With the Summer Holidays coming to a close I am sure there are many of you out there looking for a Printer, either for yourselves or for your children going back to school. With this in mind we thought we would share our thoughts on a few printers that we feel are a great fit for those returning to academia.

All of the printers listed below fulfill the criteria that we feel is essential for schoolwork. We have stuck to Inkjet Printers as they are the best choice for running off a few pages quickly, but you can also expect each of our choices to be reliable, widely available and feature rich. As an added bonus our scouts also report that many of these printers are currently on offer from several big name retailers.

Given the nature of our business the inkjet printers below all have compatible Cartridges available at a reasonable price too, so be sure to think of us when it comes to fill up the tank again!

Canon Pixma MG5650 / MG6650

Now, if I had to recommend one manufacturer of inkjet printers to all customers it would genuinely be Canon. The MG5650 and MG6650 are fantastic little machines that gets a lot of love from just about everyone here at Refresh Cartridges. They have all the features you could want, incredibly low running costs and exceptional print quality.

The printers in this list have been chosen under the assumption that you are wanting to print off text predominantly and will be sticking to compatible ink cartridges. If however you are a student of photography or any other craft that requires high quality images I would give these printer in particular some thought as this is what Canon do best. I would however recommend sticking to genuine Canon cartridges for the added colour fastness provided (at a fairly reasonable price).

To pick up one of these beauties you will be looking at parting with £50-£80 currently, it is really worth shopping around as there are many great deals about.

Printers such as the MG5650 and MG6650 listed above have the printer head fixed inside the printer and benefit from individual ink tanks. While we are happy to recommend Canon printers, we would specifically advise users not to buy the cheaper two cartridge models. These have the printer head inside the cartridge which needs to be replaced every time you change the cartridge; and as such do tend to have a much higher running cost, especially when using third party cartridges.

Epson Expression Home XP322 Ink Cartridges

As an entry level Epson printer the XP322 comes with the humble price tag of around £45. Ordinarily this would mean that you are sacrificing some key features, but the Epson XP322 comes with an A4 scanner, Apple AirPrint/Google Cloud compatibility and a multimedia card centre for SD, SDXC and microSD cards. This makes the Epson XP322 an ideal choice for those budding students who need a printer, but don’t necessarily need or want a computer.

The incredible estimated print speed 26 pages per minute make the Epson XP322 the nippiest printer on this list too.

HP Officejet Pro 8100

This HP printer gets our seal of approval for several reasons, but what makes it unique in this list is the variety of paper types the HP Officejet Pro 8100 has been designed to work with.  In addition to the A4 paper you were expecting, the HP Officejet Pro 8100 can also print to A5, A6, B5 and several types of envelope including C5, C6, DL, and Monarch sizes.

Four decent size colours make up the cartridge range of the HP Officejet Pro 8100. In all honesty these are not my favourite range of compatible cartridges and neither are they the cheapest. So users looking for a printer that is cheap to run, may want to give the two printer above a bit more thought.

The variety of paper sizes primarily make the HP Officejet Pro 8100 recommendable to those students who want to do more than just print off assignments in A4. Whether it is more creative work or more administrative work geared towards an office environment, the HP Officejet Pro 8100 is a great purchase at around £65.

Brother DCP-J4120DW

In the past we recommended Brother inkjet printers as a universal solution to anyone wanting to get their hands on a new inkjet printer. Whilst chipped cartridges and compatible disabling firmware updates have made them a little harder to recommend, Brother still produce fantastic quality printers and ink cartridges that contain an ample amount of ink. The Brother DCP-J4120DW is no exception in this respect and also has a generous 150 sheet paper tray.

In addition to its wireless functionality and the ability to copy/scan at A4 size, the Brother DCP-J4120DW has actually made our list due to the fact it can print in duplex (both sides of the paper) and also in A3 thanks to its bypass tray. Smartphone toting students will also be delighted to hear that the DCP-J4120DW also comes fully compatible with Apple AirPrint and Google Cloud Print.

With a price around the £150 mark, the Brother DCP-J4120DW is a little more pricey than some of our other printers featured, but if you have need for the advanced features mentioned above then it is thoroughly recommendable.

I hope you have found this brief guide useful, if however you have any other questions or suggestions then please let us know in the comments below.

The post Back to School Printer Recommendations appeared first on Printer, Hardware and Software Help and Advice - Igloo.