Recommend me a printer

[MiniDave]

for home use.....occasional photo but mostly black and white (text) with the occasional color page......

We bought an HP with WIFI capability, all of that works fine, my problem is with the ink usage.....I bought all new cartridges, installed them and after it ran the setup page the cartridges were showing half empty!

5 pages later it's losing colors. now it won't even print B&W......I've replaced the cartridges several times over the last few years and I'm tired of feeding it $50 worth of ink and having it last a few days.......

[MPlayle]

All ink-jet printers are subject to those same issues.  A lot has to do with how long the "new" cartridges sit before you buy them - the ink does eventually evaporate.

I currently have a HP printer (Office Jet 4635) and get reasonable life out of genuine HP cartridges bought at Costco.  The printer was less than $100, they make their money on the ink cartridges.

I used to get the $50 Lexmark printers that took some of the least expensive cartridges.  The problems came when they started quickly discontinuing each of the cheap models in like 6 month cycles and would stop ink cartridge support a year later.  I would end up having to find a new printer every couple of years.

[LilDrunkenSmurf]

I personally grabbed a Samsung C460 laser printer. A little more expensive, but the toner will never go bad like Ink does. That being said, it will never have photo quality prints.

[jeff10049]

HP printers are pure shit IMO, Get a Brother and never look back laser is better than ink jet for life of cartridge  but somewhat lower quality. I have a Black only  brother laser at the business for general printing of checks invoices etc and a ink jet for color prints it is in every way possible superior to the POS $1,000 hp we had I hated the effin thing more than anything in the world. And the $500 one and the el cheapo I'm way done with HP's ink wasting POS printers.  I have less money in three brothers than the one hp "business machine" what a joke that printer was we pulled a office space on it.

[jeff10049]

we have one of these easy on ink work flawlessly everytime.
http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/316814/Brother-Wireless-Color-Inkjet-All-In/?cm_mmc=PLA-_-Google-_-Printers-_-316814&adpos=1o1&creative=49900573076&device=c&matchtype=&network=g-VQ6-49900573076-VQ16-c-VQ17-pla-VQ18-online-VQ19-316814-VQ20-52119948174-VQ21--VQ22-184134716-VQ27-10337422916&gclid=CjwKEAjws5zABRDqkoOniLqfywESJACjdoiGEnw_xv7J27JCRP5sQfSQdLWKrPlVh_Z_7dXkhSdG1xoCF4Xw_wcB

[MiniDave]

Jeff, and the Brother does not suck ink like the HP? how many cartridges does it hold and how much are they? How long do they last in your experience? How many pages can you print before you have to buy new ink?

When we bought the printer before this one - we had done research as we had a Canon that also sucked ink like an ink junkie, we found an HP that was supposed to be able to print more than 100 times what the Canon did and we were very happy with it - but it got old and she wanted wireless so we replaced it with another HP - which works just fine but we can't buy ink fast enough and we hardly get any use out of it before it's screaming for more ink.

I have a friend who buys the ink refill kits and does his own, I guess that's another alternative, but on some of these cartridges if you refill them they don't work - electronically.

[MPlayle]

That is the most major drawback with the HP printers - they favor the "genuine" HP cartridges over generics or refills.  There were some news blurbs a while back of HP getting backlash over having used their electronics to completely block alternate or refill cartridges.

[jeff10049]

A ream of paper (500 sheet ream) I'd say per refill on the office ink jet, it has a black and three separate  color (we buy high yield ones), the other smaller one (shop printer) has a black and combined color for a total of two have not replaced them yet but it mostly scans I don't print much from it maybe half a ream so far  and it shows low color now (so 250 sheets on factory color). The laser prints about thousand sheets between toner changes.
Can't say enough good about the brother products just ordered a large format scanner from them. The Brother printers I have let you set maintenance times that f***n HP "Business Machine" would decide to clean the print head's  and then "check the device" a 20-minute process while a customer was waiting for an invoice to print. It is responsible for a number of gray hairs.
Maybe some my views are not relevant as I'm looking at it from a business standpoint but the ink use is certainly way better with the brother.