Printer recommendation?

[Hondaracer]

Looking for a new printer/scanner combo, I could do without all the bells and whistles but I guess most come with them standard now a days anyways.

Looking for somthing that can print on relatively thick card stock for wedding invitations as well, this is kind of the main reason I'm looking for a printer, as well as needing a scanner

Budget is hopefully under $200, dunno how good of a printer I can get for that?

With that budget would it be best just to grab a Costco special or what?

[mos_skeeto]

I would first decide on ink vs laser as that would cut your choices down by half.

Every hates on ink these days but I see a market for them still. You can get scanner ink combos starting at 50 bucks on sale and ink image prints look really good. The cons, and everyone hates them for these, are expensive refill costs and ink drying up.

Laser is nice and best bang for the buck if you're printing more than a few pages a month. If your wedding invites have a lot of solid colors and shapes it will look pretty good. If you have a lot of photos and gradients, household laser printers don't look that great. I would invest in getting it printed in a shop or online.

Get the cheapest one that does the job because they're all poorly built. Low end printers are quite good in terms of scanning and printing quality for day-to-day stuff but I would farm out professional printing stuff like wedding invites.

I've done one sided invites before though 4x6 photo lab prints. I'm sure the photo labs hate me for doing it but it's hella cheap.

Also keep in mind that you have to add refill costs to your purchase budget because most printers will run out of ink/toner in no time.

[unit]

i have a hard time recommending ANY printer. every single one has some sort of fucked up quirks and issues. we've used several Brother printers at our small office and when they work they're fine, but wireless on them is absolute garbage to set up and it malfunctions from time to time

just buy the best one you can afford from costco and return it if its no good.

[Hondaracer]

Ended up with the HP officejet pro 8720, right now it's $70 off for $168 at Costco.

I fucking hate HP products but this was by far the best deal for the price. Reviews are good and it does everything I needed. Plus the color printing resolution is more than double most of the printers I looked at elsewhere for the price.

See how it goes. I find HP usually dumps as much software as humanly possible with their shitty products so I hope I can install drivers and some very basic software for it

[thumper]

what is it about HP stuff that makes you go meh? just curious as you know i'm also shopping for a printer.