Here at Refresh we often get asked which printers we recommend our customers purchase. To us a good printer is one that has the features you require, is reliable, easy to use and most importantly cheap to run.
Many will simply purchase a new machine they have seen so many £15-£20 printers on “offer” at larger chain stores. The danger with buying such a machine is that you will normally regret it as soon as you come to buy your first set of ink cartridges. The reason being many of these printers take just two individual cartridges that can cost over £70 to replace the pair. Even if an alternative is available as these cartridges normally have the print head built into the cartridge and as such have atypical resale value of around £13 per cartridge.
As a result we often find ourselves recommending Brother ink-jet printers to any light/medium user. As easy to set up as any other printer and of a superior built quality to many other big brand printers that have been marketed heavily recently make them very easy to recommend. However there are many other reasons we find ourselves talking about these machines so frequently.
Brother ink-jet machines are all printer, scanner, copiers as standard so will have all the functionality most people require. However those looking for a built in media card centre/pictbridge/fax/A3/duplex or wireless printing will also find machines in their range that should be more than adequate.
Although the initial purchase price is a little higher than a typical home printer Brother ink-jet printers are genuinely the cheapest to run on the market. At present the absolute maximum we charge for a compatible Brother ink cartridge is £2.47 per unit and can contain as much as 25ml of ink depending upon the colour and type of cartridge. As all Brother ink-jet printers take four individual cartridges they can be changed as soon as a particular colour runs empty. So you won’t be forced to throw a cartridge away that is two-thirds full just because you have printed a lot of pictures of the seaside recently.
Many other manufacturers chip all of their cartridges and will bombard you with messages warning of you warranty becoming invalidated if a compatible unit is installed. Brother do not chip any of their cartridges and as such when purchasing compatible cartridges you never have to worry about your printer detecting that a non OEM cartridge has been installed.
If you require a mono/colour laser printer or you decide a Brother ink-jet printer isn’t for you please ask yourself the following questions before laying down your hard earned cash…
- Is this a brand name I recognise? Will replacement cartridges be readily available in sixth month time?
- How much is it going to cost me to replace these cartridges one I have used the low capacity inks supplied?
- Does this printer take a cartridge per colour or am I going to be stuck with tri-colour cartridges for the life of the printer?
- Are the low price cartridges pitched to me by the manufacturer genuine? Or are they only quoting the prices of low capacity original manufacturer cartridges to make it seem like a good deal?
Whatever you decide I hope we will hear from you when you next need some cartridges and if you do give into temptation and buy that cheap printer you saw at the supermarket, please don’t take it out on us when we next speak.
Happy shopping!
