I Need to Replace my Printer but Which Printer should I Choose?
Replacing your printer can be as small or as large, any investment as you like. But, ultimately it should depend on what you need your printer to print and how much it will cost to run. The cost of running the printer means obviously the cost of the inkjet cartridges and typically how much per sheet it will cost. Firstly if you are a home user, that is to say a family with several school-attending children using the printer then the printer is in for a lot of use. Because the printer will be used to print out colour as well as black and white images then a colour inkjet printer will be sufficient. You would do well to pick an all-in-one printer that has additional features as well as being a printer/copier/scanner such as wifi or cloud-print. In fairness, most printers come wifi enabled these days but many people still prefer to connect them via the USB cable. The print speed of these printers is not that fast but considering the option is a high-speed laser toner printer, the cost would not warrant stepping up in cost for the average family.
The running costs of the printer have to be the next and some will say the most important consideration. If the cost of replacing the ink cartridge is going to cost as much as you paid for the printer, which is highly likely given the low cost of some printers on offer on the high street, then it’s time to think again. First of all check if this wonderfully inexpensive printer will accept a non-genuine brand ink cartridge, i.e. a compatible cartridge, if so what is the cost? If you can find an affordable set of compatible ink cartridges for the printer then you have hit the jackpot, but beware, not all new printers will accept the compatibles and some are so new that there is not yet a compatible cartridge available for them yet. The compatible ink cartridges are manufactured by a third-party manufacturer who has been careful enough to replicate the original brand ink cartridge without infringing on the copyright of it.
The quality of the print out from a printer using compatible ink cartridges as opposed to the genuine brand is not noticeable for general-purpose everyday printing. The only time when we think it may be an issue if you are trying to reproduce photo-quality prints that you may wish to sell or keep for many years and are concerned that the print may fade. All in all, the compatible ink cartridge should be a big consideration when purchasing your new printer and any good seller or ink especially online will give you free advice so don’t be afraid to pick up the phone and ask for help.
- Published in Inkjet Printer, Laser Printers
Is the Epson XP412 the Best Value Epson Printer to Buy in 2016?
If you are planning to buy a new printer in 2016 one brand you should certainly consider is Epson. Of course the first thing to consider when buying a new printer is whether the printer is what you require and how much can you afford to spend. The printer will have to do what you want it to do. In other words, is it for occasional home use, for a busy household with school attending children or is it for the office? If it is for the busy home user where more than one person is using the printer then it’s likely that an all-in-one printer/scanner/copier will be the best bet. Epson produce this printer and label it as a small-in-one compact printer and the latest batch of Epson Expression printers are the best sellers to date. This range of printer uses four ink cartridges, T1811 black, T1812 cyan, T1813 magenta and T1814 yellow. The beauty of the four-cartridge system is that you can replace the ink cartridges individually as they run out and not a full set of inks as was the case in other printers.
For example if we choose the Epson XP-412 as a typical all-in-one we can examine its key features. This printer has wireless printing, a colour LCD touch panel is very compact an environmentally has a small carbon footprint. The need to reduce the overall size of printers is to make the printer less of an obstacle on a desk and the size of the printer has no bearing on the performance of this excellent home printer. This neat and stylish black gloss printer houses it’s flatbed scanner under a textured lid with a typical gravity fed vertical Epson paper feed. On the bottom left there is an input for SD or memory Card sticks but unfortunately not a USB socket. A useful feature of this printer is that it supports wi-fi Direct and Airprint.
Access to the ink cartridges is under the scanner section and with the touch panel on the front it is easy to access them to insert replacement cartridges. The print speeds run approximately at almost 9 pages per minute for black and 4.5 pages per minute for colour. However, printing in draft mode will increase your pages per minute by one.
For general purpose every day printing the Epson XP-412 is perfect and compares favourably with it’s HP and Canon rivals. The over-riding factor with this print is the cost of running this printer with compatible ink cartridges. The non-original version of these printer cartridges are available online for as little as €1 each + VAT. Overall Epson’s XP-412 printer is a neat and well-designed printer that will print from most mobile devices and is definitely worth putting on your short list.
- Published in Epson, Inkjet Printer