Assistance Selecting a New Multi-Function Printer

brettule on 04/11/2020 - 16:40

My HP OfficeJet Pro 8600 has died after 8 years and I'm looking to replace it. It was a pretty good all rounder except when it came to printing photographs, it could never nail the colours quite right and looked washed out. Is it unreasonable to expect a modern MFP to be able to print good quality photos? I like the HP's but I'm not rusted onto to them, wondering if you can suggest a unit I should look at which has the following features:

Brand: don't care
Price: trying to keep it under $1k but I'm flexible
Size: suitable for sitting on a bench
Usage: SOHO it will do about 600 pages per year printing and about 300 scans, not heaps.
Speed: 16ppm was my old 8600 and 15 second delay before first print. That or better is fine.

Must support:
- Colour printing
- Duplex printing required
- Duplex scanning with an ADF required
- Wif or wired LAN conectivity
- 250 sheet tray capacity or more

Would like to have:
- A3 capability, but it's not a deal breaker.
- Email to print capability or something similar where an approved list of users outside the LAN can print to it from their PC
- Be able to print decent quality photos, or is this just impossible with MFPs?

Computing Printer

Comments

  • Hybroid on 04/11/2020 - 16:45
    -1

    Brand: Brother.

    Pick the best one you can find for your needs and budget. That helps narrow it down considerably.

    Since you have the budget and want focus on photos, get a nice laser one instead of poorer quality & more expensive in long run inkjet.

  • spackbace on 04/11/2020 - 16:59

    Brother Wireless Colour Laser MFC Printer MFC-L8900CDW

    Looks to tick every box, except it's $1099 :P Wait, no it's not!

  • brettule on 04/11/2020 - 17:16

    Ah ok, inkjet isn't as good as laserjet for photos?

  • AustriaBargain on 04/11/2020 - 17:30

    What speed do you need to print

  • Big Trev on 04/11/2020 - 17:59

    I think you need to consider whether you want an office type machine, or something to print photos. Photo printing is more specialised and costly, once you get into "good" photo printers.

    Personally, I went from a laser MFP to a Canon Maxify MB5460, and have been very happy with it. Document print quality is probably not as good as a laser, but it's fast, and good enough for documents. Also good running costs - the cartridges are big (2500 pages or something).

    • Kandrew on 05/11/2020 - 22:33

      I also went from a MFP laser (Samsung) to a Canon MB 5460 and I absolutely loathe the Canon.

      It is slow to get the first page out, it’s noisy, and the print quality is nothing to write home about. I’m on my second printer, the first one having died within the first two months. It was replaced by Canon without any inspection.

      Something tells me that they are a known problem printer if they replaced it without even asking to look at it. And they haven’t asked for the original one to be returned, either.

      A full set of genuine large capacity cartridges will cost in the vicinity of $200, so be prepared for that if you do get that printer.

      My Samsung MFP lasted me over 8 years. I’ll be very surprised if this MB5460 can get me through half of that time. And I don’t think that I’m printing nearly as much as I used to.

  • nakahanap on 04/11/2020 - 19:26

    Brother makes nice MFC.

    We went from a Canon inkjet which ate cartridges like no tomorrow to a Brother with a continuous ink tank. We’ve done hundreds of pages of printing and refilled the ink 1x/year. The print quality has been quite good.

    Ours isn’t A3 (not needed for us) but it’s been a good middle choice between inkjet and laser.

  • Randxyz123 on 04/11/2020 - 19:50

    My HP Officejet pro X576dw also just died after 7 years. Pretty much have the same requirements as you but my family does a lot more printing, 30,330 pages in 7 years.

    I’ve pretty much decided on and I’m probably about to order a Fuji Xerox CM315Z.

    HP’s support was absolutely abysmal. Worse than Telstra!! They gave me a quote to fix it for $500 with no guarantees on the fix and they’ve failed to call me back twice to discuss. I’d probably never buy another of their printers.

    I trust Fuji Xerox to make a good product and I have been told their support is good. I think Canon is the only other brand I’d really consider.

    Brother barley supports Mac so they’re out as well.

    I too would like decent photo printing capability but the email to scan functionality is something I wouldn’t give up. If I decided I wanted to print photos regularly I’d get a dedicated photo printer.

  • brettule on 04/11/2020 - 21:42

    I don't often print photos, but when I do I would like them to be passable. The OfficeJet 8600 had good dpi but the colour was always quite muted. If I want quality prints I'd always go to a special print shop.

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