Wireless printer?

[B.RAD]

Hi all

Just wondering if anyone has any advice on this please - we have an Epson SX430 wireless printer, all fine bar the fact that it constantly drops network connection and a quick print/scan job suddenly becomes hours of downloading software and rebooting etc.

I'm now ready to replace it as it's such a pain, are there any recommendations out there for a decent wireless printer? We don't do anything commercial, just the usual home printing tasks and the occasional (very rare!) photo.

Would like to bare ink cost in mind but am pretty clueless so any advice is appreciated.

Thanks!

Barny

[Blatman]

Get it off the wireless! I have never had a wifi printer work 100% reliably until wireless is removed from the equation and I've done about a dozen in the last 12 months. Canon, Epson, HP and... er... something else. All of them were terrible on wifi and perfect on wires.

I would (and do) get a couple of homeplugs and put it on ethernet. Then give it a static IP address and it'll be as reliable as a wood burning stove...

[Terry Everall]

I use a Canon Pixma 5350 and it is a great piece of kit but quite heavy on the 6 ink cartridges

High quality pictures 

[SootySport]

As said wireless never stable on printers. Have a Canon MG6450 and plug in direct.    Print cartridges are expensive on all printers, out all proportion to the actual cost of production so all you can do on that score is shop around on the web and only buy genuine ones.

[dombanks]

My wireless printer sits next to the WiFi box and refuses point blank to connect. It's a hp color later jobbie.

As soon as you plug in a cable to the router it's available and works. So you can access it from anywhere using WiFi so long as the printer is physically connected to the box! Go figure

[Stuart]

Canon MG5650. Great when it works but usually tells me either that it's not responding or that another computer is using it. But I do buy cheap cartridges off eBay for it with no problems.

[Gerry H]

Canon MG6150. Worked great on wifi then suddenly refused to connect (maybe the change from Win7 to 10 o/s). Works fine with cable connection and cheap, ebay cartridges.

[Dommo]

I've got a hp thingy and it's been faultless on the WiFi front. Never failed printing or scanning...

... over the 10 times a year it gets used...

[B.RAD]

Thanks all, will give the Ethernet cable a try & if still no joy, will go back to old school tech.

[ianht71]

I have a Samsung M2020, not colour, wireless printer and it works perfectly,

Despite it being next to a network port I have never bothered plugging it in as it works so well

Good luck

[Terry Everall]

My Canon MG5350 has never lost Wifi connection in the 3 + years I have had it

[Blatman]

I suspect the inconsistency of reports about printer reliability on wifi is as much to do with operating systems and drivers as it is to do with wireless per sé

As a network engineer (and I'm pretty good with wireless...) I see my fair share of good and bad wireless, good and bad printers, good and bad PC's and tablets and good and bad users. The ONLY thing that removes most of those reliability factors is a wire.

[Man On The Clapham Omnibus]

S'funny you should say that Blatters. I was in the business of trying to flog security equipment that my company made through the eighties and nineties, and would often come up against people saying wireless alarms were best. This was a while ago but the false alarm rate in the Met area at the time was in the very 90 percentiles - 186,000 in one particular year that I memorised and not one was caused by the wires!  Actually what I didn't say was that almost all of them were caused by the customers...

[Blatman]

Wifi alarms can cause significant interference if they use the 2.4Ghz frequency. Recently (remotely) diagnosed a customer complaining that their wifi was running really slow and had been for about 4 weeks. When I asked what had changed I got the usual "oh, nothing, we never change anyting". Until they coughed up to a wifi alarm being fitted. I asked for the specs and bingo.

And back on topic... I had a customer complain their wifi printer had stopped responding to their MACbook. This one was "my" wifi so off I toddled.

Wifi perfect (or course!) but the MAC just refused to print.

"Have you changed anything?" says I.

"No" says the customer.

"You sure?" I pressed.

"Oh well, now you come to mention it, I did update the operating system..."

 

AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH....   x 1000

[Man On The Clapham Omnibus]

I have a Friedland wireless video doorbell and it has a PIR sensor to pre-warn us of an impending visit. When the video monitor is 'live' the house wifi is swamped and useless. Luckily it's only a ten second dropout but bl**** annoying. My daughter has a wireless video baby alarm and that screws up the wifi too. I would recommend anyone thinking about a wireless door access system to look at the specs before buying.