In early December, my wife asked whether we should get a printer for the house. Our daughter sometimes gets homework sent as images, and those assignments may need to be printed out and filled in by hand. That made sense. For families with kids, a printer has almost become standard equipment.
I had originally planned to buy a laser printer. Laser printers use toner cartridges, and many cartridges can be refilled, but the downside is that they only print in black and white. An all-in-one model with scanning costs more. Several colleagues bought used printers on Pinduoduo. They were not expensive and worked well.
Maybe because I had been searching for printers across various apps, Douyin started pushing printer livestreams at me. I happened to scroll into one selling HP printers. It was an inkjet model, so it could print in color. With a discount, the price was 468 yuan. It was described as new and genuine, with nationwide warranty. It did not feel expensive. Our daughter is still in kindergarten, and a lot of her materials are in color, so black-and-white printing would not always get the point across. I placed the order without much hesitation.
The delivery took two days. The box contained:
- printer cables
- two packs of A4 paper
- two packs of photo paper
- eight bottles of ink plus refill syringes
- a small stapler
- a Xiaobai printing box for remote printing
- other accessories included with the printer
I unboxed it, assembled it, and ran a test print. The print quality was actually quite good. It could even print photos. I felt I was missing a laminating machine. For phone printing, the Xiaobai box works with the printer: choose the corresponding photo size, download the app in advance and bind the printer, and you can share it with family members. There is also a mini-program version.
After buying it, I realized there was nowhere to put it. The only suitable corner needs a shelf, and I plan to put the induction cooktop there as well. The Xiaobai printing box service does not seem very stable. It went offline, then reconnected, and I had to add it again. I do not know whether that was a one-off. The most important lesson is to compare prices at more than one place. To be honest, Douyin was quite expensive. I had discussed printers with my colleagues, and they mostly buy secondhand on Pinduoduo for no more than 300 yuan. Mine would probably have been under 400 yuan on Pinduoduo. But I already bought it, so I will leave it at that.