• scrion@lemmy.world
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    6 hours ago

    Get a cheap laser printer. The toner won’t dry out, and you can get a very reliable printer for cheap. The Xpress series from Samsung was cheap and very reliable. Unfortunately, Samsung does not manufacture printers any more and their printer business was bought by HP. I have no idea how new HP models compare to the old ones.

    I’d probably look at Brother, a monochrome laser printer can be had for $120, and Brother generally has a good reputation. If you want to print in color, that’ll be more expensive of course. Honestly, I haven’t had a color printer in 11 years and I don’t miss it, but YMMV.

    • 4grams@awful.systems
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      2 hours ago

      I don’t know about brother anymore. I have one I bought because it would work with 3rd party ink. I updated the firmware and am now locked out from using anything but brother. I would up finding a hack to get it to stop checking the ink level, so I can at least print, but it’s a temporary fix (have had to do it a few times), and it makes it unable to tell me how much ink is left. No big deal, I just run the cartridges dry, but it’s less functional than when I bought it…

      Nutshell, I used to trust bother, not anymore so an open option is a big desire of mine. If this is halfway decent, I’ll pick one up.

    • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.org
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      6 hours ago

      I’ve had a monochrome Brother laser printer for about 14 years now. Still using the original toner that came with it, though it’s down to about 20% or so. Prints every time I need it which isn’t very often, but when I need to print something, I actually need to print it.

    • Cocodapuf@lemmy.world
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      5 hours ago

      Having been an IT guy for a very long time this is my recommendation to everyone. Buy a cheap laser printer for your home. Ink jet is garbage it will piss you off every time you want to print something, it’s a trap. Go with whatever brand you want, but brother is the one I’d recommend most

      In my home I have a brother color laser printer, it may have run over $300, I don’t recall. But I don’t recall because I think I bought it 15 years ago and it still works just fine every time I need to print. No regrets.

      • Lanvjscdlk@lemmy.world
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        4 minutes ago

        If you’re just printing documents and stuff, laser is fine, but they do look quite bad for art prints, which is the main use case these days for inkjet.

    • Frenchgeek@lemmy.ml
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      6 hours ago

      Remember to include the price of a new toner cartridge when looking for a cheap laser printer. Some become quite expensive when you include it.

      • Ms. ArmoredThirteen@lemmy.zip
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        4 hours ago

        When I bought a small office laser printer for making stickers it took me four years before I needed to change the cartridges. It only came with those partially full ones too. Unless you’re printing dozens of full color sheets a day the cost of cartridges is likely a minimal consoderation

        • Frenchgeek@lemmy.ml
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          4 hours ago

          I once bought a Xerox for very cheap for office work. Buying a brand new Brother was cheaper than buying toner for it.

      • Cocodapuf@lemmy.world
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        5 hours ago

        You could if you want. But then again, remember that most people will be replacing that toner cartridge only once every 2-5 years. So it’s not like a major expense.

        It depends on how much you print of course, like if you’re a teacher or something, you might print a lot.