Top Most Dorm Room Printers

I was challenged recently to find a good printer for a college setting. For whatever reason there are few articles (and even fewer of acceptable quality) recommending printers for the college student.

I did some research, which is what I often do in a professional capacity, so I imagine I might be relatively good at it. This article is current as of August, 2012.

Initially I checked out some printers available at the local Best Buy. Unfortunately, I went a second time and found the sales people were telling me entirely different stories.

One kind salesperson offered to pull up the reviews of an HP printer that had the features I needed. The top of the review showed an average score of 3 out of 5, and he said "see, those are good reviews." "Just 3 out of 5? No, they are not" I thought to myself.

So I relegated myself to the prospect of doing some of my own research. I was hoping to complete this task quickly but I wanted the best bang for my buck.

Requirements 
It makes the evaluation much easier if a few minutes are spent on requirements. The following are requirements for my case, but I think these apply to most college students.

Price
Price is entirely up to you, however with the high cost of college plus the fact that there are many excellent printers under $150, I examined only $150 or less, and my choice ended up costing $91 at Amazon.

Size
Dorm rooms and college apartments tend to be small, so a small footprint is highly desired.

Speed
For many years we had to depend on manufacturer speed ratings, which varied widely. Thankfully there is now an ISO standard, so use that when comparing print speeds.

I always feel speed is important. In this price range, there is the Epson Stylus NX430, which prints at 6.2 pages per minute. The Canon Pixma MG5320 prints at 12.5, roughly twice as fast. The Canon gets better reviews as well. You may think speed is a nice to have, but waiting for a long term paper to churn out can be an aggravating experience.

Copy, Scan, Fax
Fax is least important for the student, and with scan, internet-based fax services can be an inexpensive alternative. I do find copy and scan both useful, and since they are common in sub-$150 printers, I see no reason to exclude them.

Duplex
I recommend to everyone that they buy only duplex printers (printers that print on both sides of the paper). This not only saves trees but money as well. Duplex is now very common and no longer adds a premium to the price.

Size
Obviously in a small dorm room or college apartment, the smaller the better. There are smaller printers than my pick, but just by a couple of inches.

Print Quality
Even at this price point we can expect excellent print quality and pretty good picture quality. Don't forget to equip your student with paper. I start with a ream (300) and provide more once they get low. I prefer 22 or 24 pound, 20 pound is just too flimsy. Remember they are competing for grades and every little detail may help.

Noise
Low noise is a nice to have, but low on my priority list.

Ink
Printers can be pretty inexpensive since manufacturers continue to make money on selling you replacement ink. I always equip my college students with an extra complete set of ink, and ask them to let me know as soon as they replace any. You always want a complete set on hand, especially for those late night reports.

Ink prices vary a little between manufacturers. I did not check those out but you can search for articles that have done the evaluation. It was not a priority of mine. Note that ink is almost always more expensive for older printers, and my goal was to purchase a printer that would survive four years of college.

Maintenance Agreements
When spending this little on a printer, I just take the chance. If it breaks after the warranty period, it's only $100 to replace.

Brand
My personal assessment of user reviews for the current under $150 printers is, in order of best to worst, Canon, Epson, HP.

Results
I decided to purchase the Canon PIXMA MG5320 ($91 on Amazon). It has better reviews than the competitors  met all my requirements, and although smaller printers are available, it is fairly compact.

Print speed is good (12.5 black, 9.3 color). It has a number of additional features, the only one missing is the ability to print through wifi without a router.

No Wifi Network?
HP has the feature that allows printing wirelessly without a wifi network. Unfortunately the folks at Best Buy could not consistently tell me which printers had that feature, and they claimed that no other brand offered it, and I am not sure this is true.

In my situation, the college does not provide, nor allow, dorm students to have wifi in their rooms. This rule will probably have to go away in the near future, so for now students will have to plug the printer into their laptop via USB, which is not a big deal. So be sure to buy a 6 - 10 foot USB 2 cable as well.

Reviews of other Canon MGxxxx printers did as well except for one model, so if you want to explore alternatives, check out user reviews. (User reviews often differ from professional reviewers, and tend to be more useful.)

Just remember to separate out the negative reviews due to the seller, equipment broken in shipment, etc. Also remember that if ten people say xxx was no problem for every one who complained about xxx, then xxx is probably OK, unless all the complainers had the same laptop you own, and so forth.

Laptops
If your goal is to buy one laptop that will last a student four years, do not but a $500 laptop! What you get with more money are better and faster parts, which translates to a longer period of use. A $500 laptop will need to be replaced in 2, maybe 3 years. Luckily prices have gone down, and I purchased a nice, thin performant Dell laptop for my wife that should make it to four years for less than $1600. It was not too long ago that I'd never consider a sub-$2000 laptop.

Critical factors for a laptop are memory, disk space and CPU. I would start with 8 GB of memory, making sure you can install at least 16GB down the road. The ideal hard drive would be between 500GB and 1TB at 7200 rpm. (Note that some brands only offer 5400 rpm hard drives, so if you get one of those you can replace it with an SSD later on.)

Always avoid the top of the line CPU, but get one two or three speeds from the top. Today that would be a quad core Intel or AMD.

Screen size is a personal preference. I prefer 17" non-glare but had to buy a glossy since that's all they had. Glossy screens have been a fad and most users find they prefer non-glossy, non-glare screens. People in their 20's or 30's can get by with smaller screens, but I'd go no less than 15". Plan to add a 22" flat panel if they use the computer more than a few hours per day.

Finally, plan to buy a 1 or 2 TB external drive (preferably USB 3) for backup.