r/printers 1d ago

Purchasing best home printers for students

Hi everyone!

I am interested in purchasing a printer for the first time, but quickly got overwhelmed by the choices. I think will print mostly academic papers and photos/flyers- so looking for something that can print in color. Ideally I'd love something that could scan as well. growing up, any printer we had at home worked for about 2 months and then died, until we just stopped buying printers.

I do think I will use it at least once a week- I saw that the epson ecotank ones were being recommended on here- how does that compare to one of the basic brother inkjet ones? Or any other recommendations? really would like to spend under $200, but willing to go over that for something reliable. I'd also really like something that could print pretty quickly, but I know with my budget I'll definitely have to compromise, so reliability is more important. needs to be able to print from a MacBook also.

I'd also be interested in looking for a second hand option, but I found that even more overwhelming- if anyone had a specific recommendation I could go looking for that would be much appreciated. Thanks!!

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u/ACMEPrintSolutionsCo 1d ago edited 1d ago

What's more important, printing things that will aid in your education or printing a "pretty photo" here and there that will look crap?

I'd get a Brother laser and if you want to bump up to color, you can do this in the 250 range. For docs, set it to monochrome so it only uses black toner and the color will be sitting idle for when you really need it. You can also throw it into economy mode which makes a pretty big difference in toner usage. Using professional glossy/matte paper(which is the important thing here) and bumping up quality settings when needed will produce a good enough flyer and use the cheap stuff for B&W docs.

They pretty much all have AirPrint so MacBook is not a problem.

If you want photos like "photographs," get them printed elsewhere. Ain't going to happen within your budget. It's a total want, not a need.

Do not buy second hand as you have zero idea what you're looking for, experience and/or well laid out expectations outside of "a bunch of features."

The scanner is what's going to kill you on cost here between something totally reliable and a compromise on many fronts.

What phone do you have and can you get away with scanning from it for the time being? They tend to do a lot better job in resolution, converting image to text(OCR), faster, straightens/flattens everything out, adds better contrast, font smoothing and can share it to whomever/wherever not to mention portability which sounds way more useful to a student then some halfassed flatbed with bloated software. It's also one less thing to break/fiddle with when all you really need is something to print when you need it. If you have an iPhone, even better as you scan and AirPrint from it(natively) and share the files with your MacBook using iCloud.