[thanixravindran]

Another happy user of Brother DCP-T820DW. After being fed up with continuous refills of HP Inkjet printer, based on recommendation from this very thread,I got this Ink tank printer more than an year ago. Auto duplex printing is quite good and Wi-Fi printing makes it easy to use from mobile devices.

There is an mobile app to get the PDF scans over Wi-Fi which I use regularly as I need to sign and stamp official letters from my home office.

[nec2152]

I have used 2 Brother company's printers so far for home use:

1. Laser monochrome: DCP-L2541DW, used for 1 year, sold.
2. Color Inktank: DCP-T820DW, currently using.

I want to try Epson Color Inktank L6460 next. Will be selling the DCP-T820DW soon and go for Epson L6460.

My predicted usage pattern before buying any printer :

1. When evaluating my printing needs, I looked at how often I have been going down to a Xerox shop. It was once or twice a month. With such rare usage, my online research told me that Black and White laser would be the best machine for me. The laser printer ink (called toner) is a dry powder, and applied to the page using heat, so there is zero risk of drying like ink dries in inkjet printers and clogs the print heads, sometimes even rendering the print heads useless.
2. I had bought a property and was about to start construction, so my scanning needs for documents and bills were predicted to be very frequent. I definitely needed an ADF.

My actual usage pattern (after 3 years of usage):

1. I thought I would print 5 pages a month. I actually print around 100 pages a month. My kids nowadays often need printouts for school worksheets. They also ask me to print coloring pages for them, which I find quite cheap compared to buying coloring books from stationery shop (60p for A4 75gsm page, and 20p for printing cost, compare that to 80-100 rupees for coloring book of 10-15 pages).
2. My scanning needs turned out to be true, I have scanned more than 1500 pages in 2 years, mostly bills from house construction. I often scan in batches of around 10-15 pages. Just put them in the ADF tray and fire up the scanning via ADF, it scans the pages one after the other, without any manual intervention. I definitely could not have managed without the ADF feature. Without ADF, I would have to do the manual process of putting the document on scanner glass, scan it, then change the document, hit the scan button again on the Scanner Software and so on. I also don't have printer-scanner kept near my desk (its' in another room on a small table), so I would have to run to the printer for every page change for scanning.

Review of Brother DCP-L2541DW (Laser monochrome printer):
Reliability: 4/5 Machine ran mostly flawlessly. Some issues with paper jam and ADF noted below.
Reliability of Connectivity: 5/5. Never had a connectivity issue. Although I always used it as a network printer, connected via ethernet cable.
Print quality: 2/5. The sharpness of the text was below average. This was ok for occasional print but if your usage regularly requires quality of the printed text (e.g. distributing notes or assignments to teachers/clients for evaluation of grades/business), I would recommend to look for a different machine.
It can print up-to Indian Legal page size, the paper tray extends in length so you can fit Indian Legal pages in the tray. In this configuration, the tray actually extends out of the printer body on the back side by a few inches.
Scan quality: 3/5: Good enough for the price, scan speed was also good. It can scan Indian Legal size paper via the ADF. The scanner glass is big enough for A4 only. The ADF had an issue that the scanned image would tilt a bit downwards on the left side (mostly page roller issue). It did bother me but not so much that I ever tried to open the machine and try to fiddle with the ADF rollers.
Paper Jamming: It would occasionally jam the paper, I would have to do the stuck paper removal about once a week. Since this was my first personal machine, I did not have much data to compare it against something else. It still did better than my usual experience with small office printers, which would often be found stuck and inoperable.
Toner Life: The toner it came with lasted for around 1800 pages before I started getting errors that toner is low and it would not print any longer. I looked up and performed a particular reset sequence for toner life and it started showing toner back at 100% and started printing again. Print quality was the same after that. I sold the machine shortly after, so I don't know how long the toner lasted after that.
Operating on Inverter: This laser printer (and likely all similarly specc'ed laser printers) are a hit or a miss on inverter. I have a 1400VA, single battery inverter, and this printer could not work on that. I believe it's more about the current draw that a single battery could support (which I believe is around 500W at 12V), and this laser printer basically needs much more than that. This may be a deal breaker for some scenarios, esp. in small shops with basic inverter infrastructure to supply 200-400W for 2-3 hours, who cannot also afford a printer downtime.

I sold this machine, not due to any major issues. I was just missing having a color printer. And looking at my actual print frequency, color printer now made sense. So I sold it for 16K on olx. I had bought it a year ago for 19K on Amazon, and the price had risen to 21K on amazon by then. The couple of guys who bought it worked in a bank and they said they had the exact same model in the office and were very glad to get the same machine.


Review of Brother DCP-T820DW (Color Ink tank printer):
Reliability: 3/5. Works fine except the connectivity issue. Details below.
Reliability of Connectivity: 2/5: Right now the machine is connected on wifi, and it doesn't work 9/10 times when printing from phone. It works 8/10 times from laptop, but there is always an error that the printer cannot print (the printout still comes though). I have done a full reset and still the issue remains. Haven't had the time to troubleshoot the machine by looking up the symptoms over internet. My gut feeling says that this is fixable, since the scanning function is working fine.
Scanning works 10/10 times even when the machine is on wifi.
Black and white Print quality: 3/5. Decent for the price. Better than the DCP-L2541DW. Generally doable in most use-cases except some extremely presentable needs.
Color print quality: 3/5. Regular color prints on regular page are just ok. Not great. This maybe just a paper issue, rather than a printer issue, and my gut feeling says that most color printers would behave the same, esp. the ones with similar ink quality.
Photo print quality on photo paper: 3/5. I have tried local photo paper (5 rupees per A4 page) as well as Kodak premium photo paper (20 rupees per A4 page). Print quality is good, and exactly the same on regular photo paper v/s Kodak premium photo paper. There is some issue though, some shadows on the photo are printed much darker than what you see on screen. For e.g. I printed a photo of my parents, and I saw a shadow on my father's face on the printed page. I compared that to the photo on screen. The shadow was there on the screen but barely noticeable. Before printing, I had not even noticed that on screen, otherwise I would not have printed that image. It was that big a difference of the image on screen and the actual printed image. This tells me there is some issue with image processing which is making things worse, and I have my doubts that Brother would fix the issue via software update after a few years.
Scan quality: 2.5/5: Good for the price. Note that colors are not scanned very accurately. For e.g, on a document with a blue-color stamp, the color of the stamp in the scanned image would differ slightly.
Paper Jamming:. Paper rarely jams in this machine compared to DCP-L2541DW. I would have removed jammed paper maybe 4-5 times in 2 years.
Ink Life: It is still at more than 60% after ~1500 pages in 2 years. Ink bottles costs are also decent on amazon (900 rupees for non-branded CMYK bottles and 1800 rupees for original Brother CMYK ink). Here, C=Cyan, M=Magenta, Y=Yellow and K=Black. The CYM colors are used to create specific colors for the colored image. There are some very accurate printers out there that need 6 different colors of ink tanks to be able to create a more accurate version of the colors being printed. Think 45-60K for just the printer functionality, and no scanner. Much, much overkill for home usage.
Printing head cleaning, ink drying: I leave it on 24x7 so no such issues. The machine purges ink on it's own defined schedule. I had left it off for a month (when shifting houses). Once I connected it back, there were some print quality issues, I then ran the heaviest version of the head cleaning operation via the interface and did not encounter any problems after that.
Operating on Inverter: Inkjet printers do not need to heat anything like toner & drum for the laser printers. This machine barely needs 20-30W to operate. Can work great on inverter.


While the machine is generally ok, the mobile prints not working is a hassle for the family. I haven't had time to troubleshoot it, and I also want to try a machine with better color printouts, so I might sell it soon.
I want to try Epson L6460, it is selling for 24K at Amazon and 22.5K after card discount. I don't mind that price.


Word of advice around cost per page and color ink-tank printers:
Some things I realized as I utilized the printer past 3 years..

• Don't stress too much on the cost per page. I fussed too much over it, and my results were not a good match to my predictions. Hardly any savings.
• Before buying a printer, I never put a price on the convenience it would bring. I was stressing too much on cost per page. Once the printer has arrived, I just cannot imagine living without it (convenience factor is so damn high).
• Get color if you can. Printing 2-3 color pages per week, even if wastage, is lesser cost than Laser printer.
• Never buy a cheap, inkjet printer with cartridges, brand new or used. Initial acquiring cost is low (<5K) but cost per page is closer to 50 INR.

[manincar]

I have a home printer primarily for school projects and study material print out for my kids.

Used to have a HP deskjet printer which was an ink guzzler. Finding a HP803 cartridge used to be a chore. Most of the time, used to get only mini cartridges which costed only a shade lower than regular cartridge. Though initial purchase price of the printer was lower (about 2k pre Covid), frequent ink purchase was a pain and annual ink spend used to be higher than printer cost.

Moved to an ink tank printer - HP Smart tank 585 last year. There is a marked improvement in quality of prints especially colour prints. Even photo printing is of acceptable quality. Copy quality is also good. Hardly used the scan function so can’t comment on it. Though initial cost is 14k, even after 1 year of usage, I am yet to buy ink so far. It supports WiFi but it takes ages to print using WiFi.

[nec2152]

For people who don't already know, the inkjet printers with ink cartridges from most companies are a scam. It's a well known technique if you research it. Some highlights:

1. Most companies sell you the inkjet printer at a loss. They make their money on your repeated purchase of the company branded ink cartridges. Same as the shaving razor business. So a brand new, 3000-4000 INR color printer looks very tempting. It comes with a very small capacity cartridge, so print 20 pages and you're out of ink. Back in the market looking for a cartridge.
   
   
2. The branded ink cartridges are hugely expensive (that's the main money maker, it is also covering up the losses on the machine sold at a loss earlier).
3. The page yield of a cartridge rarely goes near to the advertised count. A 100 page yield cartridge may stop working after 10-20 pages also (if left for too long). Rarely goes near the 100 page count. An original color+black 2-cartridge pack can go around 1500-2000 INR. It may stop working after 20-50 pages. Even when there is ink left in it. So per page printing cost is around 40-50 rupees.
   
   
4. Usually there are 2 cartridges, one for Black ink and another one for CMY color ink (Cyan-Magenta-Yellow colors). You may be low only on yellow or on Magenta, and would have to replace the whole CMY cartridge.
   
   
5. It is true that the liquid ink dries in the nozzles inside the printing head. So printer purges some ink from time to time, to keep the printing head working. The ink purge schedule in the printer firmware (software) is also generally tweaked to be on the aggressive side.
   
   
6. About 15-20 years ago, non-branded ink cartridges worked fine. Then companies added a chip in the cartridge itself, and implemented a software based handshake between the printer and the cartridge, so the non-branded cartridges stopped working in the newer models of inkjet printers.
   
   
7. Once the non-branded ink cartridges stopped working, people started topping up the original ink cartridges with aftermarket ink, using injections. This worked for sometime. Then companies got wiser and updated the printer firmware (software) to keep track of the ink level. A top-up would then fail to work. Sometimes machine would lock up so bad, it would not work even if you put genuine cartridge in it.
   
   
8. Things are so bad today, that once the ink level goes low (as determined by the printer firmware), the multi-function printer would also refuse to scan. Even when these functionalities are completely separate. This is done so you would go and buy more ink cartridges to keep the scan functionality working. Cannon, HP, Epson all are guilty of doing this in their firmware. Only Brother company isn't guilty of playing such shenanigans.
   
   
9. During covid and chip-shortage, some companies had to stop making cartridges with chips for some models. They also had to issue firmware updates to keep those printer models working without the chip-based original cartridges.
   
   
10. To get out of this game, companies have launched ink-tank models. They have a higher upfront purchase cost, but the per-page printing cost is very low. It is also a peace of mind purchase, that someone is not taking you for a ride at every cartridge purchase.

[Remsoft]

Originally Posted by nec2152

1. Most companies sell you the inkjet printer at a loss. They make their money on your repeated purchase of the company branded ink cartridges. Same as the shaving razor business.

Thanks, nec2152 for all the pointers

This has been the main reason why I have been trying to avoid buying printers for my kids. My wife had been requesting it for a very long time. There are many printer shops around my home and it's very easy to carry PDFs in a pen drive and get print outs from the shops and its very economical in long run.

[.HEM]

I'm using Epson Color Inktank L6460 at my home from Sept. 2023, We have been using it regularly and with the same ink that we filled when new. The ink in the tank is still halfway mark and as of now the printer is functioning without any issues. I hope this continues.

Earlier I was using a small epson printer and it stopped working in 2 months. :(

[nec2152]

Originally Posted by .HEM

I'm using Epson Color Inktank L6460 at my home from Sept. 2023
(

How is the color print quality for L6460 on a regular 75GSM paper?
Thanks

[.HEM]

I use a 70GSM JK paper and don't find any issues with the color, just that have to wait for the ink to dry up, it takes less than a minute. We usually print out the images and worksheets for my kids in XI and IV grades.

[Venkatesh.C]

Before buying a printer, I never put a price on the convenience it would bring. I was stressing too much on cost per page. Once the printer has arrived, I just cannot imagine living without it (convenience factor is so damn high).

This pretty much sums it up. That said, traditional cartridge based inkjets are daylight robbery. I'd rather pay up front cost of an inktank(which i did) and enjoy long running cartridges that come at nominal price points.
Having owned a wireless cartridge printer for a good 7 years, moving to a inktank multifunction printer with paper feed tray was the best thing i did 3 years back
Inktanks for the win.

[jaysheth]

Originally Posted by nec2152

For people who don't already know, the inkjet printers with ink cartridges from most companies are a scam. It's a well known technique if you research it. Some highlights:

Great summary, thanks. Many of us bought cheaper printers and were looted through cartridge costs. I had found a small exception with HP 2520hc all-in-one. Even though that is an inkjet, the HP46 cartridges used to last really long (believe that cartridge was also used for the later HP 4729 ink jet).

I am still using HP2520hc, but planning to upgrade to Brother DCP-T820DW once its cartridges run out of ink.

Originally Posted by Remsoft

Thanks, nec2152 for all the pointers

This has been the main reason why I have been trying to avoid buying printers for my kids. My wife had been requesting it for a very long time. There are many printer shops around my home and it's very easy to carry PDFs in a pen drive and get print outs from the shops and its very economical in long run.

nec2152 is not suggesting to avoid buying printers. He is suggesting to avoid buying Ink-jet printers. Ink-tank printers are totally worth buying, and the convenience of being able to print at home is vast (it will also be much cheaper with the ink-tank printers, and family will also be relieved). Quoting his last point again:

Originally Posted by nec2152

To get out of this game, companies have launched ink-tank models. They have a higher upfront purchase cost, but the per-page printing cost is very low. It is also a peace of mind purchase, that someone is not taking you for a ride at every cartridge purchase.

[Samarth 619]

Lasers are very rarely color, mostly B&W, plus their problems include fading of prints here and there sometimes. For their Merits, they're rough and tough, and can withstand some good abuse before they actually fail.

In inkjets, you get color and you get it cheap, but its a fragile system that can't be moved here and there (after installation of ink/ cartridge), specially the ink tank printers. Plus, they require printing every 3rd or 4th day or they'll jam the print head, and you'll need to flush some expensive ink to make it work fine again. Otherwise, some colours might skip in your prints.
Traditional cartridge printers (costing 2500-6000) is a loot. Its cartridge will fail in 6 months, whether you print or not.


I've been using an inktank based Canon G2002 (Rs.10,000~) for the past 7 years, I think. Shopkeepers recommend you Epson as maybe, the margin is better? But overall, Canon is better.
Epson is more prone to lines and low quality prints. Plus, one huge advantage to consumer is, you can install the print head yourself in Canon, while your unit goes to Service in case of Epson. Getting the canon print head online and watching a youtube videos to install it is cool.
Only 1 replacement of colour and 1 of black was needed over these 6-7 years.


My previous setup was a Canon MP287, hacked with an ink tank system. Its quality was even better than G2002, but its cartridge also failed very often, despite ink tank system.
For single person use, I strongly recommend G2012. For office sharing and abuse, I'd recommend a laser whose cartridge could be refilled for cheap, but not an inkjet..

[thomahawk]

Originally Posted by Samarth 619

but its a fragile system that can't be moved here and there (after installation of ink/ cartridge), specially the ink tank printers.

Agree with this 100%. I have a new Canon ink-tank (G3770) and it throws random errors and paper jams for no reason. I thought it will be fun to print photos every week, but now I have ran out of interesting things to print and a place to put them up. I now have to find an excuse to print something every week to keep the heads clog free.

In comparison, my HP Laserjet (P1102w) just works. I can even pack it and go anywhere and it will just work. No worries of spilling ink. The only problem is powering it, since it isn't efficient compared to the inkjet which even works on a regular UPS? Also, it curls cheap copier paper and makes two-sided prints difficult (I read that is because I store paper in a humid environment - but that is something unavoidable where I live).

Originally Posted by Samarth 619

Shopkeepers recommend you Epson as maybe, the margin is better? But overall, Canon is better.
Epson is more prone to lines and low quality prints.

My Canon has pigment ink for black while similar Epson models were all dye based. I think my printer doesn't use its pigment based black ink for photos, so the blacks lacks depth. I read Epson's entry level ink tanks tend to clog more often and that is why I picked Canon - also the app seemed more modern.

Originally Posted by Samarth 619

Only 1 replacement of colour and 1 of black was needed over these 6-7 years.

How often did you have to replace the maintenance cartridge? I wasn't aware of this consumable item until I ordered an ink tank and read the manual.

[ashkamath]

I have been using Brother ink tank printers since over a decade now. Prior to that I used the Epson and Canon printers with cartridge before shifting to the inktank printers.

Presently using the Brother DCP-T300 at my home and it has been working flawlessly and suffices my requirements.

I use the JK Cedar A4 100 GSM paper and always take colour printouts 100% of the time and I select the very best quality prints as they are used for printing official reports.

I must have refilled the ink tanks a few times with the OEM Brother ink bottles purchased through Amazon.

The only issue with printers that I remember was with my Epson printer where the roller used to slip and the paper used to get jammed. That was long time ago, perhaps a decade or more. I have since then stopped using Epson and Canon and stuck with Brother.

I haven't got any service done on my printer and the only issue I could foresee is that Goa doesn't have a Brother printer service centre.

[swiftLife]

I recently purchased HP Ink Advantage Ultra 4929 after considering my print volume and cost of ink-tank printers.

This printer has very big ink cartridges (not the physical size but the ink volume) and the cost is dirt cheap (yes original HP cartridges are very cheap). The cartridge model is HP 47. The cost is around ₹500 for each (i.e. black and tri-color) and the official print volume is around 1300 pages for black and 700 for colored.

And I've been taking printouts without a bit of hesitation and the high ink volume is visible. Older HP printers would have consumed multiple cartridges.

The best part was that the printer came with 2 sets of black and tri-color cartridges.

This value proposition of this printer has been unbelievable for me.

[Samarth 619]

Originally Posted by thomahawk

....Also, it curls cheap copier paper and makes two-sided prints difficult (I read that is because I store paper in a humid environment - but that is something unavoidable where I live).

I think its almost the same everywhere.
The paper is rolled going through a heated toner, whose temperatures can go pretty high.
Think of it: I'm in Rajasthan, epic levels of dryness here. And yet, using a office based laser for double sided prints means, I must sit by the printer after the first side is printed.
Because sometimes the papers stick and it double feeds, sometimes it gets jammed due to paper feed problems due to rolled paper.

Considering this, I'm happy my home printer is an ink tank based inkjet.

How often did you have to replace the maintenance cartridge? I wasn't aware of this consumable item until I ordered an ink tank and read the manual.

In the 7 year life of my ink tank printer, the colour head was replaced last year and the black one just recently, 2 months ago.
So, both the original heads (factory fitted) lasted 12000+ prints and 6 years, not a bad life in my opinion.
Plus, I'm not always responsible enough to print every 3 days, & I end up flushing ink after that, so its understandable.