Hello, my HP printer died and I am looking for recommendations for good printers.
I am actually not sure if this is the best place to ask for advice, but I figured you guys have good opinions on cloud free printers that are HA compatible.
I dont print a lot, so I am looking for something small that has OK to good printing quality. But something that is very important is that it needs to be able to scan to a network drive/share
Thanks!
Personal opinion: Home printers are basically scam, nowadays.
You buy them dirty cheap, but then realize they actively force you to use their “official” ink cartridges that they sell at ridiculous prices.
I personally have an Epson WF that fits the bill, but which I’m forced to block firmware upgrades because I know it will block 3rd party (cheap) cartridges the moment I upgrade.
Why it needs to be HA compatible? (just wondering if i’m missing something)
If you need a printer for “everyone” in the house today many of them have LAN or WiFi connection, so you can put it into your local network and you have a network printer.
@koying You’re correct, but nowadays more and more printers have quite cheap inks, like Canon (megatank, i think), which has some models where you can buy almost 1dl of ink for under 10 €. I think that manufacturers (finally) realized that they can’t sell inks like gold, since chinese sell (almost identical) compatibles for “nothing”.
I have old Canon MP980 and i use compatibles for appr. 1€ per piece, my color laser Brother also has comaptible toners for around 30€ per toner, which is quite acceptable.
So, main thing is, i guess, to double-check for consumables: price of original or IF you can use compatible cartridges. That’s your decision maker.
I have a HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP277dw that can run with or without cloud and it can scan to a network drive. There is a HA integration, that let me monitor supplies and status, but since its a laser printer, then supplies usually last a long time and they do not dry up.
I’ve recently been in a similar position, as my previous Canon printer died. Worked nicely with HA, but the price of the printer was less than the price of the black+colour cartridges that went into it and it seemed to go through those very quickly (and at ~£40 a go for the pair).
Just switched over to an Epson ET-2810, which is one of the eco-tank ones (add the ink as liquid rather than cartridges) and so far it seems to be much more economic in ink usage. The flipside of course is that the printer cost £200 rather than £30-40 or so for the Canon, so you’re paying more up-front with the aim of paying less over time. At least that’s the theory…
Only problem is the Epson doesn’t play nicely with HA. There is an integration (epson-workplace), but it just reads 0% for each ink level sensor. To be fair the ET-2810 is not listed in the integration as one that’s tested as working with it, but it’s still disappointing that it fails (perhaps due to the use of administrator password?).
It also doesn’t do double-sided printing, but that’s a quite minor issue, at least for me.
I did ponder splashing out for a laser printer instead, but couldn’t find one that’s available with a decent recommendation.