3 ms·

I would nowadays don't buy printer without a WiFi. I am so used to sending things to printer from around the house at this point. The rest I agree

snuxoll 5y ago
I mean, if you can just hook it up to wired Ethernet you can do the same thing. My Brother MFC-3770CDW only supports 2.4GHz which is hella unreliable, so I run Ethernet to my switch instead and still can use network printing (including AirPrint from my iOS devices) everywhere in the house. P.S. not all Brother printers have reasonable running costs - my MFC-3770CDW is outrageously expensive for consumables because it had a lower price tag than their higher end color laser MFCs. I needed a printer in a hurry because my old Brother Inkjet died and the better models weren’t readily available at the start of the pandemic, and it’s still cheaper than ink, but so make sure you do your research even with commonly trusted brands.
alpaca128 5y ago
The point is not to buy a printer with only ethernet. But it should also have ethernet as fallback. I would recommend the same, now that my printer can't connect to any wifi anymore for whatever reason, but it works again since I connected an old wifi repeater via ethernet.
squarefoot 5y ago
Years ago I bought a Epson WP4515 printer/scanner. It had Ethernet and no WiFi but it had to sit just by the PC so it wasn't an hassle back then. One day however I had to move things around and it would suddenly need a long cable to connect to the nearest Ethernet switch. Fortunately I had at hand a bunch of TpLink TL-MR3020 mini routers I had bought literally for coins at a flea market because I knew they support OpenWRT, so I grabbed one, installed OpenWRT and set it up to bridge the Ethernet input to my home WiFi, and bingo, the device was online without cables. If anyone is interested, those small routers are sold as 3/4G routers for being able to host a 3/4G dongle modem in their USB port but actually they contain no mobile modem, they just have 2.4GHz WiFi, one Ethernet port, one USB port. They are also ridiculously limited in HW capabilities, RAM and storage, etc, however they can run old OpenWRT versions, which makes them good for that use.

snuxoll 5y ago

I mean, if you can just hook it up to wired Ethernet you can do the same thing. My Brother MFC-3770CDW only supports 2.4GHz which is hella unreliable, so I run Ethernet to my switch instead and still can use network printing (including AirPrint from my iOS devices) everywhere in the house. P.S. not all Brother printers have reasonable running costs - my MFC-3770CDW is outrageously expensive for consumables because it had a lower price tag than their higher end color laser MFCs. I needed a printer in a hurry because my old Brother Inkjet died and the better models weren’t readily available at the start of the pandemic, and it’s still cheaper than ink, but so make sure you do your research even with commonly trusted brands.

alpaca128 5y ago

The point is not to buy a printer with only ethernet. But it should also have ethernet as fallback. I would recommend the same, now that my printer can't connect to any wifi anymore for whatever reason, but it works again since I connected an old wifi repeater via ethernet.

squarefoot 5y ago

Years ago I bought a Epson WP4515 printer/scanner. It had Ethernet and no WiFi but it had to sit just by the PC so it wasn't an hassle back then. One day however I had to move things around and it would suddenly need a long cable to connect to the nearest Ethernet switch. Fortunately I had at hand a bunch of TpLink TL-MR3020 mini routers I had bought literally for coins at a flea market because I knew they support OpenWRT, so I grabbed one, installed OpenWRT and set it up to bridge the Ethernet input to my home WiFi, and bingo, the device was online without cables. If anyone is interested, those small routers are sold as 3/4G routers for being able to host a 3/4G dongle modem in their USB port but actually they contain no mobile modem, they just have 2.4GHz WiFi, one Ethernet port, one USB port. They are also ridiculously limited in HW capabilities, RAM and storage, etc, however they can run old OpenWRT versions, which makes them good for that use.