Recommend me a printer

[The Goat]

Hi I need a new printer mainly for office duty printing invoices, letter's etc but occasionally I will want it to print decent quality photos.

I had my eye on the Canon PIXMA TS8350

https://store.canon.co.uk/canon-pixma-ts8350-wirel...

It's currently unavailable & I think it is unlikely it will become available again but I can't see any replacement for it.

I'm looking for recommendations for a sub £200 printer that is equal to or better than the Canon above......

Edited by The Goat on Thursday 19th May 22:20

[sgrimshaw]

If you want decent photo quality sadly that puts lasers out of the picture, but colour all-in-ones are probably out of budget.

I'd take a look at the Epson Ecotank range for an ink jet. Print costs are ridiculously low.

https://www.printerland.co.uk/product/epson-ecotan...

Print cost per page of Ecotanks are 0.2p for mono and 0.5p, so 500 pages of mono is £1.00 and 500 of colour is £2.50.

Edited by sgrimshaw on Friday 20th May 00:04

[CarCrazyDad]

The Goat said:

Hi I need a new printer mainly for office duty printing invoices, letter's etc but occasionally I will want it to print decent quality photos.

I had my eye on the Canon PIXMA TS8350

https://store.canon.co.uk/canon-pixma-ts8350-wirel...

It's currently unavailable & I think it is unlikely it will become available again but I can't see any replacement for it.

I'm looking for recommendations for a sub 200 printer that is equal to or better than the Canon above......

Edited by The Goat on Thursday 19th May 22:20

My recommendation for office use is always going to be a laser because Inkjets are horrific cost wise, and not ideal for photos (certainly not within your budget)

I appreciate you may want one device to do both but you can get decent photoprinters for around 60 and a good quality mono laser printer for under 100 !

[The Goat]

CarCrazyDad said:

My recommendation for office use is always going to be a laser because Inkjets are horrific cost wise, and not ideal for photos (certainly not within your budget)

I appreciate you may want one device to do both but you can get decent photoprinters for around 60 and a good quality mono laser printer for under 100 !

That's interesting I hadn't considered 2 separate printers. Do you have any recommendations as to brand & model?

Tia

[The Goat]

sgrimshaw said:

If you want decent photo quality sadly that puts lasers out of the picture, but colour all-in-ones are probably out of budget.

I'd take a look at the Epson Ecotank range for an ink jet. Print costs are ridiculously low.

https://www.printerland.co.uk/product/epson-ecotan...

Print cost per page of Ecotanks are 0.2p for mono and 0.5p, so 500 pages of mono is 1.00 and 500 of colour is 2.50.

Edited by sgrimshaw on Friday 20th May 00:04

I have looked at the EcoTank range but I am clueless as to which would one would be best suited given the choices available.

[RizzoTheRat]

If its only occasional photos, there's a lot of companies that will print them and post them to you, which may be better than spending a lot more for a capability you rarely use.

[bristolbaron]

sgrimshaw said:

If you want decent photo quality sadly that puts lasers out of the picture, but colour all-in-ones are probably out of budget.

I'd take a look at the Epson Ecotank range for an ink jet. Print costs are ridiculously low.

https://www.printerland.co.uk/product/epson-ecotan...

Print cost per page of Ecotanks are 0.2p for mono and 0.5p, so 500 pages of mono is 1.00 and 500 of colour is 2.50.

Edited by sgrimshaw on Friday 20th May 00:04

I’ve been very disappointed recently with our eco tank. After fair use over 18 months it came up with a waste ink pad end of use message. The options are to have it replaced at the same cost of the printer, bodge it with a homemade external tank or bin it. We binned it.

[alfa aficionado]

bristolbaron said:

I’ve been very disappointed recently with our eco tank. After fair use over 18 months it came up with a waste ink pad end of use message. The options are to have it replaced at the same cost of the printer, bodge it with a homemade external tank or bin it. We binned it.

Yeah I wasn't aware this was an issue with the bulk ink printers until very recently - most are not user replaceable and as you point out there's often not much difference in cost between a new printer and sending the old one away to get the part replaced.

I ended up buying a Canon Pixma G650 mainly because it does allow user replacement of this item but whilst it's better at printing photos than most (6 rather than the usual 4 inks), it is definitely slower and I've had to do without an ADF.
Ideally I would have went for the Maxify G6050/G7050 range which are faster and have ADFs but they wouldn't have been as good at printing photos (and were out of stock!).

[CarCrazyDad]

The Goat said:

That's interesting I hadn't considered 2 separate printers. Do you have any recommendations as to brand & model?

Tia

I used Brother and Canon laser printers often.

What I'd do is just go onto Amazon and look for something with great reviews.

Someone else made the suggestion of using a postal photo service - may be a good shout. A few years ago I had 100 photos printed for like £5.

[Ronstein]

I tend to stick with HP Laser printers (currently MFP 179fnw) as there tend to be fewer driver issues and consumeables are OK price wise and readily available.

[paulrockliffe]

I was going to say that what you want really wants two printers rather than trying to find one that does both well.

The other thing I would prioritise is being able to put the printer on your network. Two big benefits - you can stick the printer somewhere out of the way, mine is in a cupboard, and you can print from your phone/tablet/etc. I find mine more reliable if I print stuff from my phone than my PC to be honest.

[The Goat]

Thanks all for your replys & suggestions.

I've managed to find a Canon Pixma TS8350 for rrp (on Amazon they are £90 over rrp) I'm just waiting to hear from the shop re delivery.

I've also seen this Brother Laser printer which I think will be good enough for the day to day stuff, would appreciate any feedback re this one please.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B078GXF59W/ref=cm_sw_r...

[MesoForm]

The Goat said:

I've also seen this Brother Laser printer which I think will be good enough for the day to day stuff, would appreciate any feedback re this one please.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B078GXF59W/ref=cm_sw_r...

That's a scanner too, if you don't need the scanner you can save yourself a bit of money and get this Brother L2350DW
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Brother-HL-L2350DW-Wirele...

I've got one for light home office use, if it broke today I'd get another one tomorrow, we can print from laptops, phones, etc. without any bother.

[somouk]

I'll do the internet thing of recommending what I use... Epson ET-3750. An excellent office printer and has pushed out some decent quality prints for photos when using decent paper.

[pills]

I've got a HP Colour laser 150 which does a decent job but not photo quality.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/HP-Colour-Laser-Wireless-...

£141 for a used - acceptable on Amazon.