My 9 year old Canon Pixma just bit the dust :'( I need a new printer ASAP but not sure what to get. Any recommendations from you guys? A printer that you absolutely love? What to avoid? Ink considerations? Thanks in advance for any help possible
Can’t help on specific recommendations as I’ve only used Canon printers myself but I tend to look at cost of ink rather than a great price on the actual printer. Personally I prefer having separate colour ink cartridges rather than tricolour inks, to me they seem more affordable.
Yeah, I liked having the separate ink cartridges with this last printer. Soooo sad that it died on me, they don't sell that particular one anymore.
I have a brother printer. We used to have hp, but had so many issues, I switched brands. I've been happy with this one. It does a good job, although it doesn't like to feed cover stock - but then again, none of my printers have. I always forget to look for one that will when it's time to buy new. It communicates with my Silhouette with zero issues. It has inkvestment, supposedly 2 years of ink, and so far, it's been 1 year and about 5 months, and we haven't had to replace ink yet! It still has a bunch left too. It happily talks to both my husband and my computers wirelessly (the hp would only do one or the other before it threw a fit). Best of all: it just works. I haven't had near the maintenance or issues I had with the hp ones we used to buy.
I still love my HP and their Instant Ink program. I talked about it here. I have always had good luck with HP. We had one Epson that was absolutely awful. I've never tried any other brands, but if Canon has worked well for you, starting by checking out their current options seems like a good place to start.
I've been using EZ Ink on amazon. I was skeptical at first but as it turns out, so much better. Very inexpensive. I was lucky my current Canon TS9521 (a crafting printer that prints up to 12x12 pages) had EZ Ink options. When I bought my sister a printer last year for Christmas, I checked which ones were compatible first. Here is my printer. And here is the EZ Ink store. My printer doesn't appear to be available. I spent about 250 or so on mine. The only thing I don't like is that the ink (canon or ez ink) is not waterproof or even water resistant. If you happen to find a good printer that prints well on thick, textured paper and is waterproof ink, I'd love to know. The laser one I tried absolutely sucked and I sent it back.
It depends what you print. If you mostly print photos or scrapbooking pages/hybrid supplies, this isn't a good suggestion--it's more for if you're printing school papers, recipes, info from web sites, etc. We finally replaced our old inkjet printer this year. We decided to go with a Canon Pixma 6020. It has ink wells instead of cartridges. So far I love it! We were spending a fortune on ink--$150+ a year! The ink costs with the bulk ink printers are so much lower if you print a lot.
Thanks so much Kat!! I have been using the EZ ink for years with the printer that just died on me. I LOVE it and was really hoping to find a printer that could take that ink. I'm just not having luck finding one and the printers that do take it aren't available (like yours). Who would have thought printer shopping would be so difficult! lol When you were looking for one for your sister where were you able to find a compatible list at?
Thanks for the help Rachel! I have never seen these ink wells before! I typically would be using my printer for school papers, recipes, etc. Very seldom do I print photos/scrapbook pages at home. I'll look more into this type of ink...
Thanks for the review on your printer, sounds amazing! I was actually looking into the brother brand so this helps a lot!!!
I too have a Canon Pixma and I use knock off ink from Amazon without any problems. My printer is also old and sometimes does weird things that make me think I should replace it, but I have so far been able to fix things with updating drivers, etc. One of the last times it started misbehaving I did go out and buy myself a color laser printer though. It's nice to have a back up (although I haven't told the kids about it) and I use it for my art journaling stuff mostly because I needed a waterproof option. I paint over printed stuff a lot in my art journal and my inkjet just smeared like crazy even when I'd spray it with fixative that was supposed to help prevent that from happening. Anyway, if you're interested in going the laser route... here's what I bought and I love it! The cartridges obviously are way more expensive, but they are supposed to last a lot longer too... so I bit the bullet. https://www.staples.com/canon-color...wireless-color-laser-printer/product_24395807
