Best low-cost printer for newbie

[EasyEight]

Greetings!
I'm just trying my hand at paper modeling, and only have a limited budget. I'd appreciate any recommendations for good quality, low cost printers that may also have affordable ink cartridge refills. Thanks in advance for your help!

[KCStephens]

I like my Epson Expression XP400 all in one
The inks arn't too bad especially since they are individual cartradges.

[JohnM]

No such thing as a cheap printer with affordable ink. They sell the printers cheap to con you into buying their expensive ink ... BUT ...

I've not yet come across an HP printer that cannot be easily re-filled using cheap bulk ink and a hypodermic needle. Even their cheap printers give reasonable quality prints. Other makes can be re-filled too, but I've just had more experience with HP. I'm now running a Brother, all-in-one A3 printer/scanner that easily re-fills, but there's no way it could ever be described as cheap.

If you can, try to get a printer with separate ink cartridges. The multi-colour cartridges can be refilled, but they're more of a nuisance, so avoid them if you can, and unless you're into high qualuity colour photography, avoid six colour ink machines.

Keep on snippin' ... Johnny.

[Knife]

Check the thrift stores. The one near me sells all their printers for $5 apiece. I pickup up a HP Photosmart 8250 for $5, added a constant supply ink supply from EBay for $35 with ink.

There's also a printer cartridge store nearby that gives away printers if you buy their remanufactored ink cartridges.

Never pay retail. Never.

[Vermin_King]

I've had Brother, Epson, HP and Canon printers and the only ones I had consistently good value from was Brother, but the ink is not cheap

[Burning Beard]

I have two HP's I'm using now, one home one at my shop.... I bought them because they were on sale and I like the way the paper loads on HP's. These two are 6000 series, bought new for $50 each. They have consistently good color and handle 110# card stock easily. HP probably has something else on sale now that is newer and better

Beard

[mbauer]

Sometimes the cheapest "best" printer might be a used one that used to be high dollar when new.

Mike

[ashevilleangler]

I purchased an Epson XP200 not long ago for $35.00 from one of the Big Box stores. It can take fairly inexpensive third party ink tanks or even a CIS system which supplies ink from large tanks via long tubes. And yes you get decent prints from it.

Curt

[Tim Crowe]

I would stick with HP. Spend the most you can on it.

Only print out what you really need to. Sometime the first page of a model is just a pretty picture, but ultimately just a waste of good ink.

Tim