Printing Advice of Laser printers and more

Printing Advice of Laser printers and more

Here's some retro advice that Mark reminded me about. It's been tempting to get a cheap inkjet like the OfficeJet from Costco. But most of the time it doesn't make sense.

First the cost of consumables is outrageous. It's a razor blade business. You can try to use off brand or refilled ink cartridges but YMMV a lot.

Also if you don't print regularly the head gets clogged and then you spend an hour cleaning it. (Hint, try the unclog utilities first but I often find the ink evaporated too and you need to spend $100 on net cartridges).

Instead think about splitting and getting two printers. Buy a laser printer as your core. Those things only do black and white but are way faster and cheaper too. The laser stuff lasts forever.

If you have kids print a lot the low end HP LaserJets are bulletproof. We have a cheaper Brother HL-L2395 DW and it's been great. It $99 and consumables are cheap.

You could get a color version for $300 but how many times do you really want to print a colored flyer 🙂 but not really for amazing prints.

if you print alot the MFC-L2750DW XL which is faster and still black and white.

For printing photos. Albright that's increasingly rare unless you are printing a lot, online printing is probably long term cheaper. The quality is incredible. And you can get large didn't. I've used Nations for simple 4x6 and Adorama pix for pro quality books. But the quality of Costco is actually remarkable and good for fast turnaround.

But, if you really need color and print a lot of photos you go to a higher end inkjet that uses tanks make sense like the Canon Pro or Epson Expression Photo HD XP-15000.

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