I welcome your recommendations. I haven't bought a printer in years, so I imagine the universe of options is quite different from my last time at this bar-b-que.

My needs are ludicrously simple. I probably print five pages a month, all text. But I don't want to be without a printer in case I have to write a business letter, and I cannot afford to have embarrassingly sloppy print quality. Also, must be wireless.

What do you think? Should I just go to Best Buy and have the girl there recommend something? The last time I went to Best Buy, I needed a router, and the girl simply said, "You don't need that. You need this." Her suggestion worked out very well, and I was saved.

 

I can't make a specific recommendation, but will note that if your print needs are only 5 pages/month there's a good chance a budget printer will bite you in the butt when the print cartridge clogs and stops working after a few months. Then you will learn that a replacement cartridge costs as much or more than you paid for the printer. So, you will buy a cheaper generic cartridge and then you will learn that it works once or twice before the printer rejects it and you're right back where you started. I'm currently staring at the printer on my desk that hasn't worked for a couple years because I got tired of trying different generic cartridges and refuse to pay the exorbitant fee for a genuine HP cartridge.

Depending on where you live, you might find that printing at your local public library ($0.10/page at my library) is a reasonable option.

 

@Drew21 makes some very good points. But if peace of mind of having a printer at home is worth it (considering how few hours some libraries are open) -- and you can get by with printing in black when you do print -- then I would recommend buying a cheap laser printer. They'll sit unused for far longer without clogging themselves. The initial printer cost will be higher, and, someday, 16 years from now when you need a new toner cartridge, it'll be pricey too. But it's one way to beat the inkjet blues.

The other recommendation I would make is to just buy the Brother printer (whatever technology you choose). Brother doesn't seem to be treating their customers the way HP and Canon are, with "starter" cartridges and mandatory Internet connections. Their software works well for Windows and macOS and maybe even other OSes (I don't need more than that). Our Brother printer has been almost a Honda Fit of printers. I can't recommend it more highly than that.

 

@Drew21 @Steve-o Thanks, guys. I'm willing to spend money to get value. I don't need to get the cheapest printer on the market. The "mandatory Internet connections" thing is new to me. Also, I've never owned a Brother; maybe I should look into them.

I currently have a Canon ImageClass MF212w laser printer. It works reliably, and I don't object to paying for the toner cartridges, but the print quality is unacceptable. It just occurred to me that the poor print quality may be due to the cheap toner cartridges I've been using. Is this possible, you think? Should I go back to Canon cartridges?

 

I don't know much about laser printers or Canon printers in general, but it wouldn't surprise me if a generic cartridge might cause issues.

One thing I have seen with my inkjet misadventures is that the generic cartridges often don't communicate property with the printer. For your Canon printer, I noticed in the FAQs that they mention that print quality will decline as the toner runs low. Maybe if the generic cartridge doesn't communicate properly with the printer it doesn't know how much toner is present, or something like that, and print quality suffers. Just an idea.

I also did a quick skim of the manual and noticed that there is a cleaning procedure for the printer. Have you tried that?

Anyway, if you previously were happy with the print quality it would probably be worth trying one of the Canon cartridges at $100 to see if will still work for you rather than buying an unknown printer for the same or more.

 

That's the manufacturer's spin on the situation. The reality is the manufacturer deliberately designs the printer to mis-function or outright reject third-party ink cartridges.
The electrical contacts seen on ink cartridges don't connect to any sort of sensors or mechanism in the cartridge - it's just a memory chip. The chip has information about the type of ink cartridge, its capacity or how much ink is still in it (based on its original capacity minus how much the printer thinks it has dispensed), a serial number. The data is typically encrypted and/or serial numbers are black-listed after use to prevent copying.
This is all done to try to force the user to buy manufacturer-brand ink. Their business model is to sell the printers cheap, then price-gouge on the ink once the purchaser feels they have "bought-in" to the specific printer. There have been instances in the past where it was cheaper to buy a whole new printer to get the included ink cartridges, than it was to buy replacement cartridges alone. Manufacturers will often include reduced-capacity "starter" cartridges with new printers to force the purchaser to buy full-price cartridges sooner.
When an ink-jet printer is rarely used, the ink dries in the print head, clogging the jets. Cleaning the jets to restore print quality often consumes large amounts of ink - there is a cleaning tray to one side of the paper path (usually where the print head rests when idle) that is used for nothing but dumping ink. When an inkjet printer is heard doing it's pre-print operations, that's what it's doing - blowing the nozzles out with fresh ink and then wiping off on a squeegee and/or sponge. The more often the nozzles clog, the more ink the printer wastes, the more overpriced ink the manufacturer sells.

Laser printers don't use ink, they use toner. Toner is a fine powder, not a liquid, so it doesn't dry out. There's no jets to clog or product wasted on self-cleaning. They're not bulletproof or mechanically-immortal, but are very low maintenance. Turn it off when not in use, maybe put a cover over it to keep dust out and it will probably never give you trouble. In a low-use case, it will probably get retired after 15-20 years because nobody makes toner cartridges for it anymore, or Windows 29 God Edition™ dropped driver support, or the manufacturer went full subscription-techno-fascist with a software update. That last one is a real short-term concern. Brother has been one of the last hold-outs as far as respecting their customers goes, which is where the recommendations come from.

 

If your Canon started out printing with sufficient quality, then a genuine Canon toner cart, even at $100, probably is the cheapest way to get decent printouts again. If you think print quality still is below par after that, you could sell the printer and at least be able to offer the buyer a brand new toner cart.

In years of supporting printers commercially and privately, the only third-party brands of ink or toner cartridges I've seen that were as good as OEM were for specialized purposes and typically cost at least as much as the manufacturer's cart. Maybe there are a few good brands out there, but it's just not worth the hassle to me to deal with clogs or leaks or the manufacturer's gotchas with ink levels or constant warnings about non-OEM carts. fwiw we've replaced more printers because driver support disappeared in a new OS than we ever lost to a bad cartridge.

 

I'll probably replace the toner cartridge and see how that goes, but are these s complete junk?Just wondering.

 

Printer: $40. Replacement ink cartridges: $46.

 

When I was younger I used to sell printers for HP. There were times, the sales were pretty much giving away printers for free because the ink cartridges were liquid gold.

If you're only printing a few pages a month I would just print at the library or FedEx/Kinkos. If you really want to own your own look for an inexpensive black and white laser printer. The toner doesn't dry out like ink jets.

 

We had one of those for a while. A pain to get on the network (setting Wake on LAN took a weird number of button presses and flashing LEDs iirc). Printout was good. Ink was expensive and we seemed to go through a fair amount of it because of cleaning cycles. Then one day it mysteriously died (not power supply) and we figured it was time to Just Buy The Brother.

You could do worse. But imho it's kicking the can down the road and, color printing aside, $40 printer and $46 in ink in another year or so and you're not ahead of spending $100 on the printer you already have.