Would a Walmart $40-ish Printer Be Suitable for Me?

jakeny

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I need to buy a new printer guys. Senior in college and only going to use it for school work and occasionally printing documents out for mailing.

Nothing fancy. No photos or colored needed.

Here is WM's printer area: printer - Walmart.com

My questions are:

1.) Would a WM printer for $40 or so carry with it less durability? I would hate to have to buy a new one a year or two later?

2.) What specs/features should I look for in a printer for my specific needs?

Thanks so much for everyone's thoughts & advice!!

:flowers:
 
My first cheapo lasted about a about almost 2 years before It wouldn't shoot any ink even with new ink cartridge. But it worked just fine while it lasted. Same stuff, school work
 
The main thing you need to look at is how much ink cartridges cost for any printer you consider. Any cheap printer will print for you and all of them cost about the same, but if brand A's cartridges cost $15 and brand B's cartridges cost $30 you would be an idiot to buy brand B.

I have had good luck from several brands... HP, Brother, Canon, Lexmark. All of them will do the job.
 
The main thing you need to look at is how much ink cartridges cost for any printer you consider. Any cheap printer will print for you and all of them cost about the same, but if brand A's cartridges cost $15 and brand B's cartridges cost $30 you would be an idiot to buy brand B.

I have had good luck from several brands... HP, Brother, Canon, Lexmark. All of them will do the job.

Agreed, if the ink is cheap then you're laughing!
 
In my experience, new ink cartridges for cheap printers cost the same or more than a new printer. Cheap printers, in general, are not cheap.
 
Also keep in mind if you don't do a lot of printing, the ink is going to dry up in the cart and the feed lines. I had that problem when I was away for 8 months. The ink dried up in the heads and rendered the printer useless.

As for the cost of carts, it depends on how much printing you're going to do. All of mine have 2 versions of the cart. A normal which will serve if you do tame amounts of printing. But if you do what I do like printing manuals, the XL version holds more ink. Costs more but with the XL all I have to do is reload the paper. 5 reams and the cart's only half down.

I use Epson printers. They're great but not cheap. The XL cart packs will run you about 60 dollars. All the colors and one black cart come in the pack.
 
Also keep in mind if you don't do a lot of printing, the ink is going to dry up in the cart and the feed lines. I had that problem when I was away for 8 months. The ink dried up in the heads and rendered the printer useless.

As for the cost of carts, it depends on how much printing you're going to do. All of mine have 2 versions of the cart. A normal which will serve if you do tame amounts of printing. But if you do what I do like printing manuals, the XL version holds more ink. Costs more but with the XL all I have to do is reload the paper. 5 reams and the cart's only half down.

I use Epson printers. They're great but not cheap. The XL cart packs will run you about 60 dollars. All the colors and one black cart come in the pack.

Same with Canon, they do cartridges with two different capacities (in the same physically sized cartridges). I think the bigger ones do work out slightly cheaper, but it's just more convenient as they run out less often!

The cartridges the printer comes with tend to only be half-full from what I heard, so if you're buying a new printer every time you need ink it isn't really cost effective :mad:
 
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