The Wirecutter:
>Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and stop expecting printers to “just work” because that would make sense in a world where a touchscreen supercomputer fits in your shirt pocket. Like most things in life that you have no control over, you’ll be happier if you accept printers for the janky money pits that they really are.
>
>Most of you are going to hate something about any printer that you buy, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Instead of fighting it, try to reframe the issue in your mind: You’re not buying a printer because you’re supposed to have one at home. You’re buying a printer because it’s (just barely) less inconvenient than going to a copy center.
Having used home and small office printers for over 25 years, it’s hard to argue with their premise. I have an Epson R2000 printer I love – when it works. But I dread having to print something on it because I know, even if I printed just fine yesterday, some problem will crop up when I use it today to make me waste time, energy, paper, and ink troubleshooting it.
99.9% of people doing printing don’t need color. If you work in advertising and need decks, it should be done on a professional Canon. If you’re printing photos, you should be using kiosks at Walgreen’s with actual photo paper because photo printers and ink are marked up to ridiculous levels.
Therefore, the best printer for the average person is…
The HP LaserJet P1102w
69 bucks for no-frills black & white laser, works frequently or infrequently, pretty much never breaks, toner is reasonably-priced, has the basic feature set to handle envelopes and such. Ignore the wireless feature — in fact, ignore any printer’s wireless feature — and just run a USB cable to it.
There. Now you can print homework, resumes, little league snack lists and budget sheets and cover all of your routine printing needs, and you don’t have to fuss with the inkjet monstrosity for the two times a year you actually need color.
“you should be using kiosks at Walgreen’s” Perhaps but not everyone is near a photo center like that.
Fair point, but there are always options, even web-based services where you can submit an album and have photos mailed to you that look great, ink doesn’t run and cost only a few cents each. When you calculate the cost of photo printing yourself, it becomes prohibitively expensive very quickly, to say nothing of your time spent making sure everything works and troubleshooting if it doesn’t.
There are near 20 of those P1102w models in my office right now (over 50 companywide) and we haven’t seen a single ticket on them in well over four years. The high volume Canons, however, are thankfully leased… and they have a repair guy out here every 4-6 weeks. As I’m sure you know as well as anyone, printers are a fickle, complicated technology that require near-constant upkeep. Most people are best off saving their energy and keeping it simple.
I have an old HP LaserJet 1020n (monochrome) on my network and it has never failed. I go through a toner cartridge every 2 years. HP makes it easy to get new ones and recycle old. Drivers have worked consistently with every version of Mac OS. I also print on it from my iOS devices.
I do fine art printing of photography and unlike the commenter below/above, I would never use Walgreens for proofing or printing my photographs. I’ve been doing home, fine art printing for many years, currently with an Epson 3880 which is now close to 8 years old. It’s far from perfect and Epson is not a great company to deal with, but the printer has printed thousands of high end notecards and hundreds of 16×20″ prints on very nice rag paper.
Fine art printing may be a lost art, but it’s an art that’s not lost on me. I’ve put the time in with both Lightroom and the printer and various paper profiles to get it worked out and over many years I’ve had very few problems.
While it’s true that pigment inks can clog most modern printers have cleaning routines that take care of that. Yes, ink is wasted by running a cleaning routine but it’s not that much. This printer takes nine 80ml cartridges which are expensive but they last a long time. I’ve never had a bad cartridge and never had a clog. I’ve printed plenty of bad prints but the problems have always been bad profiles or wrong side of single sided paper up.
Using services like Walgreens or web based services make trial an error expensive and awkward, exactly what most of us are trying to get away from by printing our own stuff.
Is home printing for everyone? No doubt not. But, being able to control what things look like and print on the fly is definitely worth doing for some folks. It definitely is for me and is an essential part of my photographic process.
1) You don’t need to print color (as Rageous said); maybe get a printer that can if the rest of the specs are good (for things like colored text, once in a blue moon), but color lasers you can afford suck for photos, and unless you’re a graphic design firm you don’t need a real color printer.
Inkjets are the devil and only good for specialized photo printing (see below).
2) If you do, you need a photo printer, and those are specialty. (Most people? Should be doing online photo printing.)
3) Never buy an all-in-one; they fail three different ways.
4) Don’t use wireless if you can possibly help it, at least not to connect the printer to the network.
Sure, you should never use Walgreens.
But his comment was, I think, aimed at the people who get a printer “so they can frame a photo they took of the kids” and hte like.
They don’t need to do proofing and color correct – they just want a pretty picture on physical media.
Walgreens or an online service will do that better than some random inkjet.
I agree completely. What I do isn’t for everyone, but the piece at Wirecutter and that comment paint such a negative picture of the process it doesn’t jive with my experience.
I read this and came here to say the same thing as you guys… laser printer, end of story. I don’t do much printing anymore – made a conscious effort to stop a bunch of years back, but when I do, my cheap ass laser printer ALWAYS works.
“ignore any printer’s wireless feature — and just run a USB cable to it.”
Nope. Absolutely not going to buy one printer per computer. When possible, I’ll happily use wired ethernet instead of wifi, but my printer must support networked printing.
Photorealistic printing has been marginalized by fast photo outlets like those at CVS, Walmart, etc. I can’t print an 8×10 on permanent photo paper for $3/$4.
Larger prints from pro quality labs stomp all over even the best inkjet printers.
The color printer is a dodo. Have to agree with others that for more most people,e the best printer is a cheap laser.
Ethernet is generally fine (some printers tend to spew every possible protocol over your network and logjam themselves into not working), but 9 times out of 10 when people are 1-starring printers on Amazon it’s because they tried and failed to get it working consistently on wireless networks. It’s a classic case of the Jobs “Bag of Hurt”.
wireless color laser scanner. got this HP for $325 and its pretty great:
http://www.amazon.com/HP-LaserJet-M277dw-Wireless-Printer/dp/B00TVACKEE?ie=UTF8&psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s01
…very compact, and the color is great for simple reports at home. no complaints on a Mac, other than finding the Mac drivers which took forever due to their crummy website.
my all in one lasers have been absolutely fine. I don’t fax, leaving the scanner and printer. neither have broke on me in 10 years.
I would never consider another printer without wireless. for casual home use I’ve had few to no problems. certainly nothing that a restart hasn’t taken care of.
I miss my die-hard metal-cased HP Laserjet 4M, but Ethernet and Wifi left it way behind before its guts needed replacing.
It’ll be a loooong time before I even look at another inkjet. Been through two or three of them, and they all seem like they’re one step away from waiting to be euthanized.
All I need from a printer is cheap replacement toner, at least two paper trays, double-sided capability, Ethernet, and wifi.
My last day-job employer leased used and battered HPs that required a repair guy to show up at least every month. I don’t know that anyone who could care about the long-term costs was looking ahead that far beyond their cash-out.
So color correct, run to walgreens to print. Color correct again, run to walgreens to print again. And keep doing this until you don’t care anymore and just take what you get.
Walgreens is perfect for prints that never should have been printed in the first place.