Just buy a second hand Brother laser printer and be done with this inkjet racket.

How are lasers at printing photos these days? It's very rare that I want anything else on paper.

If you want quality photo prints, you're best off ordering them from somewhere that'll guarantee a good print every time, without having to maintain an inkjet.

I use bonusprint, but others are no doubt available. The price is so reasonable that there's no point doing it yourself, getting hit or miss results, potentially having to cut the paper, etc.

For everything else, a laser is a trusty beast that'll let you print the odd thing off now and then.

Yeah, I use a local independent printer. When she retires I'm not keen on explaining my legal but not always accepted subjects.

For the odd thing now and then I go to the library. (My town still has one!)

Is the equivalent of photocopying yer bum acceptable in libraries now?

Unless you use pro-level labs - which can be quite expensive:

* They might not print from RAW processed images, or at lest TIFFs but require JPEGs that reduce quality

* They might not print on the paper you like

* You might not control the output sharpening process and output colour (or B/W) profiles

* If you don't like the result, you can't tweak some parameters and make a new print immediately

"Hit or miss" happens if you don't have a proper printing workflow - including calibrated hardware and profiles. Depending on the image size and aspect required, you might still need to cut the final image - unless you only need most standard formats.

That said, newer photo printers like the Canon ImagePROGRAF have maintenance cartridges that are replaceable by the user as well.

Photo services have their merit but are no replacement for self printing. Both have their advantages and disadvantages and both have their place. There are valid reasons to use an inkjet, photo printing is one, and then a laser is no substitute. A laser also is no substitute if you frequently need high-quality printouts, regardless of contents, larger than letter/A4, and have no wish to break the bank and build an extension.

The printout can be ever so slightly on the dark side; but it's completely free of banding, and I can more easily live with increasing the brightness a bit to print a picture than I can live with banding.

Totally agree. I stopped buying into the inkjet scam decades ago; the ink is stupidly expensive and the printers are outrageously unreliable - regardless of make.

If you can still get it, the HP Instant Ink programme is genuinely very good value; as long as the printer doesn't give up. I'm still on a grandfathered 'free 15 pages a month' plan, which is all I'm likely to ever need. On the very rare occasions I need a couple of pages more it usually costs me not more than €1, and if I need a lot more (like 1000 pages) I'll go to a copy shop.

Inkjet cartridges are ridiculously expensive. Epson's Ecotank bottles seem a much better medium/longterm deal (the printers are more expensive) - unless of course the sponges fill up too soon anyway.

I have an Epson ET-3760 Ecotank and it's brilliant. Saved $100 by not getting the top of the range model with touch screen and fax (!) capability. Still working off the ink bottles it came with. Scanner with ADF, seems to work as well as expected. Previously had a Canon multifunction unit which worked OK but gobbled ink cartridges like a gobbling thing. And of course would refuse to print in B&W if any of the color cartridges were empty.

I also have a Brother HL-5250DN laser which is going strong after a handful of toner cartridge replacements with no hint of print quality loss.

And even though the Epson is not marketed as a photo printer, it does a very nice job printing photos on semi-gloss photo paper. Good to know that the ink sponges are user-replaceable and there's a utility to reset the maintenance counter.

In the UK the Epson Ecotank printers can be purchased quite cheapy Aldi last year and this year had them on special buy and the price is very nice.

The same here. I live in a dry desert climate, and inkjet cartridges dry out in a month or two. At one point I went to buy two cartridges (black and color), and they wanted about $70 for the two.

At that point I bought a new Dell color laser printer (back when Dell made/rebranded printers). I paid $210 for the printer including shipping. That was about 7 years ago, and 3 of the 4 toners are the originals. I can buy replacement toners for $11 now. Photo quality isn't too bad.

If I want high quality, I send the pictures to Costco (they use an optical/photographic process). They will print them for about 1/10 the cost of the paper and ink to print them at home, and the quality is better. One local place has a very high-end inkjet photo printer, but I think the prints are terrible.

"Just buy a second hand Brother laser printer and be done with this inkjet racket."

Buy a new Brother printer and get some warranty as well !!!

P.S. If you watch the local 'PC Shops' or internet they are periodically available for 'cheap' prices.

Brother is still one of the Brands that does not play these sorts of games re: Toner etc

Just buy a second hand Brother laser printer and be done with this inkjet racket.

If you buy a new Brother laser make sure to google how to reset the low toner warning on that too. :D

For occasional use though, can't agree more, bought a colour laser about 8 years ago, still on the original toner set, was a complete overkill purchase, but I expect it to last me many many more years yet.

Mind you, parents did the same, then had a desire for decent photo printers. The A3 Epson they got is annoyingly lovely print wise.

Lets not just bash Epson for this. It is also an HP trick. Their cheaper printers do this ink cleaning in such a way it is almost impossible to repair without industrial cleaning product. So much gunky ink is just dropped in the side of these.

I bet this heat has also killed many printers by drying up all the ink tubes.

I second the laser printer comment. And if I need a photo printed, I send that out to a professional shop...

Like the toner waste on my laser?

Seeing the mess the old ones used to make when the sponge was full, I can understand a "not working until changed" feature - but it should be easily user replaceable and resettable.

I had a Ricoh Gel-Jet* printer with a simple user replaceable tank so it's definitely possible, just possibly not at the sub-£50 price point people expect to pay.

*High quality waterproof prints but expensive to run, now replaced by a colour laser.

Because it adds a little more cost to the printer design, and makes the printer last longer. Canon is making printers with a replaceable "maintenance cartridge", see for example:

https://store.canon.co.uk/canon-mc-g02-maintenance-cartridge/4589C001/

Dear Mr printer designer, I suggest a procedure called "Change the sponge": remove one screw, drop a plastic tray containing saturated sponge, place tray in self-seal plastic bag and bin it. Place new tray containing new sponge in the obvious location, replace screw.

Perhaps they consider arduous work of this nature to be a very difficult procedure that the average user would probably need specialist Epson training to perform?

This has been going on for at least 4 years. I had an Epson printer as my last inkjet before this happened to me, and I bought a Brother laser printer. The reset utility didn't work for me.

I love the snide comment from Epson about a "local certified technician" - my nearest one is 422.56 miles away according to their locator.

Wasn't a problem over a decade ago. My ancient Epson printer is fine - on cheap third party ink cartridges.

Epson tech has clearly "advanced" since I last bought a printer.

So? The same is true of HP LaserJets, which were built in a different age. Supplies of decent old pre-DRM computer kit is drying up.

Heck, I still have an Epson MX-80, and it doesn't mind 3rd party ink.

Doesn't help the guy now that's trying to avoid getting screwed when buying a printer.

I generally "need" to print once every 2-3 months. At that rate, the ink has dried up Every Single Time.

Quite a few colleagues in the IT department have suggested a second hand laser (ideally Brother).

> I generally "need" to print once every 2-3 months. At that rate, the ink has dried up Every Single Time.

This is such a headache. I recommended an expensive Epson business ink jet to two clients. Both of these died a few months after warranty for these exact reason. Throwing out printers with such low mileage on them is a horrendous waste of resources.

Laser all the way now. Never has the dried up ink problem.

Epson's original support post advised getting the printer serviced at an Authorized Customer Care Center, but warned: "It may be more economical to purchase a new Epson product."

Why would I do that after being forced into scrapping a otherwise functional machine

I've had two Epson inkjet printers where the sponges became saturated, causing smearing of ink on prints. I would periodically take paper towels and soak up ink from the sponge, which resolved the problem for a while. Like others here, I have given up on inkjets and bought a Brother color laser printer, with which I am delighted. When I want to print photos, which I do rarely, I send them out.

My 10 year old Canon inkjet printer died last year. So I took it apart as you do, hoping to find stepper motors, precision ground bars etc. No stepper motors any more, just normal motors and end limit switches.

But was disgusted to find a big nappy in the bottom of the printer that was saturated with most of my expensive ink. Obviously the head cleaning that the printer seemed to do every time I turned it on was sucking ink into it.

Have now switched to a laser printer (Xerox B215) which can't do pretty photos, but so far I think this one toner cartridge should last me a few years as I'm a light user and probably only print <500 pages a year. I've had it a year now and toner still says 97% .

I used to always buy Epson. I had Canon and HP but the quality wasn’t as good in my opinion.

My first inkjet was an Epson Stylus Colour II and I had no issues with it at all. I only got rid of it because I couldn’t buy ink for it any more.

My last inkjet printer was an Epson Stylus Photo PX700W. A good printer initially but when I stopped using it as much I started to get issues with pint quality. 3rd party inks seemed ok but on occasion the printer would reject them.

I don’t understand the problem of not being able to print in monochrome because a colour ink was empty?? I can understand that printing in colour might also require black but monochrome SHOULDN’T require any of the colours!!

The final straw is when I could no longer use the scanner unit because the ink was out. Seriously? So I now have a large piece of plastic junk that I can’t even use as a scanner unless I buy ink which doesn’t work because the printer hasn’t been used and has now dried up and probably needs a new print head. So I need to waste money on ink I can’t use just to use the scanner?

No. I now have a Brother latter printer with scanner unit.

The best advertisement for Brother laser printers.