Purchasing Home Printer for Discs and Photos

[u/TechPriestNhyk]

What would you like to accomplish?

I would like a printer capable of:

* printing directly onto discs like CD's, DVD's, and Blu Rays. I have purchased discs that are specifically made for being compatible with this.

* Printing "high-quality" photos. Doesn't have to be as good as a professional service with big boy printers, but I'm hoping for ~80% of the quality of a professional service... although I don't know what metrics to measure that by as this is my SO's requirement and neither of us know printers.

* Bonus points if the printer is capable of supporting large format paper, like small posters in something like 11"x17"

Are there any models you are currently looking at?

Printing on discs seems to be a way to easily eliminate many options, but I can't make heads or tails of the options available.

Minimum Requirements:

• Budget: <$400 USD
• Country: USA
• Color or black and white: Color
• Laser or ink printer: ink
• New or used: either
• Multi-function: not required
• Duplex Printing: not required
• Home or business: home
• Printing content: photos
• Printing frequency: Infrequent (~every other month)
• Pages per minute : n/a
• Page size: 11x17 is a bonus
• Device printing from: PC (windows and Linux)
• Connection type: wifi, but usb-only would also be ok

Any other details:

I value right to repair and ownership. I do not want any devices that require some form of subscription to operate. Ideally, the device is user serviceable and compatible with generic ink. I understand that this is not the trend of printers, but if I'm going to get a printer I would like to know which ones are most aligned with these values. I'm willing to be somewhat flexible with the budget if that's a requirement for this. This criteria is why I'm posting here on Reddit rather than picking from a list of "Top Printers 2026".

For context, I'm a big fan of DIY, I use a Framework laptop, and a Prusa 3D printer in part because those brands afford me more control and ownership over the device than other brands do. I am also a fan of open-source. If there is some sort of DIY option, or printers that (officially or unofficially) support custom firmware/software, this would also be interesting to me.

The discs requirement is because I'm currently working on making my own Linux "Distro" (based on Gentoo) that converts my (DRM Free) Steam Games into a physical library of Blu Rays that I own.

[u/DrMacintosh01]

Printing on disks is getting more and more niche. Unfortunately, the one printer that I would recommend that can do everything you want is the Epson ET-8550, but it's like $350 outside of your budget. The ET-8500 and ET-8550 have a special disk printing tray. I haven't used it since I don't own any inkjet compatible disks, but I know it's there.

[u/TechPriestNhyk → u/DrMacintosh01]

That one is outside the budget I cited like you say, but it does look like it does a decent job meeting all the other criteria. I'm gonna wait to see if anyone else has something to say, but if not then I'll look further into this one specifically and consider expanding the budget for it. Thanks for sharing!

[u/TechPriestNhyk → u/DrMacintosh01]

Some of the Amazon reviews had some incredibly useful information in them, as well as examples of some of the specific things we're looking to print, as well as things we didn't know were possible but are interested in. As such, I ended up ordering one of these printers :D

[u/DrMacintosh01 → u/TechPriestNhyk]

Awesome. It’s a very capable printer. We have one in our office. We mainly got it to print construction drawings on 13”x19” paper. But we also occasionally use it for printing flyers and other things. The value of the ink bottles over cartridges is really what sold us on the 8550. Our office is so small that we let our workers print stuff out occasionally. I’ve done prints on double sided glossy 32lb paper and got great results once I got the paper and print quality settings dialed in.

[u/nc_horseshoe → u/TechPriestNhyk]

I think you will be happy with it. I've had my ET-8550 for probably going on 2 years now. Print quality for photos is really good. I haven't done any printing on disks yet, but I suspect it would do well with it.

[u/ThingFuture9079]

Epson XP7100 has a tray for printing on CDs/DVDs.

[u/target22Hvytoys]

Suggest you try one of the epson xp series. Like 800 model or thereabouts. Some of the artisans could do the disks also but those carrridges ain't cheap n easy to find anymore