New Printer for PC - which one?

I bought an Epson SX510W a year or so back. It cost just over a hundred but can be had for less now. It's a printer/scanner/photocopier, which I didn't want but I couldn't find a device that was just a printer. It's fine for me but I don't print lots of photos. Documents come out well and I'm still on my original ink cartridges. It's also wireless which was important for me but may not matter for you.

I have a Samsung colour laser, approx £130. Perhaps more upfront but I'm hoping for cheaper running costs. Its wireless so which is conveniant for use with laptops.

I have an HP Color Laser.  If I bought another one it would be an HP of some kind.  I am done with Epson for sure.  Once you get a laser printer, you won't go back to an inkjet except for photos.

Jet,

I got fed up paying silly prices for ink cartridges, so I bought myself an office sized A3/A4 laser printer from a well known auction site.  The company that sells them are based in South Shields from memory.  They do take up a bit of floor space, but it is perfect for my home based office.  All the other computers in the house print wirelessly to this printer.   I get the laser cartridges from the same place.  It will cost you more for the set up in the short term, but is cheaper in the long run.  I've got numerous old printers but I found it was becoming cheaper to buy another printer than replace the cartridges.  Silly I know, but that is how they hook you in to buying their cartridges. 

Regards

Nic

For years I have used 2 printers :

1. HP Laserjet600 mono laser - used for almost all my printing.  Cheap to buy and run.

2. Canon S800 colour inkjet - for the rare occasions when I wish to print out photos or anything else in colour.  Wasn't cheap, and isn't cheap to run.  Gets used so rarely that the jets tend to clog up and need "cleaning" when I do use it.

When the HP laser eventually dies (well, it is >10 years old now), I will probably replace it with a Colour Laser Printer or an "all-in-one Scanner/Colour Laser Printer etc, which would reduce the clutter on my desk a little.  I can live without "photo quality" printing.

I feel that the attractions of colour inkjets are merely that they are usually relatively cheap to buy, but for anyone who prints a lot, then they rapidly become more expensive than the laser alternatives.

Jet just realised who is in your avatar pic. She was in The Mentalist yesterday.

I got very fed up with the ridiculous price of printer ink years ago, despite all of the rhetoric about needing ink to be free of bubbles etc.

I went the colour laser route via Epson, only to discover they are equally as expensive in toner and when the 'Photo Conductor' unit dies it is actually cheaper to buy a complete new printer c/w toners than just replace said unit. Utterly bonkers, but that happened three times!

Then I happened upon the liquid ink and toner free Xerox - they effectively use wax crayons. Virtually zero to recycle when changing colours, much lower running costs, stunning print copy ( that is much more waterproof than any ink or laser toner) and actually reasonable to buy up-front (though they have increased recently). I use an ancient Epson inkjet at home only for printing photos out. The Xerox does a very good job on most images in documents and flyers etc, but is not as good as a top notch inkjet for archival photos. Apologies for the OP as the initial  price is rather higher, but I simply could not stand the cost of ink any longer. For anyone else looking I would have a very serious look at the Xerox 'solid ink' range, they are very good indeed.

Just shows that everyone's priorities are different. 

My mono laser seems to go on forever, and it's predecessor Canon Laser (which I for >10 years) was also bomb-proof until a neighbour's child decided to pour lemonade into it, making it "non economically repairable".  Are you saying that the photo units on Colour Lasers are less reliable than on mono units?  I mention Colour Lasers, even though any replacement would be used mainly in mono mode.

I've just done a websearch, and Solid Ink Printers seem to suffer from 3 problems that would put me off, in spite of their obvious plus points :

1. Warm up time.  I suspect this might be longer than with my mono HP laser.  However, I don't know if a colour laser takes longer to warm up.

2. Clogging of jets with infrequent use.  I can go for weeks between print runs, and then use a couple of reams in a day or so.  This is why I find my Canon inkjet annoying.  If I go much longer than a couple of weeks between printing on the Canon it seems to need a cleaning cycle.  I've found that if you actually add up the cost of consumables for photo printing, it's cheaper to take the memory card off to  Boots et al.  I therefore tend to only use the Canon for one-off prints when I want them quickly, and otherwise for those occasions when I want a colour printout on ordinary paper.

3. Waxy finish to the prints making it awkward to write on them

For me, I think a Colour Laser would be a better option, as I only use about 2000 sheets of paper a year, mostly using monochrome printing.  As regards the OP, I think any decision would have to factor in total annual usage/frequency of use.

Canon inkjet. Cheap and cheerful. One black cartridge, one color cartridge.

I have a top of the line Canon, which I've stuck in the closet. Ink cost a fortune, something like 7 or 9 separate ink tanks, always running out within a few prints.

Bought a basic Canon for $79. Photos are okay, but then I don't print photos much anymore. (If I did, I'd gather my favorite digital files together and send them off to a professional firm to create a bound photo album). Ink lasts seemingly forever in this cheap and cheerful scenario.

Why Canon? For me it's like an Apple product. Almost always works right out of the box. Use their cameras, love their printers.

Dave

So ...thanks for a lot of useful info chaps...

 .....I agree that in the long term a laser is probably far better value but for now I've decided to buy a Canon Pixma 3600 (£54.00 inc free P+P from Printware) it uses 5 cartridges 2 B+W, 3 Colour but the clincher is that compatibles are widely available for around £7.00 for all 5 cartridges (!)

I realise that the ultimate quality as available from Canon inks will probably not be realised by the compatibles but I think we've already established that Canon's own are shockingly expensive.

And as previously mentioned if I really want a special print made I'll use a proper lab.