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What's the best color printer (any technology) that can do full-bleed printing so that I don't have to print 8.5x11's on bigger paper and then cut? Affordable ink/toner is important.

UPDATE: If someone has an LED or laser printer that can do borderless (aka full-bleed) printing, please let me know. In the meantime, I bought a Brother MFC-J6910DW inkjet all-in-one printer. It's truly amazing so far. The only issue is it won't do both full duplex (front and back) printing and borderless at the same time. And it won't do full duplex on paper other than plain paper. It seems to have the most affordable ink on the inkjet market.

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  • you are looking for "borderless printing" which is often merely a scale-up. I think it depends on the drivers, but you often cannot turn OFF scaling. As far as affordable ink, I'll trade you my unicorn for your source when you find it. – horatio Mar 14 '12 at 14:00
  • funny about the affordable ink. I should rephrase that as most affordable compared to other printers. – at. Mar 14 '12 at 16:48
  • Borderless or full-bleed printing is not a driver issue, I can't find color lasers which do this. Though I see it is pretty common among inkjets. – at. Mar 14 '12 at 17:07
  • I meant the control over scaling is tied to the drivers when borderless printing is supported by the hardware. The question is: how is the driver deciding what to print beyond the borders? Some drivers will take the output, cropped for the printable region and then scale that up to cover the sheet. For family photos, this isn't much of an issue. For page design, this will scale up your text and might change the aspect. How this is done is driver dependent and the developers might not provide any user control. – horatio Mar 14 '12 at 17:29
  • This aspect of driver control is the sort of feature that is very difficult to research online. – horatio Mar 14 '12 at 17:30
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I worked at a graphic design studio and all our large scale printers were Epson. These provided some of the most accurate colors I've seen from any printer. Since then I've only used Epson for home office use, with genuine Epson ink. Yes, they can be expensive but there are many advantages to using genuine inks. My old CX7800 is still going strong. If you want to go the affordable route, there are "continuous ink systems" designed for different printers. I have not used these myself but have seen very good results. Nowadays most photo printers should be capable of full-bleed prints.

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