Printer Advice for an Apple Newbie

Thank you for all your comments. I thought some might like to know the outcome or even find it useful.

I bought an HP LaserJet Pro MFD 4777DW. It's an older model that seems to have proved itself over time. The only things missing from my wish list are A3 handling and photo quality printing (both of which were secondary considerations) but otherwise it ticks all the primary requirements boxes.

It's a bit of a beast both in terms of weight, size and capabilities. I spent all yesterday evening clearing space for it and installing it physically as this is most definitely not a desktop printer. After wading through all the set up dialogs and creating the HP account, everything's set to print to it: one Mac, one iPad Pro, one Samsung Android tablet, three Win 10 PCs and three Android phones (iPhones scheduled for next year :-)).

So far it's performed faultlessly. The only gripe to date, is that the Mac drivers and software don't seem to have all the features / settings of their Win 10 counterparts though I've yet to compare them in detail. Installation on the Mac was far smoother and quicker than the Win 10 boxes. Annoyingly the Readiris OCR program that installed automatically under Win 10 has to be downloaded separately for the Mac: I've not yet worked out how to do that. Tomorrow's job.

Printing from the iPad via Airprint (thanks, John!) was so fast the paper was out of the machine before I'd walked upstairs to the home office.

One caveat: the 477's wired into one of my Gigabit switches as I have an intense dislike of wireless printers. I therefore have no idea how this performs on WiFi and have no intention of finding out.

Interesting to hear your experience of the ET-16500. Thanks for sharing. I've just realised that all bar one of the Amazon UK reviews refer to the ET-14000, a totally different beast and it garners more favourable opinions on other sites. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to support Airprint despite Epson's site implying otherwise.

Thanks for input. I agree about Dell: lousy printers but great monitors.

The random nozzle cleaning annoyance happens on Canon printers too. My trusty ip4500 has cost me a small fortune over the years by using ink during 'priming'.

I've mixed feeling about Epson. Bad experiences in the past with Epson photo printers and recently with some Workforce models incline me against them especially as the otherwise perfect 16500 doesn't support Airprint.

However, despite being an older model the XP-830 does tick all the boxes. More research required. There is such a thing as too much choice.

Thanks for the fast response. Other users' experience of hardware is, for me, always the best indicator of reliability and suitability. I'll look into the current HP range.

Thanks for the advice and link to the list which is now bookmarked. I like the 'only' 5191. ;-)