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We need a new printer
wicket - 10/4/14 at 11:49 AM

Our Canon Pixma printer has died and we are looking for recommendations for a replacement, could be a scanner/printer. We would prefer one with individual ink tanks.

Apart from general printing my wife uses it for printing greetings cards based on her watercolour paintings so we are looking for a printer that gives good realistic colour prints.

It could be another Canon but some of the reviews we have read suggest that Canon tend to enhance the colours to make them brighter which may not give a realistic colour image on the greetings cards. I realise that its is not possible to achieve exact colour matching when printing but nice and close we would be great.

[Edited on 10/4/14 by wicket]

Xtreme Kermit - 10/4/14 at 05:49 PM

Just bought an HP all in one. 5220

Not tried it with photos yet, but does a good fast job with documents and has 4 ink carts.

splitrivet - 10/4/14 at 06:37 PM

Go colour laser mate you wont regret it.
Cheap inkjets cost a fortune to run and last about 5 nanoseconds.
Cheers,
Bob

britishtrident - 10/4/14 at 06:59 PM

It all depends on how much you print and how accurate the colours need to be.
An inkjet photo printer gives better colour than a colour laser, also laser tend to have a paper feed that isn't card friendly.
I would not recommend anything other than HP they are 100% reliable we do a massive ammount of printing at the moment we also have an HP 5520 and find it gives great print quality, is quiet in use, paper feed works well and ink costs with XL cartridges are reasonable.

[Edited on 10/4/14 by britishtrident]

britishtrident - 10/4/14 at 07:10 PM

quote:
Originally posted by splitrivet
Go colour laser mate you wont regret it.
Cheap inkjets cost a fortune to run and last about 5 nanoseconds.
Cheers,
Bob


Depends ... Most home colour lasers cost more to run than heavy duty office inkjets.
Iti is true low end inkjets use small expensive and small capacity inks cartridges but high end inkjets have large capacity tanks and if XL cartridges are used the life of cartridges is greatly lengthened and cost reduced.

wicket - 10/4/14 at 08:23 PM

Thanks for all your comments so far. Trident the HP5520 looks very promising but can you feed precut greetings card (upto 300gsm) blanks which when complete will pass through the printer twice for image printing on the front and back, and sometimes a second time time for printing inside.

austin man - 10/4/14 at 08:25 PM

you can buy the pixmia with separate inks. I have one and its excellent for photo quality printing

splitrivet - 10/4/14 at 09:26 PM

quote:
Originally posted by britishtrident
quote:
Originally posted by splitrivet
Go colour laser mate you wont regret it.
Cheap inkjets cost a fortune to run and last about 5 nanoseconds.
Cheers,
Bob


Depends ... Most home colour lasers cost more to run than heavy duty office inkjets.
Iti is true low end inkjets use small expensive and small capacity inks cartridges but high end inkjets have large capacity tanks and if XL cartridges are used the life of cartridges is greatly lengthened and cost reduced.


I can only speak from experience of Canon and Epson and since changing to a laser, print quality and speed are better and operating costs are are much lower in saying that we arent using manufacturers toners and our printing is day to day business use letters, invoices etc not photo's etc.
Cheers,
Bob

[Edited on 10/4/14 by splitrivet]

ChrisW - 10/4/14 at 09:30 PM

I'm in a similar position. My 8-year-old HP b/w laser all-in-one has given up the ghost. It still prints, but it won't scan, and annoyingly there weren't 'proper' scan drivers since Windows XP.

I think this represents the best buy price vs print price vs print quality vs features:

http://store.hp.com/UKStore/Merch/Product.aspx?id=CF386A&opt=B19&sel=BPRN

Pricey I know, but lasers are FAR cheaper to run than inkjet (especially as this one is duplex so could possibly half your paper cost too), and hopefully it will last me another 8 years.

Chris