I apologize for what might appear to be a completely irrelevant topic to DT, but having purchased a ScanSnap S1500, based mostly on the praise it receives from people in the DT community, I am compelled to come here to get a few ideas on printers. Ideally, I’d like a printer that is to printing in color (& wi-fi, if at all possible) as the S1500 is to scanning. Sadly, that doesn’t seem to exist.
Does anybody have a printer they’ve fallen in love with?
Well since I am new to DT, I guess I found something I can comment on.
On a mac I have had no better luck then with Brother Printers. I had been using a 8870DW for 5 years or so, and my wife a smaller 7840w (wireless). I also have a canon pro9000markII for color photo’s.
For laser prints, I never had an issue with the Brothers.
For photo’s I actually think the Canon does as good or a better job then most places I used to go to get them printed. But you really need to use photo paper, I think it does a meh job on standard 20# stock.
Still for color documents, I did not love the inkjet canon, so not so much out of need (as the 8870 was working just fine), but just because I do occasionally want to print color documents which are not really photo’s per say (think a web page with a detailed picture that just captures better with some color, but I would not want to print on photo paper).
So last week I bought the brother 9560CDW. So far I think it is a great printer, cant say I really have any material complaints. There are a few small cons which I will list below, but in general, it just works.
Now for what it is worth, I dont use the scanner on it, because I use the 1500m, so where I assume it works, I dont really care, and have not even tested it.
I used the duplexer just to try it, but I also rarely duplex. That said, it worked fine with no jamming at all in the 12 or so prints I did.
Cant comment on tonor replacement yet, as printer is new.
Cons (all small):
and this is an apple issue not really a Brother issue. I really want it to default back to black and white every time, but use the presets to choose “black and white” or “color.” The default is color, and one would have to go into the page layout section on the print screen to change it to B&W EACH time. Well I googled and found the Cups page to change the default to B&W, so one issue fixed. I then found a setting that is supposed to allow me to change the default to ALWAYS go back to the B&W even if my last print was color. For now that change does not seem to work, but I am told I MAY need to reboot and/or zap the pram. None of which I have been motivated to do. But for now, I can select B&W from the presets, and otherwise it just uses my last setting (which has its plusses, when I do plan on printing multiple color images, I just dread the day when I print 1 color page, thinking I am following it up with 100 page B&W PDF, only to waste a bunch of color toner).
This is more of a con with the printer “line” then the printer itself, but I really did not want a duplexer. I never really need it, although I do admit in my couple of tests, I can certainly see where it is useful. See the thing is, I dont even need a fax on this thing, so I dont really need a full Multi function printer, but I DO want the ability to make color copies with “scan copy” so I have to buy an MFP. Well this thing (primarily die to the duplexer), is friggen HUGE. HUGE HUGE. SO you better have space for it. It can cause issues if it is on a countertop with a cabinet above it. It can then prove hard to open.
Did I mention it was HUGE!!!
Still 1 week into color upgrade. About 5% of pages printed in color. Printer big as heck. And yes, I wish I upgraded sooner.