a3 printer

puifon

New Member
I am looking for an A3 printer, preferably including a scanner, mainly using it to print images for my graphic design course for uni presentations etc. Dont want to spend more than £200 anyone recommendations ?
 
lol... keep dreaming, never going to happen at £200, a3 scanner usually retails above that on it's own and any decent a3 printer is £200+
 
Refurbished or ex demo units are your only options if you're not willing to spend more than £200 but whether or not you will end up spending a lot more than the initial purchase price for replacement ink/toner/cartridges is unkown. You might find a really good deal, you might not - you just have to know what you're looking for.
 
I got an epson 1400 about 4-5 years ago which cost about £260 and its still going strong today. The quality is actually really good especially when printing on decent paper. There might be better printers out there now but it seems its still available and at £199 which I think you would find it difficult finding an alternative at that price.EPSON Stylus Photo 1400 Photo Inkjet Printer at cheap prices | PC World
It takes 6 individual inks which reproduce images really well. I'm sure if you have an extra £400 you could get a printer with about 3 different shades of black ink cartridges and gain better image quality, but for £200 you cant go wrong!


You can buy cheap A4 scanners on eBay. I got a reconditioned Canon lide 20 scanner for less than £20 recently and it is great and would suit all scanning requirements - unless you want a3...
 
There's definitely a few printers that take A3 out there under £200. There's a Brother which scans (not A3) and copies too. I've been looking myself. As long as you don't need photo quality they should be alright for you.

Sign up for Which for a month for £1 and you can access their Best Buys.
 
Lexmark's Genesis S815 is full of fresh ideas. Instead of a standard flatbed scanner, this multifunction device uses an image capture system based on a digital camera. It can capture an entire page in three seconds. It boasts a range of integrated mini-applications too.
 
balders said:
There is this for £210

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Epson-C11CA96301-WorkForce-WF-7515-Printer/dp/B0067ZU54S

Do you really need to buy one for your course? You should have access to a large format printer there.

Only concern with that one is it looks like that printer loads the paper from the bottom. Bottom loading printers use rollers to grab the paper and pull it in as opposed to using gravity. With thicker paper, the rollers don't always correctly feed the paper in. If you plan on using thicker paper or card stock than normal, you might consider getting a printer that is top loading.
 
I got a brother one from Staples at the start of Uni a couple of years ago. It was £130 and scans and prints (borderless) in A3, the quality of both is excellent but of course, since then several 100 quid has been sunk on ink. I'll look up the model when I get home.
 
Having your own printer, in fact having all your own computer, software etc while at uni and not having to rely on the facilities is great. You should be able to rely on the uni facilities, but you know that doesn't always happen - of course the uni facilities are great until you need to get something done in a rush. You know the day before deadline when you want to print your work out the uni printer is going to be either broken, run out of ink, run out of paper, the technition ill, or theres going to be a massive queue. Then if you are lucky enough to have your work printed out, there will be some kind of issue with it, such as a problem with quality, you didnt notice a layout mistake - things not lining up correctly or an obvious typo, the colours are incorrect, unexpected result with the paper stock but then you dont have time to resolve it - nightmare! With your own printer, you have the abiliy to print off your project at 3am the or even 7am on deadline day, knowing that it will print off perfectly. Its worth the £200 eassily! Best investment ever...
 
My Uni printing facilities were a joke, there were 3 large format printers to cover 300+ students lol and you not only had to pay to use them but queue up too. The best thing about them though was that even with using the exact same settings on OUR files the printers all the printers decided to print the colours differently... yeah that's a quality set up there lol

You could NEVER get a slot near the deadline so you either had to have your work finished weeks in advance or book in advance and hope you were done in time for it.

I ended up buying my own a2 printer as not only was it cheaper in the long run but I could print out when I wanted to not if I was lucky. Could have probably made money letting others use it too considering the amount of times I helped out mates on my course the night before deadline lol
 
Back
Top