HP vs. Epson Printers on the Peoria.com Forums

I have to replace an old printer, and found myself going instinctively to an HP brand - until a friend told me I should buy an Epson.

Anyone have an opinion on that?

Consumer Reports, Dec. 2011. What kind of printer? Inkjet? Laser? Photo? All-in-One? Color? Black & White Only?

Recommended buys for All-in-One were Canon Pixma MG8120 ($200), Dell P713w ($150), HP C410A ($180) and Lexmark Pro205 ($100). Epson wasn't mentioned until it got to snapshot printers.

Other than at work, have never had an Epson printer.

Ha. Thanks. The one I was eyeballing at Office Depot was the 8600 Premium All in one. With an old printer trade-in, I can buy it for $250.

We've switched over the lasers and love them. Hope to never own an inkjet again, although we do a lot of printing.

@JnJ:

HP.

I had a laser printer till it died late last year--a Brother that lasted about 8 years. Got an inkjet HP. They're workhorses but when this one dies I'm going back to laser. Printer cartridge was $65 but I only had to replace it once a year at most. I've already spent $60 on ink for this one in 6 months.

I have a color Laser HP at my office. I have to replace the cartridges about once a year and all combined it's around $500! Definitely not cheap!

@JnJ:

Not cheap at all. Our offices seem to replace them more frequently. I never seen the office supply invoices, but I've heard people complaining about the price.

Don't make the mistake of using NON-HP cartridges. They are junk.

Buy refurbs. Theyre still pricey but they cost less. There's a place out of Bartonville that sells them. US Laserjet I think?

Ummm...I already bought the fake cartridges.

They seem to be working fine.

@JnJ:

No failure rate with them? I've replaced hundreds, maybe thousands and I've ran into many many "fake" cartridges that die before their supplies run out. I guess it is a game of averages, not sure if the company I work for comes out ahead or not. From an IT prospective, it is a pain in the ass to deal with fake, cheap cartridges

I have an old Office Jet T45 vintage 1999. It is getting harder to find cartridges for it and I found a place on eBay. This thing has printed years worth of menus for 3 different restaurants I've worked at plus all sorts of employee manuals, banquet menus and contracts, "to go" menus, etc. I'm sure tens of thousands copies have been through this thing. So, upon its reputation, I bought a new HP for home and took this one to work. It is a lot better piece of equipment than my new-ish (don't have the model number in front of me) one, but know the new one uses 60XL ink cartridges because I buy them so frequently...it EATS ink. I don't know it is just this printer or all HP ink using cartridges, but whatever my next one would be, I'll look into ink usage first.

The good thing about Epsons is that the printheads are not on the ink cartridges, they are on the printer. This means that you can use whatever cheapo ink cartridges with no difference.

Or, you can do what I did and buy $75 worth of refillable ink cartridges and ink and make it +2 years without buying expensive cartridges.

I have 2 Epsons (1100 and 1400) and love them.

The generic cartridges wouldn't work in my HP printer... error message... Office max allowed me to return them and I paid the difference for the HP ones.

I bought a refurbished multi-function (copy, scan, fax) Brother off of Tigerdirect.com last year and I really like it. Its not the speediest machine, but the cartridges are cheap (compared to the HP) and the refurb was considerably less than a brand new one.

I would have liked to get a laser printer, but I wanted something that was color and 11x17. The laser printers, in that size, with color, were way out of my budget.

@joepyeweed:

I had the same issue with the new HP as you with error messages. However, on some forum I read that if the refills/remanufactured cartridges were originally HP, they work. And they do. The message on the screen reads (something like) "refilled genuine HP cartridge installed".

@shifty:

We have a 1400 and really like it.