Buying my first printer

[trunker3]

I am looking to buy my first printer and have been looking at the Canon Pixma iP7250. Does anyone have experience of them. I will mainly be printing 7x5's with an occasional A4. I would be grateful for any help to get the right printer.

[Gwiwer]

You can Google user and technical reviews for any printer which I suggest is a good starting point.

 

Take note of comments and consider what you need the printer to do, for example mostly text, mostly photographic prints or a "maid of all work".

[backofanenvelope]

I have a Canon Pixma IP4000 which I have had for a long time and have always been happy with the output of it. For me getting the right inks and papers is just as important as the printer. You can get good Epson printers you just have to be careful with cost of consumables as sometimes it can be as expensive to get these as buy new printer! Depending on how much you are going to print you may want to think about bulk ink printing.

t.

[PGC]

Hi Trunker3

 

For a printer to print photo's, I'd suggest you follow Gwiwers comment and Google reviews etc. I have an Epson R360 photo printer that produces very high quality photos up to A4, but it's not a new model.

 

I personally would stick with HP printers for everyday use. The reason is that most other printers have the print head (the bit that does the actual printing) built in to the printer so when you replace the ink, you only get new ink but keep the old print head. With HP printers, the print head is built in to the cartridge, so when you buy a new cartridge you also get a new print head. The inks cost more because of this, but the printer and print quality keep going for a lot longer. I have an HP 940 that's been going for years and if I print on to photo paper, it actually produces very good photos, although not as good as the Epson!

 

If I was buying new for myself, I personally would buy one of the HP all in one's that you see on offer at ridiculous prices in places like Tesco, WH Smith etc. for everyday use and a dedicated photo printer, but obviously that costs more and is dependant on circumstances.

 

Hope that helps.

 

Phil

[Oldddudders]

Online reviews are a great starting point.

 

In my 15 years as a PC owner, I have had printers by Lexmark, Epson and Canon, and have found the last to be the most reliable. The £300 Canon S9000 A3 printer I now use is 10 years old. At the budget end of the market you will find printers where the cost of the cartridges is nearly as great as the original price of the printer, so they are great value too. It's like bangernomics in old cars, buy 'em cheap and have to replace often, or buy better and expect it to last. Don't ignore the all-in-one printer/scanner/copier that saves lots of time if you do other office work at home.

[PGC]

For me getting the right inks and papers is just as important as the printer.

 

I have an Epson R2880 A3 photo printer (if you can afford it, get one, it produces brilliant results but they're not cheap!) at work that I was having drive issues with when Windows 7 came out so I spent quite a bit of time on the Epson help line sorting the problems out.

 

In the course of conversation, the Epson engineer told me that for best results, use same manufacturer papers as inks, so Epson papers with Epson printer etc. At first I thought this was just an engineers version of sales talk, but he then told me he uses an HP printer himself!

 

The reason he gave the information he did is that different manufacturers use different printing technologies, and the papers from the manufacturers are designed to work with their technologies. I can't remember exactly which way round the technologies are, but I think Epson use a hot printing method where the ink is actually heated by the print head to make it flow more easily, whereas HP use a cold printing method (this is why the print head can be built in to the cartridge).

 

Being the cynical old g*t that I am, I still wasn't convinced but could see the sense in this argument and did some tests. I now stick with Epson photo papers for my Epson photo printers (I have 2, one at home and one at work)  - the cost is greater but the results definitely are better. I have a photo printed to Epson A3+ and mounted - a friend who is in the print trade commented on the quality of the photo and was astounded when I told him it was a print, the results really can be that good.

 

Phil

[Alastair-I]

For photo printing, I suggest using online printers such as DSCL.  Unless you're printing 100s of prints per month, the ink and paper costs for calibration push the economies of home printing out the window.  I use the DSCL "pro" service, so take responsibility for my own monitor calibration, use their supplied profiles and let them take care of the printer calibration.

 

For normal text printing, get one of the cheaper HP laser printers.  Fast, reliable and more economical than an inkjet.

[dasatcopthorne]

Have to agree.

 

DS Colour Labs.

 

Brilliant service and amazing prices.

 

I'd never use an ink jet to print photos. Far to costly.

 

Dave

[Rumblestripe]

I have the model you asked about (Canon Pixma iP7250) and I'm very happy with it. Great colour reproduction and instinctively I like the fact it uses five inks rather than a combo colour cartridge where you are always throwing away some ink when the cart runs out of one ink. It replaces an iP4300 which I had for six years and finally required a replacement head which would have cost as much as the new iP7250. The iP4300 did not have an easy life with being used by my daughter during her art and photography courses and probably printed more high quality colour prints than would be usual. In some ways I preferred the old iP4300, I liked the top feed for inserting non-standard size paper whereas the iP7250 has a second tray to handle smaller (5x4 upwards) paper which is great if you only use two paper sizes, less convenient if like me you might do the odd 5x4 then an A4 print on glossy or textured paper as well as "ordinary" jobs like bank statements or whatever. Canon inks are no more expensive than the other major manufacturers and I find their printer software pretty good.

[trunker3]

Many thanks for all your helpful suggestions.

[shortliner]

I think Rumblestripe has been looking over my shoulder - or living in my house - we have both gone down exactly the same route! I bought the IP7250, because I was so pleased with the IP4300 that I was replacing. I haven't been disappointed. One thing - stick with own brand cartridges - they may be more expensive, but cheapy refills are a sure route to severe disappointment  (I did ONCE on the IP4300 and never again!) - and buy the XL size = excellent value