Recommend a Printer

I recommend Brother as well.

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I recommend not HP

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Brother

Canon Pixma TS9500 series $250 retail.

My Canon Pixma multifunction printer has been used by my family since 2010. Not one problem.

I also own a Canon Pro100 professional photo printer. Unbelievably beautiful art printing. Had for 5 years. Zero problems.

*If you wonder about quality, check out a FexEx Business Center. All the printers are Canon printers.

(they certainly do)

But that's not what he suggested.

Why not hp?

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Why not hp?

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I have an OfficeJet 8710. The only reason it has not been broken into a million pieces, and then those million pieces melted back into a big chunk, and then that chunk broken into a million new pieces, is because my wife begged me not to.

We paid $135 for it in July 2018, and we chose it specifically because, at the time, no one really had any trouble with 3rd party cartridges. We bought a 5 pack of 3rd party cartridges (CMY+2K) for $48 at the same time as the printer, knowing the starter cartridges hardly have any ink.

A few months later, the starters ran out (we hardly ever print), so I went ahead and put in those 3rd party ones. It bitched about them and absolutely refused to accept them. Turns out auto-updates were turned on by default, and after I bought the printer HP had pushed an update which prevented it from working with the cartridges I had.

Put another way, HP removed a valuable feature from my property, without asking, and the firmware update was NOT reversible. $48 wasted. frick HP.

I turned off automatic firmware updates.

So we bought another set of 3rd party cartridges which advertised "latest chips", which meant they worked with HP's "frick you" firmware update. This time $37 for a 4-pack (CMYK). They worked just fine.

All was well until those ran out, or dried up, maybe a year later (again, we don't print much). We bought another set of cartridges for around $40 again. And BTW, we get the 3rd party because HP's own cartridges are $35 PER COLOR. I'm not paying $100+ for some fricking ink. frick HP.

This set worked alright for a while, but then the printer started saying it was out of magenta. frick that, we hardly ever print color. I guess it's my fault for buying "cheap" ink, but whatever, you have black print me some fricking black. "But I need magenta! I can't print black and white without magenta!" Man, frick you HP.

So then we buy a whole new set, another $40, because we just know the rest are about to do the same thing. They have worked, but as I type this right now this fricking printer says it's fresh out of black. I've jiggled the cartridge, that thing has got to be 3/4 full. HP don't give a shite.

The current cartridges have been in there for a week and a half, and if I want to print a page right now I have to drop another $20-40 and wait 2 days for a cartridge to arrive.

frick HP.

I have an HP printer that I've owned for 5 years, and it works like a champ. Prints fast, well, and wirelessly. I have 3 kids in college (they were in high school when I bought the thing) and we print quite a bit. Even with heavy usage, the cartridges lasted well over 6 months. Spending $100 for cartridges is not a huge expense in the big scheme of things.

I had decent success with HP. The worst printer I ever had was, incidently, a Brother. May have been a lemon. I'm not against using any particular brand. I may replace the HP in the near future. The only problem I'm having is that occasionally (every 3rd or 4th print) it tells me that the paper tray is empty, when it's not. I suspect that the roller that slides the sheet of paper out of the tray has lost some traction.

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It is an issue when you don't print much, they either dry up or the printer runs a bunch of clean cycles and wastes it.

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True. I hadn't thought about that.

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I would also prefer to not support the business practice of removing features and wasting customers' time and money.

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Is HP any different than anybody else on this front? If I'm replacing my printer in the next year or so, I may want to support a company that doesn't do that, as well. I always thought that printer companies sell printers cheap so they can make money on the ink, so I could understand their not taking kindly to 3rd party vendors undercutting them on the ink. Having said that, I can appreciate not wanting to support a company that pulls the rug out on you. If you sell a printer that accepts 3rd party cartridges don't take that ability away after you purchase it.