I just updated the home office with all-new printers.
The nice thing about Black Friday this year is that it’s pretty phased out, instead of being wedged into the 3-5 AM rush period on Friday. There are very few doorbusters that encourage camping out. I expect sales volume to be up, but retailers are smartly making this a Black Friday Week, instead of a one-day event. The downside, if you are a Black Friday camper, is that this year continues the downward trend for you. Black Friday has become less of an insider/prosumer deal over the past decade, and more of a sales tactic.
But I digress, if you want a new printer, there are a couple of great deals you can get tomorrow or even on Wednesday, and beat the Black Friday traffic.
Target has the Epson NX420 all-in-one for $44.99. It offers 802.11n Wi-Fi printing and wireless scanning. It’s a great deal.
If you don’t need Wi-Fi, Office Depot has the Epson NX305 for $29.99. The one advantage that the NX305 has over the NX420 is that it has an Automated Document Feeder (ADF).
Which did I buy? Both. An 802.11n printer that includes an ADF is actually more expensive, so I have the NX305 near my Mac with NeatWorks, and the NX420 on the opposite end of the house.
My goal with the NX305 is to get it to work properly with NeatWorks, so that I can have a cheap version of the NeatDesk. I’ll update back when I hit success/failure on that task.
P.S. Office Depot does have a 15% restocking fee on electronics, so you may want to make sure it’s right for you before opening the box.
Update: I just found a firmware update for the Epson Stylus NX420. It improves Wi-Fi performance and was released a few days ago. If you buy this printer, be sure to view All Downloads on the support web site. There, you’ll find firmware SA28A7. And no, it doesn’t add AirPrint/ePrint… this is a $44.99 printer after all.
I’ve never had an ADF on a home printer/scanner/copier. Can you stack a bunch of photos in the ADF and have them scanned in? Because loading them individually is rather slow and annoying.
Generally you only want to use an ADF for plain paper, unless it explicitly supports photos. Putting glossy paper in could bend it because of the paper thickness.
An ADF pulls paper in from the top and wraps them around through the scanning element on the flatbed scanner. That’s why ADFs are available on cheap printers, they’re basically paper feeders, not a second scanning element.