and because i’m a lazy ass i didn’t read the specs but just read the search engine result.
I also assumed that because 6 years ago i bought a $50 hp envy and it had wifi, this much expensive one is also going to have it
Result: that $250 printer doesn’t actually have wifi
I dunno, I’ve been.printing through a print server for decades. I find it far less problematic than wifi-connected printers (especially consumer ones).
Consumer wifi printers are a kludgey mess.
I set up a RPI 2 at my parent’s house connected to a 15 year old printer and it works like magic. Basically any device can detect and use the printer using Samba as long as it’s on the network. No drivers or anything.
Server or not, it needs to connect to the network
And a raspberry pi will do a hell of a lot better job at doing that than the printer.
Our brother printer at work is otherwise a fairly great printer. But dear god does it have the WORLDS WORST wifi connectivity. I had to put it directly under an AP at work so it wouldn’t try to connect to one on the other side of the office at 0.1Mbps and constantly dropping packets.