Hi All.
I am looking for a colour printer which is compact, portable, economical to run.
This for primary / secondary school with minimum printing.
Look forward to some recommendations
Note : reading some reviews it seems inkjet is expensive from ink perspective with limited printing reqts compared to laser. Is it true ?
Thanks
if you really want budget and don't need colour then go for B&W laser.
I need colour more specifically coloured business card printing.
Scanning and just basic printing.
Want something that will last 10 years and cheap refills.
Does something like this exist?
printing business cards on a cheap printer at home would be a bad idea, they would not look very good. There is plenty of cheap printing companies who would do this for you.
@[Deactivated]: Unfortunately the person I am arranging this for cannot do it any other way.
I know there are smarter ways out there but this is what they want.
I bought a multi function colour laser printer in 2010 for ~$350. It's still on the original toner given how limited my printing has been (twice a year at most), however it looks like it might have printed its last document the other day due to a pretty significant jamming issue (about 3 sheets have become wrapped around and stuck / torn off inside the fuser). The time / effort to completely disassemble the thing means I'll probably swap it out for a $20 printer and just buy a new one every time I need to print.
A few things to note about laser printers:
They're great for graphics, but poor for photos (most are only 600x600 dpi which is 'bearable' but not great)
They're generally big / heavy and noisy / hot when running.
Printing things like envelopes / labels etc is difficult to impossible depending on the model.
The toner will last just about forever if you print sporadically, which is why I bought it in the first place, I had too many instances of ink drying out before I got to my next print.
As Bargs said, but also remember that the original toner cartridges are usually 'starter cartridges'.
I bought a brother inkjet printer/scanner MFC-415W about 7 yes ago while kids were in school. 1 refill from 'endless ink' - replacement LARGE refillable ink, and a few hundred ml. Print heads need to run a clean cycle if it has not been used in a while.
Define economical. There's a trade-off between upfront and ongoing costs.
You could potentially go out and buy a cheapo inkjet printer from BigW for $19 and it will be fine if you just want to print a few things off. It won't make any sense to get more ink for it, so you'll probably just throw it out and get a new one the next time you want to print something.
Or the other option is that you go for a colour laser. The decent models go for around $200 and if you're not printing much, the toner will last forever. I'd imagine you'd be easily getting over a year given how little you said you'll be printing.
Personally, I'd go for the second option.