Is it time for you to get a new printer? If so, you may find some good deals through merchants' extended Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales.
Other sites may leak the Black Friday ads or give hyperlinks to specific deals. Those may be great resources, but it helps to understand the market as well as what you want before rushing off ink up Black Friday printer purchases.
It used to be that bargain hunters would have to camp out all night after their turkey dinners to try to get great prices to kick off the Christmas shopping season. But a confluence of circumstances seems has shifted that business model.
Incidents of unruly customers fighting to get door buster deals began to give Black Friday a black eye. Consequently, many brick and mortar stores began to extend the "Black Friday" sales throughout November. While there were no longer the incredible door buster prices, the change offered good deals that weren't the extremely limited adverteasing (sic) come ons.
In addition, increasing numbers of consumers ditched going to stores and shopping online (and not just on Cyber Monday).
COVID social distancing certainly did not make hanging out for hours any more attractive.
But before you break out your wallet for these pre-Black Friday deals, a thrifty techie ought to discern:
- What features do you want with a printer?
- What is your comfortable purchase price point?
- Consider the associated future costs with your selection
A simple choice is with one wants a monochrome or color printer. Another distinguishing choice is whether one wants just a printer or a multi-function printer which also allows for scanning and copying. A third determination is whether to get an ink jet or a laser printer. A fourth factor is how you connect devices to the printer.
Many SOHO (Small Office/Home Office) consumers choose an ink jet computer. It can seem as if companies are giving away their printers as they are so inexpensive. That's close but not quite true. Ink Jet Printer manufacturers know that once you buy their product, you are locked into constantly buying replacement ink from them. Ironically, the replacement cartridges can cost close to the initial purchase price of the ink jet printer. Part of the reason is that the replacement cartridges have sophisticated components to make the unit work along with the resupplied ink. But naturally the manufacturers have a captive audience so there is generally not price competition on the replacement ink.
Supposedly, ink jet cartridges can last for a couple of years before the sponge dries out on the cartridge. Anecdotally, it seems like consumers not in an enterprise environment have to replace their ink jet cartridges every few months.
Many ink jets offer color capabilities, so they will have cyan, magenta, yellow and black ink wells or cartridges. But print heads often won't operate if one color bay runs low, even if you just print monochrome (black). So weighing how important important color commentary may sway the decision making.
Nowadays, many ink jet printers are all in one, which includes scanning and copying. These can be quite handy features but may be more tech whistles and bells for consumers who just want to print. Alas, copy and scan functions are not really features on entry level laser printers. Generally, multi function laser printers are double the price of a bargain laser printer.
Some companies have tried to make print supply replacements easier. For Black Friday, HP is pushing six to nine of free unlimited ink through the HP+ via an InstantInk subscription As long as you have an internet connection, HP printers are smart enough to deliver more ink to you.
One can print 10 pages a month for free and you can roll over your unused printed pages. A printer with cloud computing capabilities brings a metered printing solution with a subscription model to the consumer. Do you want a monthly charge for printing to be stacked up amongst your bills so as to supposedly never run out of ink (or toner)?
Epson has gone a different way on ink jet printers. Rather than selling a consumer an inexpensive ink jet which forces you to buy expensive ink cartridges every few month, Epson designed the Eco-Tank system, which allows consumers to refill their cartridges.
Theoretically, printer ink is not as expensive as the built in cartridges, so if a consumer can refill empty tanks, that SHOULD save them money AND be more enviromentally conscious. Alas, Eco-Tank printers are currently several times more expensive than the older, wasteful models.
Prima facia, it does not look like the ink is much cheaper than the regular ink jet cartridges. And if you are only printing monochromatically with a color ink jet, it seems one still has to buy all of the colors (or temporarily print in grayscale). In the Thrifty Techie's estimation, it is great idea who's time has not yet come. Caveat emptor.
Laser printers print quickly and allow for duplexing (printing on both sides of the page). You will initially pay more for a laser printer but generally toner cartridges last a lot longer. It is important, however, to read the fine print to see the print capacity for the starter cartridge as well as the replacement costs. Amazon features a laser printer from an off brand for under $100 but the starter cartridge only prints 700 pages AND the replacement costs nearly as much as the laser printer but would only be good for another 1600 pages.
If one is willing to commit to an HP laser printer and is doing a lot of monochromatic printing, it might make sense to take advantage of their Black Friday HP+ six months of free printing, as it allow for up to 1500 pages a month. Afterwards, that subscription level would cost $25.99.
However, consider that toner refills from other manufacturers would cost double that price. It is unclear how many laser print copies one can roll over during the HP+ introductory subscription. These were questions beyond the ken of the HP virtual assistant
While there are some prosumer color laser printers, they cost significantly more than a monochromatic laser printer. Also be aware the eventually one needs to replace the drum on a laser printer, but assuredly it is not as often as switching in replacement ink jet cartridges.
With the proliferation in cloud computing and consumers relying on mobile devices, it is worth considering the importance of wireless connections versus wired hook ups. Thankfully, we no longer have to deal with clunky and slow parallel port connections. USB makes it simpler to connect a desktop or a laptop with a printer, often using a USB A to USB B (printer) jack. However, this isn't possible for printing from a handheld device such as a cell phone or files stored in the cloud (e.g. Dropbox). Thus many manufacturers have included wireless connections for printers.
So if someone need not worry about connecting a wire to a device, why wouldn't one want a wireless printer. Obviously, printing from a mobile device requires installation of some sort of connection software, which further eats of space on your phone. Presumably, consumers might get bargain pricing for printers which lack the latest and greatest features such as WiFi or Cloud printing.
If one is interested in a photo printer, major retailers were not offering pre-Black Friday discounts. But there some of these reasonably priced thermal printers. But realize that one will have to use special glossy paper that is specific to the manufacturer. The glossy paper is sold in lots of 25 and it works out to paying 0.50 cents a print Personally, for the few 4x6" prints that I want to physically have on-hand, I would rather get them printed at the store for 12 cents a copy. But you do you.
