For home office use you can't go wrong with a Brother HL-series laser printer. Cheap as beans, and (unlike HP), toner cartridges don't cost more than the printer itself.<p>For large offices: I have NEVER encountered a large multifunctional that didn't suck. The number of times I've pressed CTRL-P on my dekstop, only to have walked to the printer and found that somehow the print job hasn't arrived, was printed on A2 instead of A4 or the paper was jammed in one of 15 trays...
Buy a Laser Printer.<p>Dont Buy Inkjet. They <i>All</i> suck. They are designed so the Ink Cartridge head will be blocked after opening for x months. And Ink Cartridge are filled with Ink but either dry up or you will never be able to make full use of it. In Colour Inkjet some manufactures even make it so have to have enough ink in ALL colours to print. Even if you try to print something without it, mixed or not.<p>Their business model is basically force you to buy more Ink Cartridge.<p>Basically Consumer Inkjet printing sucks.<p>Edit: I think Xerox or Fujitsu had a new LED based printing tech similar to Laser, they were very good for first two years, but generally speaking they dont last as long as old Laser.
* Few companies are good at hard- and software at the same time.<p>* Competitive market - pressure on price, in consumer market especially on up-front price. Weirdness around pricing schemes with ink, fight against cheaper alternative ink/refills, now ink subscriptions, ...<p>* this has generally let to low expectations, and in consumer market getting out of that is difficult. What does a "premium" consumer printer brand look like?!<p>* Complexity: Quite mechanical in nature compared to e.g. PCs or phones. Some parts need to be very precise (but still cheap). Handling paper is just tricky. Printers have very differing usage patterns - sometimes very high load at once, otherwise stuck in a corner for months or years. This doesn't jive well with cheap.
They aren’t. If you buy a cheap one, it will suck.<p>If you buy a color inkjet printer and you didn’t spend at least $200, you messed up.<p>I have the HP OfficeJet 9015, Wirecutter’s pick. It is far and away the best printer I’ve ever owned.<p>Also, if you want to print stuff, it doesn’t hurt to use Apple devices. AirPrint is dreamy.<p>Also, don’t forget how lousy printers used to be, especially in relation to drivers and software. Now it’s just join the printer to the WiFi and it’s there, ready to both print and scan wirelessly.
Any idea what would be a decent home printer for work ( and some schooling). It would be nice to have colour but maybe something like this would be more appropriate.<p>It's never been an issue before as I've always been office based, but with lockdown and school shutdown this would have been useful. Needs to be small as I don't have office space!<p>Brother HL-L2350DW Mono Laser Printer - Single Function, Wireless/USB 2.0, 2 Sided Printing, 30PPM, A4 Printer, Small Office/Home Office Printer<p>UK Based<p><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Brother-HL-L2350DW-Wireless-Connected-Printing/dp/B077PY79TM/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&qid=1601892123&refinements=p_89%3ABrother&s=computers&sr=1-2" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.co.uk/Brother-HL-L2350DW-Wireless-Connect...</a>
office space
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9E_SDwUM4kM" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9E_SDwUM4kM</a>
+1 to all the recommendations for Brother laser printers. I've had a full-color machine for several years now and it's been rock solid. Prints literally <i>every time, the first time</i>. I didn't even know that was possible. Calling it "life changing" is only barely hyperbole.<p>Plus, I splashed out for the model with full-duplex scanning which makes random paperwork archiving a breeze. I set it to scan to a NAS on my local network, and then the NAS backup job uploads to cloud storage overnight. One-step archiving FTW.
I've definitely had my fair share of inkjet printers that were essentially worthless. However, my Brother HL-5370DW is excellent. I bought it 10 years ago for $125. This year, for the first time ever, I replaced the toner cartage. The cartage was $70. I'll probably get another 10 years out of the new cartage.
Black and White Laser Printer for the win.<p>Any other printer will drive you insane. That includes Color Laser printers, any kind of Ink Jet printer, all dot-matrix printers, heat-sensitive paper printers are particularly bad, printers with multi-part paper, printers that use paper with sprocket-holes. I think I've covered most of them.
If you buy a good one, they last a while and work reliably. If you buy a cheap one, the continuously have problems. Kinda like most things for that matter.
Because people are dumb. Most people look at the purchase cost and do not care about operating cost, cost per printed page and OS support.<p>Over the years I realized that for non-professional use (that is, unless you can write off all the expenses) the way to go is to ALWAYS buy HP printers (everything else is worthless) and get laser printers, black and white, networked (WIFI/cabled, i prefer ethernet-cabled), ideally for the low-end professional segment.<p>I had a 2nd hand HP LaserJet 1200, worked tirelessly for years. It died a couple of years ago, but I really can't complain: that printer has been working for at least 15-18 years.<p>During the lockdown I got myself a LaserJet Pro M118dw, because reading RFCs on the laptop display is just awful living.<p>It's remarkable and worked out of the box with Xubuntu.<p>I can't stress the whole "HP-only" thing: their drivers are open source and often bundled, their advanced software (HPLip toolbox) reports pretty much everthing, never had a problem with them. Even with the all-in-one scanner enabled at my parents, I used the wireless scanner functionality in GNU/Linux and was extatic when it worked out of the box (i really wasn't expecting that).<p>Toners are a bit more expensive but they last waaay longer. You can just buy one and forget, if you print some documents from time to time it'll last years. And unlike inkjet cartridges, it won't dry off.<p>Just buy HP laser printers. They just work.<p>The 20-50€ more in the price difference are for all the hassles you're not dealing with.