Home printer recommendation with reasonable borderless photo printing

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Dynamic

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#169635 20-Mar-2015 23:39

Hi,

I'm on the hunt for a new printer for home.... A4 inklet ideally with duplex. Some sort of web print functionally would be nice so we can print from a Chromebook but this is not essential. Wireless highly desirable for printing from laptops.

Most of our printing is kids homework, but every year we do our own family Christmas calendars which involves 50+ borderless A4 pages with decent photo quality print required.

Anyone care to recommend a printer they have recently tried out? I lean toward Brother or HP brands.

Thanks in advance.

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Dratsab

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#1264413 21-Mar-2015 08:48

I have a Canon MG7160 - does everything you last out plus is also a scanner. It's quite a compact machine and is VERY quiet. I'm quite impressed with it.

I used to have an HP multifunction printer but got frustrated with the amount of time it would take to get started as it seemed to do endless self tests every time it switched, plus it was quite noisy. I imagine this is something they've probably sorted out by now but I won't be going back to that brand to find out.

At the end of the day, you're going to get a wide variety of opinions on brands here. Some will hate various brands, others will love them. Best thing to do is research - find a machine that does everything you want, reliably, at a price point that's acceptable to you and go from there.

The only other thing I'd add is make sure the ink droplets are 1 picolitre so you do get photo quality. Some machines are advertised as photo quality but their droplets are not as fine as this.

Edit: corrected model number.

Dynamic

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#1264425 21-Mar-2015 09:28

Thank you Dratsab. I've found in the past that Canon/Oki/Epson etc were crap at releasing drivers for newer versions of Windows where in my experience HP and Brother have been pretty good at releasing at least basic drivers for older printers when a new version of Windows is released. I've been working in IT for 20 years and have formed that opinion over time. That is the primary reason for the brand preference.

I've had a look at a number of reviews, but for the models I have looked at, proper professional reviews are hard to find, and Amazon customer reviews vary wildly.

The 1 picolitre reminder is helpful, thank you.

I'm happy to spend up to $300-ish and aim to get a long life from the printer.

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Gilco2

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#1264448 21-Mar-2015 10:58

I got rid of a HP 6520 around Christmas. It was drinking ink like it was going out of fashion and unreliable. Warehouse stationary had sale and I bought an Epson workforce WF 3640 multifunction for $99.
So far extremely pleased with it. Excellent print quality and all photos so far have been excellent as well. One annoyance is Windows standard drivers wont let me print documents unless I have the paper in top tray. That tray is the tray for photo paper. Installing the Epson drivers fixes that but in a fix it does work out of the box. Same with Linux.
I find it very economical on the ink. It is also very quick printing.

Only problem I have here is only Warehouse Stationary have ink for it. I havent needed to get any more but when time comes maybe other places will carry ink

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#1265581 23-Mar-2015 11:06

Dynamic: I've found in the past that Canon/Oki/Epson etc were crap at releasing drivers for newer versions of Windows where in my experience HP and Brother have been pretty good at releasing at least basic drivers for older printers when a new version of Windows is released..

Ive found just the opposite with HP. In fact, many older HP printers there was no downloadable driver for Win8 (or Win7) , driver had to come through Windows
Update which can be a painfull process . :-)
One clients large, expensive scanner/printer/copier had only limited functionality via the generic driver that HP offered for Win7.

Im less than happy with my Canon inkjet (not the el-cheapo model) . The turn/on start up process starts a long cleaning cycle every time, just wasting ink in the process .
Even to replace an empty inkcart, I have to wait for the carriage to go back & forth, back & forth several times for no good reason.
Perhaps I'll just buy an Epson instead of new ink carrts for it .