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Which printer would you recommend (for student)?

bsheridan

bsheridan

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 11, 2008
432
3
On the Apple store there is a £60 rebate when you buy a printer with your mac. Which printer would you recommend from the 'Great first printer' section on the Apple online store?

I am a student so although these seem cheap, the printer cartridge refills may be pricey. Does anyone have any experience with them and would you recommend?
I'm looking to print mostly A4 pages, b/w and colour and mainly text. Speed is not a major issue, just reliability with a Mac.

Thanks for your help,
b.
 
Before you choose, take a look at the prices for aftermarket inks/toners. They'll be much cheaper than the manufacturer's prices.
 
Any of them will work well enough; my sister and I have been happy with our HP PhotoSmart C4480s.

My personal choice would be a laser printer (I only got the C4480 for free for the scanner part), but if you want color that's not quite so affordable!
 
As a college student myself, I find a monochrome laser printer better suit our needs. Since we basically only print black and white, and ink just costs a lot more, a laser printer should be a better choice for us. In Canada, you can usually find black and white laser printer on sale for less than $60 CAD or even less if you're lucky. I don't know if the situation is similar in UK though. I bought a Samsung ML-2240 which comes with a 700 pages Starter Toner Cartridge. You should not need to worry about the toner for few years if you only print notes and your paper/essay etc. I will just replace the whole printer with another cheap laser printer when that day comes. :)
 
I agree with the laser printer recommendations -- definitely cheaper supply costs. If you need color, the Canon Pixma series isn't a bad choice. Their ink is quite a bit cheaper than Epson.
 
GamaFu said:
You should not need to worry about the toner for few years if you only print notes and your paper/essay etc. I will just replace the whole printer with another cheap laser printer when that day comes. :)
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Maybe you can do that nowadays; when I got mine five years ago, it was still $150 for the printer, so a $75 toner cartridge was cheaper. ;)
 
Monochrome laser is definitely the way to go. Lower cost per page and much faster at printing large documents like papers and PDF articles. I like the Canon imageCLASS MF4150 ($210), which can print double sided, fax, scan photos, and scan documents to PDF, but I don't think it's an apple rebate one.
 
ATimson said:
Maybe you can do that nowadays; when I got mine five years ago, it was still $150 for the printer, so a $75 toner cartridge was cheaper. ;)
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lol My last printer is a Konica Minolta PagePro 1350w which I bought two years ago for $45. The toner will cost me $100, so I basically replace it with another laser printer which is $59.99 to purchase, the toner is about $66 for this specific model. Since the toner seems to be a lot cheaper nowadays, I might just buy the toner instead of replacing it. :) Getting a new printer every two years or so is very tempting though. :D
 
I killed my starter cartridge in the 1st semester of grad school. (I think professors have decided volume of reading was more important than knowledge retention). I found the after market high-yield toner cartridges to the be the best deal per page for replacing them. You can get them for most printers and they have almost twice the page counts of normal refills.

GamaFu said:
Since the toner seems to be a lot cheaper nowadays, I might just buy the toner instead of replacing it. :) Getting a new printer every two years or so is very tempting though. :D
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I'd go for the new Canon i-SENSYS LBP5050. Great price for a colour laser printer (can be had for as little as €180), and it's a Canon. These facts make it a winner in my book.
 
I have and love my Canon MP600 (may have been updated since I got it)
It is a scanner/copier/photo printer.

Ink isn't outrageous, but having 5 cartridges (B,B,C,M,Y) doesn't help. However, if you are doing mostly papers, it ONLY eats up the big Black (non-photo) ink, which is relatively cheap (~$15-$20)

Also, the top of the printer is flat (so it's footprint doesn't totally kill your desk space) and doubles as a nice place to put papers/books/beers/bongs :D in a crowded dorm/apartment/whatever.

IMO, laser isn't great, as it (at least used to) has to warm up, not to mention for the price you are aiming for, you cannot get color. Also, the MP600 has memory card reader built in, which is nice since :apple: doesn't believe in putting them on their computers...
 
raccoontail said:
I killed my starter cartridge in the 1st semester of grad school. (I think professors have decided volume of reading was more important than knowledge retention). I found the after market high-yield toner cartridges to the be the best deal per page for replacing them. You can get them for most printers and they have almost twice the page counts of normal refills.
Click to expand...

Wow... 700 pages in one semester? :eek: Thank god I am still in undergrad, there's not that many reading to do for now. I don't like printing notes/paper out though since it doesn't seem to be very environmental friendly to me. They become useless once I am done reading them. However, I would have no choice but print them if I have that many reading to do though.
 
illegallydead said:
IMO, laser isn't great, as it (at least used to) has to warm up, not to mention for the price you are aiming for, you cannot get color. Also, the MP600 has memory card reader built in, which is nice since :apple: doesn't believe in putting them on their computers...
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FYI, warming up only takes less than 10 seconds, about 5 or 6 seconds for my printer. If you're printing in a large volume, laser printer would still be faster. However, if color is a must, then laser printer wouldn't be a good choice. They are a lot more expensive than the mono one.
 
Personally I like the Epson 1400. For a good jack of all trades however I would have to say the Canon MP610 is a good inexpensive printer. Of course that may mean that ink will be a bit higher.

In the past I used to really like HP printers. I still like their laser printers, nothing can beat those, but for a good color ink jet I am now a big fan of the Epsons.
 
I got the HP C7280 (€199 in PC World), and it's great but might be a bit out of your price range.


As a student the MX310 has one useful feature - the automatic document feeder for scanning (very useful for copying handouts that you didn't get electronically, or lecture you've missed :eek:). It means you can carry everything in your laptop. I have scanned hundreds of pages on a flatbed scanner and it's hard work. A feeder makes it far easier. The down side is ink might be a bit more expensive with Canon, and some Canon printers don't play nice with spurious carts.

Check out the prices of inks and let that guide you (but also bear in mind you'll probably print mainly black).
 
am a uni student doing a animation degree. (so mac is my obv choice) and i use a laser printer for my notes. its just much easier for everything, and quicker compared to some inkjet printers i guess. and quiet. :)
 
I bought two printers this year. One was the Canon MX700... got it for $99 at Frys and then I got the printer from Apple... the Canon MP480. Personally, I go for Canon products, because not only they aren't that expensive, they are high quality products. Their ink isn't expensive, I was able to buy 1 for about $10 each from Frys. That was for the MX700 printer which carried the high quality ink, so my guess is that the ink for the MP480 would be cheaper. I would recommend you to get the MP480. It's pretty good for printing out documents, so yea. It's also free after the rebate.
 
+1 for laser. :)

I've had a much better experience with them than ink jets, especially on consumables. :eek: Brother's HL-2140 would be good inexpensive unit, and it works with Macs. :D Replacement toner is reasonable too. ;)
 
Super happy here with the Canon MX850. It's an all in one, ink seems to last on black at least, I haven't done alot of color yet. It's not wireless but I hooked it up to my wireless router and now it is (we print from a PC, a G4 and a Mac Pro, two wired to router one wireless-G). The text in black is pretty comparable to laser and the few photos I've done turned out nicely. Also prints quickly. Scans turn out very nice as well (I scan my class notes alot). Only thing I don't like is the software on my Mac to print isn't as versatile as that on my PC, but I haven't messed with it much so that may be something I can configure later. Not sure I could go back to something that doesn't have a document feeder after using this. Couldn't recommend it more.

http://store.apple.com/us/product/TR443LL/A
 
alexlovesmacs said:
This one is really nice and it's wireless
http://store.apple.com/us/product/TR958LL/A?fnode=MTY1NDA1MQ&mco=MTUzOTk4Ng
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Wow, that's a one expensive printer. Alternatively, if you have a wireless router that takes USB, just get a normal printer and connect it to the router, and *BOOM*, you've got yourself a wireless printer. :D

My friend has a HP wireless printer, and they often complain to me it's not that stable, sometimes it prints, sometimes it just won't. I can't speak from my personal experience in that case. I don't encounter any problem using it when my printer is directly connected to the router though. Not to mention you won't need to install software that comes with the printer since I guess the wireless printer will have to pair with your computer in order to work properly, so a process will have to run all the time. :(
 
GamaFu said:
My friend has a HP wireless printer, and they often complain to me it's not that stable, sometimes it prints, sometimes it just won't. I can't speak from my personal experience in that case. I don't encounter any problem using it when my printer is directly connected to the router though. Not to mention you won't need to install software that comes with the printer since I guess the wireless printer will have to pair with your computer in order to work properly, so a process will have to run all the time. :(
Click to expand...

I have an Airport Express with a Samsung ML-2010 laser printer plugged in - works seamlessly and I LOVE having wireless printing! I have never had any issues with it, apart from when my wireless network goes down, in which case, I just plug in directly.

I think your printer choice needs to be based on your printing patterns - I virtually never print images, so mono laser is absolute perfect for me. The quality is excellent & cost per page is reasonably low. Certainly, there are color inkjets that are dirt-cheap (almost free) out there, but it's all about toner/cartridge replacement.

Best wishes!
 
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