliable, durable, in my own experience.
All Brother all the time.
For now at least yes. I would have said the same thing about HP 25years ago.
Brother laser , no WiFi , no color , prints perfect everytime. Cost like 200 euro. Edit checked model HL-L23100
The ones that have a network jack, and WiFi that you can turn off are OK too!
Check the EFF’s list of printers without tracking dots
They are probably all pretty old, but you should be able to make a good Ebay search
printer (model-a,b,c) -replacement -foror similar
But, ::: spoiler Warning REMINDER: IT APPEARS LIKELY THAT ALL RECENT COMMERCIAL COLOR LASER PRINTERS PRINT SOME KIND OF FORENSIC TRACKING CODES, NOT NECESSARILY USING YELLOW DOTS. THIS IS TRUE WHETHER OR NOT THOSE CODES ARE VISIBLE TO THE EYE AND WHETHER OR NOT THE PRINTER MODELS ARE LISTED HERE. THIS ALSO INCLUDES THE PRINTERS THAT ARE LISTED HERE AS NOT PRODUCING YELLOW DOTS. :::
OH, INTERESTING INFORMATION. THANKS! ;)
