Mad value - I got an all in one photo printer for £30

ThePrettyDamned

From Rymans. 

It's a HP 4520. It allows wireless printing via wifi. It's not enormous. It scans perfectly well, photocopies, prints normal stuff and today I printed a couple of 5x7s on HP Premium plus photo paper. And guess what? They looked okay, about as good as a cheap drugstore print. There are some fine textures from the print heads visible, but only on flat bokehlicious colours (yeah, I said bokehlicious) and blacks are not even close to black and fine textures in things that are black are all clipped to not-black, but that's par for the course of a standard inkjet printer up to the hundreds and hundreds of pounds mark. 

For colourful portraits, it does a reasonable job. Sadly, there is no ICC profile for it but I wouldn't dream of using it for professional print anyway - it's great for snaps of the pets and family photos. 

On top of this, it comes with 3 months of HP Instant Ink, where you can print 300 pages and it automatically posts ink to you when it's running low. When the trial is up, I signed up for 50 pages per month for £2 per month which should give me enough to print a handful of photos for my albums and keep the printer actually working rather than drying up while ensuring I don't run out of ink. £2 per month! Includes postage and everything! Mad. 

I am in a state of disbelief of how good it is. It's not horrendously fast, but it's not disgracefully slow either. It has a mechanical arm to catch the pages as they come out (which is super cool), the paper try slides back into the printer to keep it compact and it does double sided printing automatically with no need to re-feed the pages back in. 

£30?!?!?!!

ThePrettyDamned

Oh yeah, and it has a monochrome touchscreen on it, that actually works. 

thomasross20

We used to do motor drivers for printers but pulled out - true... Mad value. Good for consumers but not for part makers!

scrumhalf

It's a loss-leader for ink sales.

ThePrettyDamned

scrumhalf said:

It's a loss-leader for ink sales.

Indeed, but at £2 a month for 50 pages, that's excellent value. Apparently it doesn't care what's on the pages, either - I have not tested it yet but that's potentially 50 5x7, 4x6 or even A4 size photo prints. Even if it works out as only 5 or 6 per month, that's a cheap way of me filling up many photo albums with memories, printing CV's to hand in to employers and scanning important documents for backup purposes. 

Although it also means that a page with a single full stop on it also counts as a page. 

The point is, it's excellent value for money. 

I've also heard the ink is more expensive as that's got some of the more clever tech inside it - versus professional printers in offices and print companies where the inks are in more simple containers and the parts are rugged, reliable and fast and do the heavy lifting. Not sure how true that is, but it explains why off brand colour inks often screw up. 

Foster

I have a HP Printer that will only print black if I remove the black ink cartridge 

ThePrettyDamned

Foster said:

I have a HP Printer that will only print black if I remove the black ink cartridge 

Ha! That's amazing. I've heard of that problem before actually, on kodaks. Wonder why that happens? 

Axe_meister

Wish I could find a single function ink jet for £100. 
I don't need another scanner I already have a really good one.
just give me a printer that prints high quality without the crap

robgilmo

Every printer I have ever had has been shit, even expensive ones, ink costs fucking fortune, I use the library now.

paul_c2

Yeah they are good for low amounts of use, or non-critical printing. Normally they start to not feed in paper after about 40 pages (the rollers get dusty and the rubber loses its grippiness) but can be persuaded to feed the paper. Another previous trick they used to do is go bonkers and print a line of random characters on a page, then another page, then another......due to a dodgy printer driver I think? I suspect the latest HP printer with a 50 pages/month deal has this feature "built in".

RaymondLin

I got a Canon printer before Christmas for £35 too, has scanner built in, wifi too.  My old printer, also Canon, lasted 10 years and even though probbaly spent like £300 on ink, it's worth it tbh.  I know they sell it as a loss leader. It'll cost probably about £50 a year in ink to run it.  Call it like a lease in a weird way but I rather £30 printer and £20 ink than £300 printer and £3 ink.

at least this way if the printer breaks, I can replace it for peanuts.

FelineGuitars

I got tired of my super duper expensive Epson inkjet printer clogging (apparently because i didn't use it enough) I would go through half a refill and half a ream of paper (and half a day lost too) just trying to get it to print an invoice without gaps.

Ended up getting a laser printer (just black and white) and never looked back.

notanon

A Friend of mine mentioned similar - Power of statistics. Question is which stats?? You can obliterate opposition by dragging on board with ridiculous offers people don't like change. There are some limits AFAIU but could be a good deal - the lord know ink ain't a good deal the moment you start to print on deskjets.

robgilmo

Any one tried CIS in their printers?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_ink_system

sweepy

I went for the big Epsom all in one unit with 4 ink resovoirs, initially pricey but dirt cheap to run 

ThePrettyDamned

FelineGuitars said:

I got tired of my super duper expensive Epson inkjet printer clogging (apparently because i didn't use it enough) I would go through half a refill and half a ream of paper (and half a day lost too) just trying to get it to print an invoice without gaps.

Ended up getting a laser printer (just black and white) and never looked back.

This one replaces my laser one, which broke and didn't scan or photocopy (which I needed). It was good while it lasted, and toner did seem to last better, but the printer itself stopped working. 

I sometimes drool over the big printers with 20 different ink cartridges but in reality there are professionals who could do a great job for much less initial outlay, and they have the upkeep of big printers, space concerns etc. 

57Deluxe

is same premise as for water filters and coffee machines - hook the punter and sting them on replaceables...

axisus

That is a bloody good deal!

ThePrettyDamned

Ridiculous really. 

I think it's easy to take it for granted, printing. It wasn't that long ago you'd have to pay other people to print reasonable quality colour documents... I can remember getting a colour printer in the 90s when I was a kid and it was a big, off white box of loud, hot magic. 

The quality of photo print from this is pretty okay! it won't beat Loxley, saal etc but for general snaps for the family album it is acceptable. 

I export the edited raw from Lightroom to the exact size of the print, with high print sharpening applied on export. 

midlifecrisis

robgilmo said:

Any one tried CIS in their printers?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_ink_system

had one years ago and it was brilliant. i use to print maybe 1000 pages a month so worked out very economical, worked great for about two years, then wore out bought a replacement that broke within a week, got another that did the same. now i use an old canon with unbranded carts that cost about a sixth of the canon ones, as i dont print so much now anyway

vale

i so wish some cheeky & public spirited instructables geek would would come up with a hack for epson printers so they work with generic cartriges.
those things are literally neurotic! too much ink, not enough ink, wrong type of paper, wrong type of cable, lactose intolerant, rainy day, not enough lube. ffs!

they are like the awkward first fuck of every single relationship you ever had, but every single time.

i so hate epson. to kill!

once upon a time (early 2000s) i had an hp generic lowest-of-the-low-range black & white printer that cost £15 from a charity shop. it lasted three whole years & i only ever replaced the cartdge once. best printer days of my life. i so need one of those again. simple is beautiful.