KirkLindstrom.com - Recommended Products - Best Quality Home Office Printer for Lowest Cost per Page
 HP-Officejet Pro 8610
e-All-in-One

Lowest Cost Per Print Printers
Best Printers for Lowest Cost Per Printed Page
Epson Premium Photo XP-800
Small-in-One


Best Printers for low cost ink and low ink usage
Best Printer for tight spaces

Bottom Line:  For the lowest cost per page with very good quality, I picked the HP Officejet Pro 8600 e-All-in-On Wireless Color Printer with Scanner, Copier & Fax
 

For a smaller space, my brother picked the Epson Premium Photo XP-800
which is more expensive per page but a bit better quality and a smaller footprint.  A full review with an update follows:

August 4, 2015 Update:   So far I've printed about 50 pages for my two newsletters every month using about 25 pages due to the double sided feature. After the first color went dry, I bought a second set of original ink cartridges from HP then when a cartridge runs dry, I swapped out the empty one with a new one.  Then I refill the empty cartridge at Costco for about $8, usually with a $2 off coupon.   After over two years, I am on my second refill for two of the cartridges and two are on the first replacement, so still original HP ink. The refilled ink works great for me, I notice no difference, but I'll pay Costco or CVS to make a photo quality print if I wasn't happy enough with this printer using photo paper.

I like the printer so much I ordered the newer version for my girlfriend last year (HP Officejet Pro 8610 Wireless All-in-One) and she loves it.  She is so used to conserving ink, she may never run out of ink!   

So, today for about $200 for the printer and a second set of ink cartridges, you should have a printer that prints about 50 pages a month for over a year before you refill ink at $8 a pop.

October 25, 2013 Update:
  So far I've printed four of my newsletters and used less than half the ink in any of the four cartridges.  With my old printer, I usually ran out of color ink after printing between two and three full newsletters.  Since all three color inks were in a single cartridge, you had to replace all colors when you ran out of any one color.

   HP Officejet Pro 8600 e-All-in-On Ink Usage
I LOVE the quality, double sided print and ease of printing from my desktop or laptop with the wireless connection.  A BONUS is I can use the sheet feeder to scan newsletters I get from the competition to PDFs and editable text.

September 11, 2013 Earlier this year my brother and I independently decided we needed new color printers with built-in scanner, copier and fax for our home offices. The factors we considered for a new printer were
  • Low cost per printed page - 
    • some printers are sold at a very low price so the printer companies make it up by selling you ink.  They all have tiny cartridges that hold very little ink. 
    • The new printers with the best price per printed page have separate cartridges for three color inks plus a larger cartridge for black ink. 
  • Sheet feeder for scans and copies.  I wanted to move towards a paperless office for some articles and monthly newsletters I used to keep.
  • Automatically prints on both sides of a page to save paper and storage space of hard copies.
  • Wireless:  We can print from many different devices including our desktop PCs, laptops and smart phones.
  • Foot print - The total area taken by the printer. 
    • My brother has his office desk in a closet so his space is extremely limited.  He elected to spend more per printed page to have more room on his desk.
    • My office is in a large room plus I can put the printer anywhere since the one I chose is wireless.  Fortunately, my new printer had about the same footprint as my old printer so I didn't have to make any changes (except buy ink far less often!)
  • A quality brand with a good reputation.

Bottom line, for the lowest cost per page with very good quality, I picked the

  • HP Officejet Pro 8600 e-All-in-On Wireless Color Printer with Scanner, Copier & Fax.
    • After several months of use, I am happy to report I would have had to replace the ink with my old printer while this one tells me the four individual ink cartridges are between 80 and 95% full. 
    • The black ink (HP 92) for my old printer is about $24 at Amazon.com while the black for my new printer, (HP 950XL) is about $38.  Thus, for about 50% more for black ink, I get at least five times more pages just from the black ink. 
    • The color ink (HP 93) for my old printer is harder to figure since I had to replace the cartridge whenever any of the three colors ran out.   A 3-pack of color inks for my new printer (HP 951XL) is about $71 with individual colors selling for under $30 but I can refill them at Costco for under $10 so I may try that since I mostly use the printer for my job where I don't need photo quality prints.
    • I find the sheet feeder very useful to scan newsletters or magazine articles to PDF that I can save on my hard drive and email to friends and family. 
My brother with the tight space requirements picked the
All have Copier, Fax, and Scanner with auto 2 sided scanning, copying, and printing.  The HP allows you to print via email so you can print from any device connected to the internet by sending to the printer's email address.

Consumer Reports recommends all the printers we considered but only rated the Canon Pixma MG3220 as a "Best Buy."  I didn't pick this printer because its much higher ink cost was about the same as I have now with my very good, but older printer.  It also does not have a sheet feeder.  I figure I will pay for my new printer in a year or two with ink savings which gives me the very nice features (wireless and sheet feed plus great software to make PDFs) as a free bonus!

Here is a comparison of printers I considered with key features highlighted.
Make
Model
Current
Price
Size
W x H x D
inches
Cost per Page
Overall Consumer Reports Score
(1 to 100)
Text Page
8x10 Color Photo
HP
Photosmart 7520 $160
21.7x19.7x8.7
5.3˘
$1.25
78 - Very Good
Epson
Premium Photo XP-800 Small-in-One $150
19.1x16.8x10.4
4.9˘$1.65
76 - Very Good
Brother
MFC-J6910DW $175
26.0x23.2x16.8
2.0˘
$1.35
70 - Very Good
Epson WorkForce Pro WP-4540 $250
25.7x18.1x18.2
1.6˘
$1.45
68 - Very Good
HP Officejet Pro 8600 $140
19.4x11.8x16.3
1.3˘$0.85 68 - Very Good
HP HP Officejet Pro 8600 Plus $200
19.4x12.4x16.3 1.5˘$0.85 68 - Very Good
Canon
Pixma MG3220 $60
12 x 17.7 x 6
7.2˘ $1.70 72 - Very Good
But no sheet feeder

ORDER your low cost per page printer today then shop around to find a better price!!!!
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Best Quality Home Office Printer for Lowest Cost per Page
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