Printer - Under $500

I am going to buy a new printer.  I don't care if it prints any larger than 8 1/2 x 11. It must have the following.

Wireless
Does not suck up ink like mad
Good text printing
Smallish footprint
Works well with Mac Book Pro
Under $500, under $350 even better

Thank you for ideas

Mundy

If you do not care about photo printing any Epson or Canon all-in-one should work. Prices are between $75 and $300. Ink is not cheap but when you pay $100 for the printer that leaves a bunch of $ for ink.

How about the laser printer route? Is that better for my needs?

ursus80 wrote:How about the laser printer route?  Is that better for my needs?

If it is just for document printing and you print a fair amount then a laser printer is a good choice.  The black and white only, no copier/scanner models start around $100.  You may pay $200 to $350 for color printing models.

I have a color HP laser that was in that price range. Beware that the toner cartridges are ~$70 each and there are four. Also it is no good for photos from my experience, I use a Canon all-in-one for that. If I had to choose between the two I'd take the inkjet all-in-one. Mostly everything I print is documents, but I don't print a lot.

Don't buy a Canon Pixma iP2700 like I just did and then discover it doesn't work with my iMac OS 10.6.8, and there is no fix.

I did get a Brother BW laser printer for $80 and the prints are great. Toner lasts 2000 normal print pages and the cartridge is only $15.

I think I can get the Canon Pixma to work on my Windows 7 rig.

If you're not printing color a laser printer is the way to go - faster, cheaper and sharper than inkjet. If you're wanting to print in color there is not an inkjet in the price range that I know of that does not cost a small fortune in ink fees. You can easily get a good laser printer for less than $200 these days.

Personally, I think the ink thing is a little blown out of proportion. I print all my work myself on a Canon 9500 II. To replace all the tanks via B&H and using Canon inks, the cost is $120. I'll get a significant amount of prints out of that $120, enough to more than cover replacing the inks, costs of paper, depreciaiton on the printer and so on. For that cost, I can't have my local printer the same number of pictures that I get and I control everything.

I had an HP deskjet but it really struggled with reds, so I can't honestly suggest HP.

You have to some research on small inkjet cartridges, the tanks are getting smaller with many only around 10 ml of ink, vs the 20 ml that used to be in them. Epson has started selling work force printers designed to compete with lasers, they have advantages including lower standby power and no warm up and print as fast, here's a review of one:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2398122,00.asp

Going for about $120, they use much larger tanks than the cheap home inkjets, making them much more economical, they do an acceptable job only on photos having only 3 colours, but better than lasers and it's there if you need it. I'm getting the 4090 which is a touch bigger only because they don't sell the 4020 in Oz.