Printers

[EricH]

We had a Konica Minolta. Print quality was good. However we had lots of paper feed issues. On anything greater than 80gm paper it would often fail to pick up the paper. It was also noisy and not very fast. When the drum needed replacing we decided to try something else. We have been using a HP2660 for the past 2 years for all A4 maps including waterproof paper and have been very pleased with the quality.

[SYO Member]

I have only ever used compatible cartridges with Epson inkjets and have never had a problem with gumming up of either the cartridge or the printer itself.

And when comparing the print quality when using the lower than normal volume Epson cartridges that you get with the printer against compatibles, there's no difference in my opinion.

A compatible cartidge (of a set of 4) is £1.99 whereas a Epson branded one for my current DX6000 printer is £7.99, so for me it's a no brainer. And a new printer of this spec is about £70-80 so only just above 2 sets of Epson branded cartridges, although environmentally unfriendly if it was compatibles that caused a problem.

Did you know that whether using either type of cartridge it is recommended that you should print at least one page a week to ensure you don't have to keep cleaning the print heads?

Finally, here's something that most punters won't know. For Epson, both the branded and compatibles are made in the same factory in China! Probably the same with other manufacturers.