Good multi-function inkjet that is cheap to use occasionally

[you2]

I'm looking for a good multi-function inkjet for occasional use. The cost per page is not a big deal since I don't print that many pages; but I do not want a printer that will empty the cartridges everytime it is power cycled. I know that some inkjet are better than others for occasional use but I've not been able to find a source of good reviews thats discuss ink cost per power cycle.
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From consumer reports the epson xp-800 seems like a decent candiate but maybe there are alternatives ?

(The brother's printers are good in this area but they have poor scanners (or colour accuracy) so I was kind of hoping for an epson or canon which seem to have better scanners.

 

[crashtestdummy]

A couple thoughts:

1) Do you need to print in color? The reason I ask is that inkjets are both more expensive when you do print and don't tolerate long periods of inactivity very well. Laser MFCs are getting cheaper, and it may be better to go that way.

2) Unless space is a premium or you're photocopying a lot of documents, think about buying separate devices. Scanners on MFCs are notoriously mediocre in terms of photo reproduction, but solid dedicated flatbeds can be had for a little over $100, making the cost of buying separate components about the same as buying an MFC.

 

[bononos]

I'm looking for a good multi-function inkjet for occasional use. The cost per page is not a big deal since I don't print that many pages; but I do not want a printer that will empty the cartridges everytime it is power cycled. I know that some inkjet are better than others for occasional use but I've not been able to find a source of good reviews thats discuss ink cost per power cycle.
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From consumer reports the epson xp-800 seems like a decent candiate but maybe there are alternatives ?

(The brother's printers are good in this area but they have poor scanners (or colour accuracy) so I was kind of hoping for an epson or canon which seem to have better scanners.

Inkjets are susceptible to clogging and will typically run some self cleaning process now and then, but I don't think there is any investigation/review on how often, when exactly these cleaning procedures are run and how much ink is being used. You could just print something every few days or a week to keep it from clogging and calculate the costs to see if it makes sense for occasional printing.

 

[you2]

I considered this but rejected it for the following reasons:
First most of the newer mid-tier inkjet MFC have very good scanners and work well as limited use copiers.
Second the cost per page between a low-tier laser printer (such as brothers 2270DW) and inkjet (for monochrome) is around 6ct which is not so bad for limited use; as long as tons of ink is not being drain on cleaning cycles.
Third I really dont' have the space for two occasional use devices; we're talking once or twice a month for a couple of pages.
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I suppose if I could find a decent MFC laser (with scanner of same qulaity as those on the inkjets) that might be the ticket as colour printing is less of a priority; but I've not seen them.
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A couple thoughts:

1) Do you need to print in color? The reason I ask is that inkjets are both more expensive when you do print and don't tolerate long periods of inactivity very well. Laser MFCs are getting cheaper, and it may be better to go that way.

2) Unless space is a premium or you're photocopying a lot of documents, think about buying separate devices. Scanners on MFCs are notoriously mediocre in terms of photo reproduction, but solid dedicated flatbeds can be had for a little over $100, making the cost of buying separate components about the same as buying an MFC.

 

[you2]

Yea I know this; but I've seen a few sites that infact do track cost for occasional usage. One was a brief report via consumer reports and there was a site in europe (can't find it now) that had paid reviews that covered cost per power cycles.

Inkjets are susceptible to clogging and will typically run some self cleaning process now and then, but I don't think there is any investigation/review on how often, when exactly these cleaning procedures are run and how much ink is being used. You could just print something every few days or a week to keep it from clogging and calculate the costs to see if it makes sense for occasional printing.

 

[redgtxdi]

How about just a printer??

I don't need a scanner per se but if it has it, fine. This is for my old man. Gotta get him something simple & easy to use!!!

Suggestions???

TIA

 

[nForce2]

Yea I know this; but I've seen a few sites that infact do track cost for occasional usage. One was a brief report via consumer reports and there was a site in europe (can't find it now) that had paid reviews that covered cost per power cycles.

You may be aware of this already - and bononos mentioned it - but it's not just power cycling that runs the cleaning cycle on inkjet printers. If plugged in and on (or in power save mode), they run a separate cleaning cycle periodically to keep things from drying up. It's not really worth it to turn them off or unplug when not in use to avoid this, as you then get the penalty from the power-on cleaning, and may have to do an incredibly ink wasting "deep clean" if one of the colors dries up in the nozzles.


We're on our second inkjet Brother MFC, and we love it. WiFi, USB, and wired ethernet connectivity, iOS support, auto-feeding scanner, multi-page PDF generation, scan-to-computer, faxing, etc, etc, it just works. We only sold the first one because we couldn't take it with us during a move. But the lifespan of the ink cartridges is just a few months - regardless of whether you print a lot, or don't print anything at all.

You just have to factor that in, and understand what you're dealing with. If you print a few hundred pages a month, your per-page costs may be extremely low. But at ~$60 for a set of ink cartridges, if you only print 5 pages per month, your costs will literally be several dollars per page! :\ Using a cartridge refill service helps significantly, but the costs are still there.

 

[gsaldivar]

Brother MFC-J5910DW + a cheap continuous ink system like this one. Expensive ink problems solved!

 

[you2]

My concern with the brothers printer (per my original comment) is that skin colours on the scanner are suppose to be quite poor (from various reviews) esp compared to canon/epson which just work. Is this not the case ?

Brother MFC-J5910DW + a cheap continuous ink system like this one. Expensive ink problems solved!

 

[you2]

How is the scanner ? Also I'm closer to the 5 pages per month; so maybe I really should consider one of the cheap lasers
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I really wanted to the mfc for scanning/colour; but it sounds more and more like this is just not going to be viable. Sigh.
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You may be aware of this already - and bononos mentioned it - but it's not just power cycling that runs the cleaning cycle on inkjet printers. If plugged in and on (or in power save mode), they run a separate cleaning cycle periodically to keep things from drying up. It's not really worth it to turn them off or unplug when not in use to avoid this, as you then get the penalty from the power-on cleaning, and may have to do an incredibly ink wasting "deep clean" if one of the colors dries up in the nozzles.


We're on our second inkjet Brother MFC, and we love it. WiFi, USB, and wired ethernet connectivity, iOS support, auto-feeding scanner, multi-page PDF generation, scan-to-computer, faxing, etc, etc, it just works. We only sold the first one because we couldn't take it with us during a move. But the lifespan of the ink cartridges is just a few months - regardless of whether you print a lot, or don't print anything at all.

You just have to factor that in, and understand what you're dealing with. If you print a few hundred pages a month, your per-page costs may be extremely low. But at ~$60 for a set of ink cartridges, if you only print 5 pages per month, your costs will literally be several dollars per page! :\ Using a cartridge refill service helps significantly, but the costs are still there.

 

[alkemyst]

None of my inkjets have ever ran a cleaning process without me kicking it off.

I have a Epson Color Stylus 1400 wide format printer.

The consumables are reasonable, but if the printer sits it's not only in need of a wasteful cleaning cycle, but dust and the like build up that doesn't get cleaned causing poor print quality.

This issue is minor for my needs. The photo output is much better than any laser and if I need to just print off a quick doc I can.

That said my goal is to have a laser printer one day (right now it's space constraints).

I also have a dedicated wide format scanner which I couldn't give up for the typical 8.5x11 versions out there. I scan A LOT of stuff.

That all said, with modern phones and cameras many scanning needs are no longer needed.

Most of my friends and family were using scanners just for receipts and other things where perfect quality was not needed at all.

 

[nForce2]

None of my inkjets have ever ran a cleaning process without me kicking it off.
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but if the printer sits it's not only in need of a wasteful cleaning cycle, but dust and the like build up that doesn't get cleaned causing poor print quality.

Yep, and that's a bit of a toss-up for a design decision. The Brothers are nice, because they're always ready to go, and you don't have to wait for the cleaning cycle when you power it up. But they do use the ink to do that.

I think my older HP inkjets worked the same way as your Epson - not sure about the newer ones though, as I haven't had an HP printer for a decade or so now.

My concern with the brothers printer (per my original comment) is that skin colours on the scanner are suppose to be quite poor (from various reviews) esp compared to canon/epson which just work. Is this not the case ?

I would describe the scanner on the Brothers as a very "functional" scanner - more of a business-oriented design. There's not a lot of settings to change, but what it does, it does well. A good standalone photo scanner costs two to four times what a mid-grade inkjet MFC costs - so you can't expect miracles.

If it's a stack of documents, or a copy to make, the Brother wins hands-down, no question. But I have a high-end Epson for my photo scanning needs. The Brother doesn't compete in that area.


(For reference, my newest Brother is ~3 years old now - so they could have made some improvements in that time. So do some additional research before using my experiences to make a purchasing decision.)

 

[you2]

I thank you all for the follow up. I'm a very ilght user; for the scanner it would be mostly old photographs (not negatives) and i twould be infrequent (once every 2 or 3 months). For printing it would mostly be stuff like boarding passes; tax forms; again we're talking about 8 or 12 times a year; for those cases where I'm not at the office but need to get a hard copy of something. I will occasionally print photos (again maybe 3 times a year I'll do a batch of 4 or 5 photos).
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So maybe I'm over thinking the issue. Some models I've been thinking include mx799; xp 800; mg 6320, mg 7120, hl-2270dw.
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requirement is good with andriod phone and works with linux. I believe the first two are photo printers, second two are good colour printers (but not photo printers) and the last is a laser printers.

 

[BrightCandle]

I did have a Lexmark S605 and that thing used to eat ink on cleaning all the time. The darn thing would turn itself on in the middle of the night and clean on what felt like a weekly basis. Just sat there for a couple of months it would run half of the ink away.

I was recently looking for a replacement as its now stopped picking up paper and one of the inks just isn't working at all and I came to the conclusion its really hard to find an all in one laser at remotely reasonable prices. To get a laser printer and a separate scanner would be cheaper, but for some reason flatbed scanners are really expensive now, they used to be £20 but I couldn't find any below about £60 and certainly not a wifi one like the typical one found in a multifunction printer.

So I started looking around and found that HP do a series of printers (6500, 8500) that are inkjets but cheaper than laser in ink costs. They do them with a variety of addons including duplex feeders and such and cover a whole range of budgets with them. Due to the low ink cost that is what I decided to go for, reviews suggest it is cheap to run and quick to print but will soon find out.

 

[you2]

My undrstanding on the hp 8500 (I could have the model wrong) it is very cheap to print if you print a *lot* but for occasionally use it has a very expensive cleaning cycle....