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Resolved Need a cheap Printer/Scanner combo for college. Advice?

007bond

007bond

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Dec 12, 2008
560
1
DFW, Texas
Hello, everyone. As the title of the thread states, I'm in search of a good, cheap printer/scanner combo for use with college work. I will be printing out many documents. I have the following requirements:

  • Under $70, $50/- preferred
  • Cheap, long lasting ink cartridges
  • Color Prefered
  • Networking capabilities NOT needed
  • Good Mac compatibility (obviously)

Thanks in advance :)
 
Last edited:
A cheap printer that also uses cheap ink doesn't really exist. I worked at OfficeMax my first year of college (which happened to be last year) and I've gained that knowledge through experience. A good cheap printer is the low end of the HP photosmart series, but the ink is rather expensive and lasts a moderate amount of time. That or the cheap end of the Epson workforce series. The ink for those lasts a bit longer, and might be a bit less expensive. You can offset ink costs by buying refilled ones, which are the original recycled cartridges just refilled with offbrand ink.

Don't let anyone dupe you into getting a Lexmark printer. They offer a 5 year warranty because it's the only selling point of their crappy printers. Lexmark literally paid us extra at OfficeMax to upsell their printers because we wouldn't recommend them otherwise.
 
If you can get away without the scanner and only B&W, your absolute best bet is a cheaper Brother laser printer, since the toner will last you probably all year and is about the same price as a new ink cartridge for any inkjet you may look at.
 
12dylan34 said:
A cheap printer that also uses cheap ink doesn't really exist. I worked at OfficeMax my first year of college (which happened to be last year) and I've gained that knowledge through experience. A good cheap printer is the low end of the HP photosmart series, but the ink is rather expensive and lasts a moderate amount of time. That or the cheap end of the Epson workforce series. The ink for those lasts a bit longer, and might be a bit less expensive. You can offset ink costs by buying refilled ones, which are the original recycled cartridges just refilled with offbrand ink.

Don't let anyone dupe you into getting a Lexmark printer. They offer a 5 year warranty because it's the only selling point of their crappy printers. Lexmark literally paid us extra at OfficeMax to upsell their printers because we wouldn't recommend them otherwise.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the advice and insight. I will keep it in mind :)

My dad is a huge fan of Brother printers, but he (so far) has only bought the laser models. Do you have any experience with the inkjet versions?

I saw this: http://www.staples.com/Brother-MFC-J430w-Inkjet-All-in-One/product_344773

It seems to be a great printer for the price, but I haven't checked out the ink yet.

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12dylan34 said:
If you can get away without the scanner and only B&W, your absolute best bet is a cheaper Brother laser printer, since the toner will last you probably all year and is about the same price as a new ink cartridge for any inkjet you may look at.
Click to expand...

That might be a good idea. The scanner isn't a huge want, and the printers are $100. Do you know if they come with a toner cartridge? Or do I have to buy one separately?
 
007bond said:
Thanks for the advice and insight. I will keep it in mind :)

My dad is a huge fan of Brother printers, but he (so far) has only bought the laser models. Do you have any experience with the inkjet versions?

I saw this: http://www.staples.com/Brother-MFC-J430w-Inkjet-All-in-One/product_344773

It seems to be a great printer for the price, but I haven't checked out the ink yet.
Click to expand...

That one does seem a lot better. The CMY is only $9.99 a cartridge and the black is $14.99. The thing to look at is if it will still print black and white even if the color cartridges are empty/low.
 
007bond said:
Thanks for the advice and insight. I will keep it in mind :)

My dad is a huge fan of Brother printers, but he (so far) has only bought the laser models. Do you have any experience with the inkjet versions?

I saw this: http://www.staples.com/Brother-MFC-J430w-Inkjet-All-in-One/product_344773

It seems to be a great printer for the price, but I haven't checked out the ink yet.

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That might be a good idea. The scanner isn't a huge want, and the printers are $100. Do you know if they come with a toner cartridge? Or do I have to buy one separately?
Click to expand...

Brother inkjets are alright. Some of the cartridges are as low as $10 per color, so it may be worth looking into. Most of the lasers come with half filled cartridges, which will do about 600 pages. Last year, I only went though about 250 pages, but your needs might be different.

This one:
http://www.walmart.com/ip/19477126?...&wl3=13701393310&wl4=&wl5=pla&veh=sem&veh=dat

will go on sale for as little as $50 at some places on some weeks, so I would just scour the ads online if you can wait a week or two. They pretty much just randomly assign sales to printers on random weeks, so it's hard to tell when.
 
killerrobot said:
That one does seem a lot better. The CMY is only $9.99 a cartridge and the black is $14.99. The thing to look at is if it will still print black and white even if the color cartridges are empty/low.
Click to expand...

Looks like it does, according to this article:

http://welcome.solutions.brother.co...html?reg=us&c=ca&lang=en&prod=mfcj430w_all#pc

I will only occasionally print in color, so this works out pretty well. I did just see that it was on sale for $10 cheaper last week. Hopefully the price doesn't go up even more tomorrow...
 
Well, I got really lucky :p

I found and old HL-2070N laser printer by brother. My dad had a new toner cartridge for it, too. He said that it was broken (something about the paper led flashing). Anyway, I found that it was just a simple paper jam and he said I could have it. Awesome! Though it won't have color or scanning capabilities, I could always use my school library for that.

Thanks for the help, everyone!
 
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