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Need new Canon Inkjet. Help me choose..

A

Abhi

Diamond Member
Hi.

My 16 month old i560 has bitten the dust (stopped printing black) and replacement of the print head is a costly affair, so its time for a new printer!

I print approximately 600 B&W Text pages/month and almost no Colour pages/month. So primarily I just need excellent text printing.

I am in India, so the prices here are different from USA prices. I ll mention them for reference:

ip1000: $62
ip1500: $80
ip2000: $110
ip3000: $160
ip4000: $200

Given my usage, which printer should be best for me?

P.s., I have access to generic BCI 24 Bk for $1.5 and BCI 3Ebk for $3.5.
 
I believe the ip3000 replaced the i560 and the ip4000 replaced the i860.

That being said, I also read that a lot of people had a hard time distinguishing output from the ip3000 from the ip4000. Don't know how the cheaper printers compare in terms of black and white output.

Why don't you try eBay and see if you can find a Canon printer cheap? Even could try and find out if all of the i series printers have the same printer head, bid upon a very low range i series printer, and then have the seller just send you the printer head (and any ink in the printer)?
 
Thanks for replying mshan.

I tried the ebay trick, buy no cheap canons on sale in Ebay India, and shipping from USA would be expensive 🙂

I read somewhere ip1000, 1500, 2000 use the BCI 24 carts and 3000 and 4000 use the 3e Bk carts.

Does that influence quality in any way?
 
I own a Canon i860 and it uses two black cartridges:
- a BCI 3e for printing text black and white
- a separate BCI 6e for photo blacks

Is the BCI 24 cartridge a combined color and black cartridge module? If you only print black and white, it might be cheaper to just buy a Canon printer with separate cartridges because then you don't end up throwing away the color ink cartridges.
 
If you can afford it, the iP3000 would be the way to go. the BCI-3e black that it uses for text is much larger than the BCI-24 used in the lower models. I don't print anywhere near as much black text as you and a set of tanks lasts me 4 to 5 months on my iP3000. And BTW, a print head for the i560 isn't very expensive here maybe you have someone who would "bring" one back to you in his/her luggage. Too bad they couldn't "bring" you an entire iP3000 as they have been around $50. here.

/bh/
 
Thanks zepper, Good idea.

mshan, the BCI 24 has a black cart and another cart with all 3 colours. So I ll just have to change the black, not the colour cart.
 
I think the separate black cartridge is for text printing, while your printer combines all three of the color cartridges for photo black.
 
Yeah, I think a cheaper laser printer might be a great idea.

Samsung has some very cheap ones (just remember there starter cartridge only prints out 1000 pages, vs. usual 3000) and you need to research replacement printer cartridge costs. Does Samsung have a strong presence in India?
 
BCi-21 = 6ml
BCi-24 = 6ml
BCi 3eBk = 27ml of ink { some generics have 30ml }

The IP3000 is twice the cost of the 1500 but it has 4 times the ink and basing the cost of generics the up front costs of the 3000 would eventually pay for itself.

Another worry is that the 1500 might not be able to handle 600 pages per month load.



 
Sounds like a cheap laser printer would be the way to go for you. I got rid of my all in one inkjet as the ink costs were killing me. I replaced it with a HP1020 laserjet and haven't looked back. The laserjet was $140 through Newegg and the text is head and shoulders above my old inkjet's. I haven't replaced the starter toner cartridge yet. I got the printer early August and would imagine I've printed around 200-250 pages of text. You can always pick up a cheap inkjet for color at a later date and run it as a secondary printer for when you need color. That's what I'm going to do anyways.
 
Originally posted by: alevasseur14
Sounds like a cheap laser printer would be the way to go for you. I got rid of my all in one inkjet as the ink costs were killing me. I replaced it with a HP1020 laserjet and haven't looked back. The laserjet was $140 through Newegg and the text is head and shoulders above my old inkjet's. I haven't replaced the starter toner cartridge yet. I got the printer early August and would imagine I've printed around 200-250 pages of text. You can always pick up a cheap inkjet for color at a later date and run it as a secondary printer for when you need color. That's what I'm going to do anyways.
Click to expand...

Lasers sound great until you need to get new toner, then the price really hits you.

Among its drawbacks, the ML-1740 ships with a starter 1,000-page cartridge, so you'll soon have to replenish the toner. The standard 3,000-page cartridge costs about $80, or 2.7 cents per page.
Click to expand...

 
Well, it is possible to buy refilled toner carts or refill them yourself to save money. The Kyocera Ecosys models have separate toner and drum but use special toner which also keeps the drum polished. Can get per-page toner costs down to under 1 cent per page. But the unit itself costs more initially. And the drum is rumored to be good for 1 million pages or more.

.bh.
 
The OP said that he could get generic ink carts for $3.50, they yield 500 pages or more, he does 600 pages a month.

IP3000 = 600 x 12 = 7200 pages per year 7200 / 500 = 14.4 x $3.50 = $50.4 / 7200 = 0.007 per page

ML-1740 = 600 x 12 = 7200 pages per year 7200 / 3000 = 2.4 x $80 = $192 / 7200 = 0.026666666 per page

So in terms of per page cost the IP3000 is a lot less expensive. Don't know how much the ML-1740 would cost in india but I bet it's more then here.

The IP3000 also has auto duplexing which could reduce the paper cost by printing on both sides.
 
The Pixma auto duplexing is too slow to use for more than a sheet or two (four sides) - but it is definitely cool to watch from a mechanical viewpoint. I still use the old manual method for most of my two-sided stuff (which works GREAT on the iP2000 and up due to the dual paper paths - no guesswork - print out from the drawer, flip the stack, and back into the top bin).
Never had a paper jam with my Pixma either - good peace of mind for unattended runs.

. Yup, I can see where using 3rd-party tanks will undercut laser costs using OEM toner carts. Will refilling the toner carts yourself bring laser anywhere near that cents per page figure. And I can see where a replacement Pixma head or two will cost a lot less than the special drum the Ecosys uses.

.bh.
 
Thanks for the inputs guys, appreciate it.

I did have a cheap laser, a samsung ML 1250, a few years back. It turned out to be VERY expensive, just as 13Gigatons's calculation suggests.
With cheap refills, I feel canons are the cheapest way to print.

However, my i560 died in 16 months. And I had purchased this printer for $200.

Putting that into perspective, I was thinking if a cheaper canon printer would have been better for me, assuming both printers last for around 18 months.
 
If it was actually the head that went bad, the iP3000 head costs less than US$50. The i560 shouldn't be much different. Just need to find a way to get one to you duty-free.. 😉

.bh.
 
Originally posted by: Zepper
If it was actually the head that went bad, the iP3000 head costs less than US$50. The i560 shouldn't be much different. Just need to find a way to get one to you duty-free.. 😉

.bh.
Click to expand...


Actually, the iP3000 and i560 should be using the same print head. I know for a fact that the iP4000 and the i860 printheads are the same.
 
Originally posted by: SilentRunning
Originally posted by: Zepper
If it was actually the head that went bad, the iP3000 head costs less than US$50. The i560 shouldn't be much different. Just need to find a way to get one to you duty-free.. 😉

.bh.
Click to expand...


Actually, the iP3000 and i560 should be using the same print head. I know for a fact that the iP4000 and the i860 printheads are the same.
Click to expand...

The iP3000 and i560 use the same print head. I checked that.
 
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