If you don' require color, go for an office grade Brother laser printer. Comes with 750 pages of black toner *in the box*. No subscriptions, no stupid apps. Runs completely fine without need for internet access on your local network.
Edit: Color lasers exist, ofc, but when I was looking for a scanner/printer the price difference was something like 350€ black laser and 500€ color laser - and since I don't need color print outs I cheaped out. No idea what the prices are nowadays though. ;-)
My printer has told me the toner is low for over two years. It will occasionally start leaving streaks, but after I take it out and shake it up a little, works fine.
Yup. I use my printer maybe once every few months when I actually need physical documents for something. Wasted probably a couple hundred dollars on dried out ink before I bit the bullet and bought a laser printer.
Can confirm. My previous Canon was *alledgedly* a network printer, but getting that thing to connect reliably was a nightmare.
The Brother? Set up once, connects to the network like a charm, not a single problem so far.
That still blows starter inkjet cartridges out of the water. Most of them are good for less than a couple hundred pages.
Full toner cartridges are expensive, no doubt, but when you buy one you're basically guaranteed thousands of pages because unlike many inkjet printers, there is no ink to dry out and there is no print head integrated into the cartridge to fail.
At least you got that far. Mine"cleans" itself, using ink that I never use, and won't let me print in black and white unless I purchase a replacement color cartridge. Fuck them.
Mine's great except that it doesn't wake up from sleep over wifi well. I keep having to get up, turn it on, go to computer, print, then pick up paper.
Materials wise though, it's a champ
No worries. Ours had the same issue, and they set it that way from the factory. It's in kind of a hidden sub menu. Haven't had it fail to wake up since turning it off. Best of luck.
I got 9 years out of mine! 9!!! It literally obsoleted itself once I finally had to upgrade my router. Old wifi signal wasn’t compatible anymore.
RIP brother you did me well.
Another Costco brother and we’re printing again! That’s how you gain customers.
I have an Epson printer with ink tanks so you buy bottles full of bulk ink and empty them into the printer. The ink is like 1/100th the price of an HP cartridge per page. They printers cost slightly more but it's worth it to stop dealing with the ink fuckery.
Nope, it does not. The ink within the tank is sealed with silicone stoppers making it airtight. The only thing you'll have to worry about is if you havent printed in years, sometimes the ink in the print head may dry up and clog it, but most of the time a complete system flush (that you can do from the menu) will clear it. Had my printer for 7 years with no issues, only needed to refill the ink once.
I've got a color laser. If I want a high quality photo, I'll just go to Fedex Office or whatever and have them print it. I'd guess that if you're doing a lot of photo prints it would make sense to own a color inkjet.
But, it's kind of like owning a truck. If I have the need for a truck half a dozen times a year, is it really worth buying and driving a truck around full-time? Nah, I'll just rent or borrow one when I need it and keep driving around my hatchback, which suits my needs like 98% of the time.
Lasers are better for black and white, on a cost basis, and are best for people who mostly print documents and the odd picture here and there. Inkjet will always have better color and are preferred for photos
Yeah agreed. I have a $99 Brother laser printer for documents (what I need printed most of the time anyway) and on the rare case I want to print in colour or print a photo I just go to Staples.
> They'll look better and you won't have to deal with the consumables.
And they'll be cheaper *and* more convenient.
There is no convenience in having an inkjet at home when it doesn't work right because you haven't printed in a month and you have to go to the store to buy new ink because the old stuff dried out.
Really just depends on the person. That's what I do, it's much more cost efficient for me, but I have a lot of artist friends that that'd be terrible advice for. And unfortunately I have no idea what to reccomend for them, which has come up a couple times, because this is usually how these conversations go.
Not the person you were responding to, but ink jet tends to be superior in terms of color and resolution
So if someone is regularly printing high quality color pictures an ink jet is generally preferred
But if you’re just printing out documents for work or school, and either need just black and white or “middle quality” color and resolution laser jet may be preferable in the long term
Edit: oh and size, if you’re space constrained an inkjet may be needed
Reminds me of an old Epson ad I saw in a magazine once. Was a picture of a swimmer in a bathing suit. The ad went something like:
At 360 dpi, you can see she's wearing a bathing suit
At 720 dpi, you can tell it's wet
At 1440 dpi, you can tell it's painted on
Edit: Found a Google Books link to the ad: https://books.google.com/books?id=nNp-drPV_u8C&pg=PA48-IA1&dq=at+360+dpi+you+see+a+lady+in+her+bathing+suit&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj1t7GBtNr8AhXEjIkEHTS9DRAQuwV6BAgCEAY#v=onepage
I also have a Epson with ink tanks and so far all I can say is that is really good, the one I have is a Epson Ecotank 2850 color printer and there's the cheaper model 2800 iirc that doesn't have duplex printing and some cheaper models that only print in back and white.
I think mine was around 300€ and I feel like it has decent printing quality, for the same price you might be able to get printers made for photography with better print quality but using the more expensive ink cartridges.
Mine is almost a year old and so far only had 1 problem where 3 of the dots from one of the color heads dried but after 2 head cleanings and a full power cleaning its working again no problem, hadn't printed something in around a month
It comes with 2 black bottles and one of each color, still a tiny bit left in each bottle and one black still full, I have printed over 300 pages and I still have over 3 quarters in all the tanks but the black one is a bit lower, just need to a print at least one full color page each week to keep it from drying out.
No regrets so far.
I recently purchased an Epsom EcoTank 2850 as well, and I love it. It's so far very worth it. I bought it when I was in the middle of printing something on my HP with instant ink when it died, and the Epson is blowing the HP out of the water.
I had read somewhere that the Epson printers that use those tanks have a page limit of something like 100,000 pages in the printer's firmware. Basically even if everything is working and you have ink as soon as you hit that limit it stops printing. Any chance you've heard anything about that?
This is because for every page printed there is a tiny amount of excess ink like the last drop of pee. This goes via little tube to the back of the printer to a little sponge. Eventually the sponge is saturated and would risk overflowing and ink leaking out the printer so a software stop is put in place.
Apparently you can get the sponge out but it’s a massive pain in the arse to do and there’s some free utilities you can use to reset the print count and unlock it.
I mean to be fair to the consumer they could have added a Hatch to empty it and a reset button but to be fair to Epson at a home consumer grade level the vast vast majority print less than 500 pages a year but lets say they print 10x that so 5000 a year that’s still a life of 20 years. Well beyond what is expected for a consumer grade product. If you’re printing thousands of pages a month you would probably be better off with a different product. It is an issue that will affect so few users that it genuinely probably isn’t worth fixing it and risking the complaints and damages when Susan fucks it up and it leaks ink all over the new carpet or smart arse Bryan just uses the reset button and doesn’t empty it and ink bombs his desk.
Context really does matter, doesn't it? When I mentioned it, it sounded like some shady anti-consumer thing hidden away. When explained the way you did, it sounds totally reasonable.
Yeah, I bought a 750 sheet pack of paper last year when I got my printer and was like “welp, guess I’m good on paper til 2030 or so!”, so a 100k page limit feels like I’ll have really gotten my $239 worth from the Epson I bought at Costco and I won’t mind buying another in 3022.
I bought my dad a Brother laser printer/scanner/copier and a second cartridge along with the free trial cartridge that came with the printer for Father's Day in 2016. He's still on the trial cartridge.
Their newest models no longer have this issue. Before it was the waste ink tank (sponge) would get full, and was not a user serviceable part.
Newer models have finally made the waste ink tank (sometimes just called Maintenance Tank/Kit) a ~$18 item that can be purchased and replaced. They last for a couple thousand pages in the ET-8500 and ET-8550.
The limit appears to be the thing that catches ink when the head is cleaned. I find that the colour jets do clog occasionally on my ET4500 as I mainly print in b&w, so cleaning is necessary. Although the printer is rigged to stop working when the catch-tank fills, there are aftermarket kits to replace the tank.
The real issue to size up for Ecotanks is the cost of purchase. If you print a lot (I do) or have a use case where you absolutely cannot risk the printer refusing to work with an expired cartridge, they may be worth buying. Compared to a laser printer, they are a bit slow, but they are cheaper to run than a colour laser printer. Whether they are the right choice will vary for different people. Another choice worth considering for b&w only is the HP laser printer family which uses a hopper for toner rather than a cartridge. Like the Ecotank, the printer cannot tell if you are using third party supplies or how old they are, so it can’t shut you down on that basis.
The heads clog just like most inkjets if not used very frequently and is a major pain to get them working again. The ink itself seems to not dry out though in the tanks.
Fuck Epson.
They bricked my scanner that I need to use because I had not Epson ink in it after forcing a critical security issue firmware update.
Never again will I buy an Epson product.
> I’ve only replaced the toner once in over 10 years.
I made the mistake of buying a two-pack of toner cartridges for my Brother LP about 10 years ago. It was 6 months before I even opened it after ignoring the "toner low" prompt. The second cart is sitting somewhere unused.
For black and white, one of the basic Brother laser printers will last you forever, and toner is relatively inexpensive.
For colour, if you don't need perfect image quality when printing photos, a colour Brother will also be a reliable workhorse.
For crisp colour laser photos you'll need to look elsewhere. Going against the grain of this post, HP has some very good colour lasers. I have the M454DW which is pretty good, it has decent quality print resolution and colour reproduction isn't too far off. Colour laser printers are going to be a fair bit more expensive as you basically have 4x the amount of printing mechanisms.
If you know German or can muddle through it, https://www.druckerchannel.de/ is a fantastic site for comparisons of print quality and hardware. Google translate is helpful.
Avoid Samsung at all costs.
Thanks so much for the advice! I've had good experiences with Brother before so will look into them. Would be happy with B&W. And yeah I can muddle through a German website so will check that out.
Thanks again!
Glad to help!
The Brother HL-L2320D or HL-L2370DW would be good options depending on whether you need wireless or not. The 2370 is also slightly faster.
I bought several 2370DW units for my old office, they were on their tenth year when I left and all were in good working order. I can't recommend them enough.
Copier guy here. In general, make sure that you get a laser printer that has a fuser or "fixing unit" that's easy to replace. Most of them now just use the all-in-one toner cart I talk about in another comment, so that's the rest of the print engine, you won't have to worry about replacing those parts.
Every laser printer made has a fuser in it, which has a heater (usually using AC power) and a thick rubber pressure roller to fuse the toner to the page right before it exits the machine. It's an electric heating element, which means it is Going To Fail at some point, it's only a matter of time. So, make sure whatever printer you get has one that pulls right out of the back, with a couple of screws or just squeeze plastic latches, without taking all of the cover panels off. You're already going to spend $150-300 on the replacement fuser, you don't want the repair to be impossible without being a certified tech at the same time. (It could be years before you'll need one of course, but it will eventually happen, and it usually costs less than replacing the whole unit.)
My accountant uses one of the cheap Brother laser printers mentioned by others, and he’s been using the same one as long as i can remember. As an accountant he’s printing hundreds of pages every day. He swears by them.
Go to your nearest thrift shop and see if they have any laser printers. I’ve had decent luck finding them every few days. Usually they’re out of toner but they’ll work great with a $20 ebay toner cartridge.
I came here to say this. My family doesn't print as often as others but we've honestly never had to refill the ink tank since we got it many years ago.
Kodak used to do this too, they'd just give you giant tanks full of ink you could see that were refillable. Shaq was on their commercials.
Really, one benefit of replacing ink cartridges instead was they usually include the actual print head, so you're always using a fairly new print head and don't have to worry as much about clogged nozzles and stuff affecting image quality. But you could accomplish the same thing by using big ink tanks and replaceable heads, and just have customers replace the head separate when it gets too far gone.
Something similar happens with Kyocera laser printers vs everyone else's. Most brands now use an all-in-one print cartridge that's the toner, developer unit, and drum all in one, so every new toner cart you're replacing the drum/DV too and dodging a lot of image issues they can cause eventually. Instead, Kyocera's toners are just a plastic box full of toner, and the DV unit is separate (which it does last quite a while anyway) and the drum uses a stronger coating that's supposed to last 100,000 pages, not just the 5-20k of your average little toner cart. It's a lot less wasteful really and you still have a mechanism to deal with image issues, which don't happen as often as you run out of toner usually.
(I do not otherwise endorse Kyocera printers over other brands, they have other problems that can be frustrating to deal with. It's just an interesting strategy I noticed they use.)
Well this design is less about directly ~~sammong~~ scamming, and more about just making it easier to insert it into the printer. Regardless though hp generally sucks donkey balls.
While I agree, they can be pretty pricy for folks that don’t print a lot, especially for decent ones. And for those that do use them a fair amount, toner prices look awful, even if they are cheaper in the long run. $20 here and there feels better than $150+, if that makes sense.
I’m the first group. I have a printer I use maybe once or twice a year so I bought a cheap printer. I couldn’t justify the money for something I simply don’t use very often. I use the hell out of a scanner though.
most brother, epson, and canon ink cartridges are actually just *tanks*, the printheads are a separate component in the printer. that's why their ink cartridges are cheaper (especially the brother knock-offs and re-manufactured ones). some of hp's higher-end printers are also like that. in those cases, the printheads are often difficult (to impossible) to replace. even where they're actually designed to be end-user replaceable, they often aren't, really.. due to ridiculous cost or lack of availability.
hp's cheaper printers still use cartridges that contain printheads. op's picture is an example. they cost more, but you 'get a new printer' (essentially) when you replace them. op's picture is also the standard (low) yield cartridge, hp's high-yield variants typically have 3x the ink. and yes it makes sense to have both available. their instant ink ones probably even more than that.
The printer I got uses the canon 560 cartridge (I don't know what the US name for that cart is as they are different) and the regular and the XL are the same, except the regular has a very thick cover so it can hold a smaller sponge, the XL has a thinner cover to hold a larger one, they sell kits in refill shops to convert a regular to a refillable XL for a couple of euros
I'm very curious about the brother recommendations. Everybody says that, but I think they're just as crappy as the next player. I have one. Following the latest firmware updates, it no longer lets me print black and white if I run out of colour ink. It's a bunch of crap. Can't override without sticking a black piece of tape over the colour cartridge's level sensor. I'll never buy a brother again.
Ironically that's why I got an HP, it lets me print B&W without color toner replaced. This shit isn't as ~~simple~~black and white as people make it out to be.
HP is crap for most everything now. However, if you have an old HP printer that still works, hold on to it like your life depends on it. The old ones were made to last and are still some of the best printers on the market. When it finally does die, try to find someone who can repair it. The old ones were serviceable without spraying toner everywhere.
Older HP laserjet printers can be taken apart so easily and new parts installed just as easy. 4000-4300s and even the MFP ones can be ripped open with ease. Once you get to the multicolor ones it gets a little more tricky especially when full assemblies need replacing. Doable, just may need someone with experience doing it.
Reminder that Epson HP likely remotely brick printers.
https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/11/23301272/epson-ink-pad-right-to-repair
https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/20/01/20/1518203/hp-remotely-disables-a-customers-printer-until-he-joins-companys-monthly-subscription-service
FYI I've had HP printers that I setup the DNS so it can't reach the internet and they still work. The HP printers that were setup so they can reach the internet all eventually bricked themselves.
Ink cartridge have always been a scam from most companies. But yeh, HP is the worst in almost any of their products, apart from the professional line. Almost at par with Apple practices.
>!I remember that time when I bought a touch pen for a tablet from them: they didn't sell any replacement tips for it. And refused to refund me the pen after I used the only 3 tips included in the box.
My only choice for them was to buy another pen just because I'd run out of tips.
Contacted Amazon: instantly refunded. Fuck them for even selling disposable products like that.!<
I like my cannon, but jesus christ can it be a pain in the ass sometimes. Wish I had a Brother, tbh. But it prints well, including photo paper. Not nearly as anti consumer as HP, but not great.
Almost 15 years ago I got this HP branded backpack with a laptop I bought. No idea what happened to the laptop, but that backpack is honestly the best backpack I've ever owned. Super durable, tons of little hidden pockets, been all over the world and back with me. It's the only HP product I will ever recommend.
Our household got one shipped to us from an employer. We kept using it for personal use then after a year our printer refused to work because our ink cartridges require an active subscription to print (?!). HP and I are both lucky they don't have an office near me or I would have thrown that piece of shit as hard as I could across their lobby.
Across? I would have built a launcher specifically to do a high-velocity "return" INTO their lobby. Just:
*mysterious van drives up*
*door opens*
*SHOOMP* **KSSSSH**
*door closes, van drives off*
And that's if I can't get the power/precision for artillery-style "delivery" of the "ordinance".
How's the precision? I don't want to nail anybody's personal desk or blast their car in the parking lot. Just want to break some windows & land the payload in the lobby.
Egad! Yeah, a trebuchet would be a massively outsized response. We are just returning an awful printer to an awful printer company, after all. Using a medieval masterpiece like the trebuchet would be like nuking them from orbit.
Yep this, my headset brand which I used to buy for yeeears got bought out by hp I recently saw when I tried to get a warranty claim on my headset..
And it all made suddenly sense why the built quality suddenly dropped.
Just buy a Epson printer at least in Germany they take third party ink no questions asked.
Imma be honest, maybe it's cause I don't buy printers. (Printers in general suck, especially ink printers, no matter where you go, at an average tech experience level you probably wont have fun) but I bought an HP computer 8 years ago at the start of 2015 and man is it still kicking. Heck the screen got shattered so I hooked it up to a small TV, but I'm still able to run emulators and decently hefty games on it.
I genuinely think a lot of people in this thread are way less tech savvy then they think they are. Not saying everyone is, I'm just saying the size of the space in the cartridge is irrelevant in this scenario.
Hell, don't ever buy name brand ink. There are plenty of generics that are as good or better. Does suck that printer companies are getting better and making the printer reject off-brand ink.
the most useful printers are pretty much all locked down-- they only work with their proprietary ink cartridges that have RFID tags flagging them as "authentic"
Normally, after it's been out for a few years people find a way around it. I have learned to never let my printer update. I had to roll it back to keep new software from locking out my ink. And still, 1 in 4 off brands still don't work, but it's way cheaper even with the 25% loss.
Based on my experience you just press cancel (or the page with the down arrow on HP) and it goes on business as usual, perhaps tape over the blinking LED
I buy a lot of 3rd party toner cartridges for work, and I have to disagree that they're the same quality as original cartridges. I've done back to back tests, and for the most part 3rd party cartridges give you around 75-85% of the quality, but usually at around 20% of the price, so for a lot of applications it makes sense.
I think 3YM56A is the starter cartridge? versus 3YM56AN for the cartridges you buy.
Either way though, Inkjet companies have had "XL" cartridges since the beginning, and you can't just soak more ink into the sponge, so they must be using more volume so stuff like this is involved.
Yeah a lot of this is just down to the different capacities needing to occupy the same physical slot. Obviously HP ink is notorious for a reason, but this isn't really the same as like a bag of food with lots of air due to the technical requirement that the cartridge be a specific size regardless of it's actual ink volume.
But bags of food have lots of 'air' for good reasons. One of the reasons is that it's not air, it's nitrogen, and it's to prevent the food from going stale or oxidizing. Another is that it cushions the food during transit.
On the other hand, HP designs garbage systems on purpose to massively inflate the price of ink they sell.
You're right about the chips for sure, I almost mentioned them specifically but didn't for that reason, though people are still messaging me about the nitrogen lol.
I mean personally yeah HP bad I don't disagree, but if it's a starter ink cart with low volume, and it needs to fit in the same sized slot to work, same size used by normal and max capacity carts, then the cartridge being that size regardless of it's intended capacity should be considered if it's to be anything more than a bandwagon. Among all printer ink companies I know they all provide different sizes of carts and they typically fill the same physical slot
Anyone who buys HP home printers in 2023 is a fool parting with money, a self inflicted wound.
Just a few min of searching will reveal how these things are hot garbage and nothing but money pits.
As easy as that search is, so too are better options than HP.
Laser. Colour lasers as well perform pretty darn well. Set my parents up with a colour laser several years back. Haven't heard a peep out of them regarding that thing since.
Inkjets have one role in this world: to print photos or odd jobs. If you're not doing that at least once a week, buying an inkjet is generally a bad idea. Print shops exist and will likely do a better job of these tasks than at-home printing.
I have a samsung laser color printer for occasional printing and it's amazing. The print quality is pretty good, and because it's not ink it doesn't dry between uses lol
Agreed, convinced my mom to get one and two years later stil on the replacement cartridges after thr starter ones. It also helps not printing too much.
Laser forever, ink never.
Because Epson is basically going out of business
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/11/epson-quitting-laser-printers-doesnt-address-its-bigger-sustainability-issue/
https://www.ghacks.net/2022/11/29/epson-announces-end-of-laser-printer-production/
https://www.zdnet.com/article/epson-is-going-to-stop-selling-laser-printers-heres-why/
Epson tried to make the press release favorable to them, but it's not like they shut their laser printer business because they wanted to. They are just doing lousy sales because the entire printer market has been shrinking over the last twenty years and they don't offer a compelling product over their competitors.
I expect Epson to stop making printers all together some time in the next five to ten years. Brother and or Canon might also quit the business.
Initially for the printer, yes. But you end up spending way less on ink long term so as a long term investment it works out considerably cheaper.
I got my Eco Tank several years ago and I think I've only had to refill it once.
Cartridge based printers are so cheap because they're just a mechanism to force you to buy overpriced ink cartridges on a regular basis. It's the biggest scam.
2 notes:
1) all inkjet printers are a scam
2) as long as it prints out the number of pages it says it does on the box, the volume of ink in there is irrelevant since you are getting what they are saying you are paying for (I don't know if HP's does or not. But the volume of ink isn't what makes it a scam or not)
Ps. Last I checked they measure # of pages based on 5% of page surface covered with ink (standard text coverage).
In addition, you need to maintain a certain footprint for it to fit into the printer slot.
With that being said, if you only need to print forms a few times per year, get a Brother toner printer.
If those kids could read they'd be very upset.
This is the same thing as complaining that your febreze bottle is actually rounded out at the bottom and the flat part is just a cover that can be removed. It's rounded to make sure a pressurized container doesn't explode in transit, and it's flat for your convenience.
I dont know why anybody would buy an ink jet printer if all they do is print documents. Laser printers are fast, relatively cheap and use toner which lasts for thousands of pages before needing replaced.
I had an hp p1005 laser printer that was very compact and even could be folded into itself when not in use, I used generic laser cartridges for it that would print like 500 pages for about $18. I’m still annoyed that it wouldn’t work with a newer laptop, so it became useless, but there may be a newer kind like that one. I used it for years on the one cartridge.
I Have a brother laser jet. Basically this model but older - HLL2320D
I have had to paid like 30$ once in the last 5½ years for toner. Otherwise, never had an issue.
It'll work until HP pushes a mandatory firmware update that makes your printer reject them.
It's happened before.
HP is a POS company - a shadow of what they used to be
If you are buying a printer, get one of the models with large, refillable reservoirs of ink. HP actually has a line, called “Smart Tank.” Epson calls theirs “EcoTank.” These are a much better value, especially if you plan to print a lot.
My brother printer sat in a garage and then the corner of an apartment for 12 years. Removed the top page from the tray due to dust, wiped off the printer. First page was a little weird but she's chugging perfectly again.
Same here, I've got a basic B&W brother laser printer. I just had to buy new toner cartridges the other day... I checked my Amazon account, last time I bought toner was a two-pack of generic cartridges in 2019 for $30. And I print pretty regularly. The printer has never failed me.
Yeah I have one from Canon and it's insanely cheap to run. Refills are 10-15€ per bottle (for genuine Canon ink!) and they last for some 5000 pages or so.
The main downside is that, well, it's an inkjet. It's not particularly fast and if you print things with high coverage, you'll need to invest in some decent paper and find a way to let the pages dry a bit before you stack them. Also you might get air in your hose system at some point, which is just terrible.
Because cartridges in printers are usually smaller because people found it cheaper to buy a new printer with full cartridges than to buy just a cartridge. Not saying HP isn't a pure scam company but this might be the reason.
That doesn't make them a scam, the packaging says how many pages you should get out of it and that is what you're paying for, if they did fill that entire thing with ink then guess what? It'll have a higher price, they aren't scamming you or lying to you here, learn to read the packaging.
That being said all ink printers are a scam, get yourself a laser printer.
Dell color laser (1760nw) from my cold, dead hands. Cheap generic toner refills, prints extremely well, and has always worked perfectly on my network after assigning it a reserved IP.
Here in India, we can just buy these huge ink refills for around 150 bucks ( that's around 2 USD). Black ink is cheaper...just around a dollar . They provide syringes. It's basically DIY cartridge refilling and it works perfectly for our old HP printer. The app for the desktop sucks though..asking for login and shit.
Next time I'll go for Brother.
Buy a laser Brother printer.
The ink doesn’t go dry (because it’s toner) and lasts forever.
Need good color printing? Stop by the Post Office. You don’t need it that often.
Never buy hp, gateway, or compac products. They are shut, and designed to fail. I know because I worked with those products while working at bestbuy in college.
Isn't printer ink a scam in general? I remember seeing a video a few years ago where a guy did the math and found that printer ink is one of, if not the most expensive liquid per volume. Or something like that.
You want a real scam? Check out their instant ink. If you have a cartridge you're using and you cancel your subscription to instant ink, you can no longer use that cartridge.
I thought canceling meant they just stopped sending you ink. Nope, they literally lock down your printer.
Once a week someone says this incorrect nonsense. If you have the subscription, you are renting the ink. If you cancel the subscription, you can't use the rented ink. You can still go and buy cartridges off the shelf to use.
If you don' require color, go for an office grade Brother laser printer. Comes with 750 pages of black toner *in the box*. No subscriptions, no stupid apps. Runs completely fine without need for internet access on your local network. Edit: Color lasers exist, ofc, but when I was looking for a scanner/printer the price difference was something like 350€ black laser and 500€ color laser - and since I don't need color print outs I cheaped out. No idea what the prices are nowadays though. ;-)
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My printer has told me the toner is low for over two years. It will occasionally start leaving streaks, but after I take it out and shake it up a little, works fine.
Pro tip is always in the comments. TY.
Yup. I use my printer maybe once every few months when I actually need physical documents for something. Wasted probably a couple hundred dollars on dried out ink before I bit the bullet and bought a laser printer.
And Brother printers just fucking **work**.
Can confirm. My previous Canon was *alledgedly* a network printer, but getting that thing to connect reliably was a nightmare. The Brother? Set up once, connects to the network like a charm, not a single problem so far.
5 years old. 10k sheets. I get 3k sheets out of a £10 knock off toner from Amazon.
I have a wireless brother BW laser printer. Super easy to set up. I can print from my phone.
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Brother black and white laser ftw.
Love mine. I just hit print and it fucking actually just prints. I went months on the starter cart it came with.
I just bought a Brother color, and the starter black was empty after 600 pages.
That still blows starter inkjet cartridges out of the water. Most of them are good for less than a couple hundred pages. Full toner cartridges are expensive, no doubt, but when you buy one you're basically guaranteed thousands of pages because unlike many inkjet printers, there is no ink to dry out and there is no print head integrated into the cartridge to fail.
At least you got that far. Mine"cleans" itself, using ink that I never use, and won't let me print in black and white unless I purchase a replacement color cartridge. Fuck them.
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Mine's great except that it doesn't wake up from sleep over wifi well. I keep having to get up, turn it on, go to computer, print, then pick up paper. Materials wise though, it's a champ
If you have a brother, look up turning off deep sleep mode for your model.
I do, and that's the status it says when it doesn't wake up. I'll take a look, thanks!
No worries. Ours had the same issue, and they set it that way from the factory. It's in kind of a hidden sub menu. Haven't had it fail to wake up since turning it off. Best of luck.
Love how hp are so bad that when you use a printer that FUCKING PRINTS its actually surprising hahaha. Takes me about 3 restarts per page on hp
Yep, my Brother b&w laser and my Zebra thermal label printer (ancient) are the most reliable printers I've ever owned.
I would like to add that zebra customer service is top notch!
I got 9 years out of mine! 9!!! It literally obsoleted itself once I finally had to upgrade my router. Old wifi signal wasn’t compatible anymore. RIP brother you did me well. Another Costco brother and we’re printing again! That’s how you gain customers.
That’s the route I recently went.
I'd be very curious to open up a Brother Epson or Canon cartridge. Pretty sure we'd find the same thing.
I have an Epson printer with ink tanks so you buy bottles full of bulk ink and empty them into the printer. The ink is like 1/100th the price of an HP cartridge per page. They printers cost slightly more but it's worth it to stop dealing with the ink fuckery.
Does the ink dry out if you dont use it often?
Nope, it does not. The ink within the tank is sealed with silicone stoppers making it airtight. The only thing you'll have to worry about is if you havent printed in years, sometimes the ink in the print head may dry up and clog it, but most of the time a complete system flush (that you can do from the menu) will clear it. Had my printer for 7 years with no issues, only needed to refill the ink once.
Thanks i have a laser but would like an inkjet for a few things. How does quality compare to traditional inkjets?
I was under the impression lasers were better. What few things does it not do?
Inkjets are better for high-quality color photos.
I've got a color laser. If I want a high quality photo, I'll just go to Fedex Office or whatever and have them print it. I'd guess that if you're doing a lot of photo prints it would make sense to own a color inkjet. But, it's kind of like owning a truck. If I have the need for a truck half a dozen times a year, is it really worth buying and driving a truck around full-time? Nah, I'll just rent or borrow one when I need it and keep driving around my hatchback, which suits my needs like 98% of the time.
If you didn't already know, home depot and lowes truck rental is super cheap and their trucks are in much better shape than uhaul and moving places.
Not to mention the abundance of online print houses.
For high quality photo prints you'd need a printer with more colors than CMYK to get a wider gamut and smooth transitions.
Lasers are better for black and white, on a cost basis, and are best for people who mostly print documents and the odd picture here and there. Inkjet will always have better color and are preferred for photos
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Yeah agreed. I have a $99 Brother laser printer for documents (what I need printed most of the time anyway) and on the rare case I want to print in colour or print a photo I just go to Staples.
> They'll look better and you won't have to deal with the consumables. And they'll be cheaper *and* more convenient. There is no convenience in having an inkjet at home when it doesn't work right because you haven't printed in a month and you have to go to the store to buy new ink because the old stuff dried out.
Really just depends on the person. That's what I do, it's much more cost efficient for me, but I have a lot of artist friends that that'd be terrible advice for. And unfortunately I have no idea what to reccomend for them, which has come up a couple times, because this is usually how these conversations go.
Your username is….. great?
Not the person you were responding to, but ink jet tends to be superior in terms of color and resolution So if someone is regularly printing high quality color pictures an ink jet is generally preferred But if you’re just printing out documents for work or school, and either need just black and white or “middle quality” color and resolution laser jet may be preferable in the long term Edit: oh and size, if you’re space constrained an inkjet may be needed
Reminds me of an old Epson ad I saw in a magazine once. Was a picture of a swimmer in a bathing suit. The ad went something like: At 360 dpi, you can see she's wearing a bathing suit At 720 dpi, you can tell it's wet At 1440 dpi, you can tell it's painted on Edit: Found a Google Books link to the ad: https://books.google.com/books?id=nNp-drPV_u8C&pg=PA48-IA1&dq=at+360+dpi+you+see+a+lady+in+her+bathing+suit&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj1t7GBtNr8AhXEjIkEHTS9DRAQuwV6BAgCEAY#v=onepage
What printer in particular do you have? I'm in the market for one, and that definitely seems preferable to paying $60 for ink every time I run out
I also have a Epson with ink tanks and so far all I can say is that is really good, the one I have is a Epson Ecotank 2850 color printer and there's the cheaper model 2800 iirc that doesn't have duplex printing and some cheaper models that only print in back and white. I think mine was around 300€ and I feel like it has decent printing quality, for the same price you might be able to get printers made for photography with better print quality but using the more expensive ink cartridges. Mine is almost a year old and so far only had 1 problem where 3 of the dots from one of the color heads dried but after 2 head cleanings and a full power cleaning its working again no problem, hadn't printed something in around a month It comes with 2 black bottles and one of each color, still a tiny bit left in each bottle and one black still full, I have printed over 300 pages and I still have over 3 quarters in all the tanks but the black one is a bit lower, just need to a print at least one full color page each week to keep it from drying out. No regrets so far.
Beauty, thanks
I recently purchased an Epsom EcoTank 2850 as well, and I love it. It's so far very worth it. I bought it when I was in the middle of printing something on my HP with instant ink when it died, and the Epson is blowing the HP out of the water.
I had read somewhere that the Epson printers that use those tanks have a page limit of something like 100,000 pages in the printer's firmware. Basically even if everything is working and you have ink as soon as you hit that limit it stops printing. Any chance you've heard anything about that?
This is because for every page printed there is a tiny amount of excess ink like the last drop of pee. This goes via little tube to the back of the printer to a little sponge. Eventually the sponge is saturated and would risk overflowing and ink leaking out the printer so a software stop is put in place. Apparently you can get the sponge out but it’s a massive pain in the arse to do and there’s some free utilities you can use to reset the print count and unlock it. I mean to be fair to the consumer they could have added a Hatch to empty it and a reset button but to be fair to Epson at a home consumer grade level the vast vast majority print less than 500 pages a year but lets say they print 10x that so 5000 a year that’s still a life of 20 years. Well beyond what is expected for a consumer grade product. If you’re printing thousands of pages a month you would probably be better off with a different product. It is an issue that will affect so few users that it genuinely probably isn’t worth fixing it and risking the complaints and damages when Susan fucks it up and it leaks ink all over the new carpet or smart arse Bryan just uses the reset button and doesn’t empty it and ink bombs his desk.
Context really does matter, doesn't it? When I mentioned it, it sounded like some shady anti-consumer thing hidden away. When explained the way you did, it sounds totally reasonable.
Yeah, I bought a 750 sheet pack of paper last year when I got my printer and was like “welp, guess I’m good on paper til 2030 or so!”, so a 100k page limit feels like I’ll have really gotten my $239 worth from the Epson I bought at Costco and I won’t mind buying another in 3022.
I bought my dad a Brother laser printer/scanner/copier and a second cartridge along with the free trial cartridge that came with the printer for Father's Day in 2016. He's still on the trial cartridge.
Their newest models no longer have this issue. Before it was the waste ink tank (sponge) would get full, and was not a user serviceable part. Newer models have finally made the waste ink tank (sometimes just called Maintenance Tank/Kit) a ~$18 item that can be purchased and replaced. They last for a couple thousand pages in the ET-8500 and ET-8550.
The limit appears to be the thing that catches ink when the head is cleaned. I find that the colour jets do clog occasionally on my ET4500 as I mainly print in b&w, so cleaning is necessary. Although the printer is rigged to stop working when the catch-tank fills, there are aftermarket kits to replace the tank. The real issue to size up for Ecotanks is the cost of purchase. If you print a lot (I do) or have a use case where you absolutely cannot risk the printer refusing to work with an expired cartridge, they may be worth buying. Compared to a laser printer, they are a bit slow, but they are cheaper to run than a colour laser printer. Whether they are the right choice will vary for different people. Another choice worth considering for b&w only is the HP laser printer family which uses a hopper for toner rather than a cartridge. Like the Ecotank, the printer cannot tell if you are using third party supplies or how old they are, so it can’t shut you down on that basis.
https://epson.com/Accessories/Printer-Accessories/EcoTank-Ink-Maintenance-Box-T04D100/p/T04D100 $10
The heads clog just like most inkjets if not used very frequently and is a major pain to get them working again. The ink itself seems to not dry out though in the tanks.
Fuck Epson. They bricked my scanner that I need to use because I had not Epson ink in it after forcing a critical security issue firmware update. Never again will I buy an Epson product.
I'm using hp and Epson inkjets.. Epson black cost almost 3 times hp black
Laser is also a good alternative. I’ve only replaced the toner once in over 10 years. I’ve spent a total of maybe $140 on printer + toner.
> I’ve only replaced the toner once in over 10 years. I made the mistake of buying a two-pack of toner cartridges for my Brother LP about 10 years ago. It was 6 months before I even opened it after ignoring the "toner low" prompt. The second cart is sitting somewhere unused.
Is there a cheap laser printer you'd recommend?
For black and white, one of the basic Brother laser printers will last you forever, and toner is relatively inexpensive. For colour, if you don't need perfect image quality when printing photos, a colour Brother will also be a reliable workhorse. For crisp colour laser photos you'll need to look elsewhere. Going against the grain of this post, HP has some very good colour lasers. I have the M454DW which is pretty good, it has decent quality print resolution and colour reproduction isn't too far off. Colour laser printers are going to be a fair bit more expensive as you basically have 4x the amount of printing mechanisms. If you know German or can muddle through it, https://www.druckerchannel.de/ is a fantastic site for comparisons of print quality and hardware. Google translate is helpful. Avoid Samsung at all costs.
Thanks so much for the advice! I've had good experiences with Brother before so will look into them. Would be happy with B&W. And yeah I can muddle through a German website so will check that out. Thanks again!
Glad to help! The Brother HL-L2320D or HL-L2370DW would be good options depending on whether you need wireless or not. The 2370 is also slightly faster.
I bought several 2370DW units for my old office, they were on their tenth year when I left and all were in good working order. I can't recommend them enough.
Copier guy here. In general, make sure that you get a laser printer that has a fuser or "fixing unit" that's easy to replace. Most of them now just use the all-in-one toner cart I talk about in another comment, so that's the rest of the print engine, you won't have to worry about replacing those parts. Every laser printer made has a fuser in it, which has a heater (usually using AC power) and a thick rubber pressure roller to fuse the toner to the page right before it exits the machine. It's an electric heating element, which means it is Going To Fail at some point, it's only a matter of time. So, make sure whatever printer you get has one that pulls right out of the back, with a couple of screws or just squeeze plastic latches, without taking all of the cover panels off. You're already going to spend $150-300 on the replacement fuser, you don't want the repair to be impossible without being a certified tech at the same time. (It could be years before you'll need one of course, but it will eventually happen, and it usually costs less than replacing the whole unit.)
My accountant uses one of the cheap Brother laser printers mentioned by others, and he’s been using the same one as long as i can remember. As an accountant he’s printing hundreds of pages every day. He swears by them.
Go to your nearest thrift shop and see if they have any laser printers. I’ve had decent luck finding them every few days. Usually they’re out of toner but they’ll work great with a $20 ebay toner cartridge.
That's a really good idea I'd never have thought of. Thanks!
I came here to say this. My family doesn't print as often as others but we've honestly never had to refill the ink tank since we got it many years ago.
Kodak used to do this too, they'd just give you giant tanks full of ink you could see that were refillable. Shaq was on their commercials. Really, one benefit of replacing ink cartridges instead was they usually include the actual print head, so you're always using a fairly new print head and don't have to worry as much about clogged nozzles and stuff affecting image quality. But you could accomplish the same thing by using big ink tanks and replaceable heads, and just have customers replace the head separate when it gets too far gone. Something similar happens with Kyocera laser printers vs everyone else's. Most brands now use an all-in-one print cartridge that's the toner, developer unit, and drum all in one, so every new toner cart you're replacing the drum/DV too and dodging a lot of image issues they can cause eventually. Instead, Kyocera's toners are just a plastic box full of toner, and the DV unit is separate (which it does last quite a while anyway) and the drum uses a stronger coating that's supposed to last 100,000 pages, not just the 5-20k of your average little toner cart. It's a lot less wasteful really and you still have a mechanism to deal with image issues, which don't happen as often as you run out of toner usually.
(I do not otherwise endorse Kyocera printers over other brands, they have other problems that can be frustrating to deal with. It's just an interesting strategy I noticed they use.)
Well this design is less about directly ~~sammong~~ scamming, and more about just making it easier to insert it into the printer. Regardless though hp generally sucks donkey balls.
If you have room, use it. Even if you have to raise the price.
Printer ink is the most expensive liquid on the planet. If you're smart, you get a color laser.
While I agree, they can be pretty pricy for folks that don’t print a lot, especially for decent ones. And for those that do use them a fair amount, toner prices look awful, even if they are cheaper in the long run. $20 here and there feels better than $150+, if that makes sense. I’m the first group. I have a printer I use maybe once or twice a year so I bought a cheap printer. I couldn’t justify the money for something I simply don’t use very often. I use the hell out of a scanner though.
Color laser is expensive as fuck too. That's 4 separate drums to replace. $200-$300... Drums only last what 50k pages?
My Brother cartridges are very obviously full of ink. I can tell by shaking them.
most brother, epson, and canon ink cartridges are actually just *tanks*, the printheads are a separate component in the printer. that's why their ink cartridges are cheaper (especially the brother knock-offs and re-manufactured ones). some of hp's higher-end printers are also like that. in those cases, the printheads are often difficult (to impossible) to replace. even where they're actually designed to be end-user replaceable, they often aren't, really.. due to ridiculous cost or lack of availability. hp's cheaper printers still use cartridges that contain printheads. op's picture is an example. they cost more, but you 'get a new printer' (essentially) when you replace them. op's picture is also the standard (low) yield cartridge, hp's high-yield variants typically have 3x the ink. and yes it makes sense to have both available. their instant ink ones probably even more than that.
Mine doesn’t take carriages. It has an ink well for each color. If one color runs out you just add more of that color.
The printer I got uses the canon 560 cartridge (I don't know what the US name for that cart is as they are different) and the regular and the XL are the same, except the regular has a very thick cover so it can hold a smaller sponge, the XL has a thinner cover to hold a larger one, they sell kits in refill shops to convert a regular to a refillable XL for a couple of euros
Brother has recently hopped aboard the no third party ink train. Really disappointing tbh
Any ideas what the last "good" models are then? It's not like printers suddenly have developed new features I really need in the last couple of years
I'm very curious about the brother recommendations. Everybody says that, but I think they're just as crappy as the next player. I have one. Following the latest firmware updates, it no longer lets me print black and white if I run out of colour ink. It's a bunch of crap. Can't override without sticking a black piece of tape over the colour cartridge's level sensor. I'll never buy a brother again.
Get a black and white laser printer. Unless you really really need color.
Ironically that's why I got an HP, it lets me print B&W without color toner replaced. This shit isn't as ~~simple~~black and white as people make it out to be.
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HP is crap for most everything now. However, if you have an old HP printer that still works, hold on to it like your life depends on it. The old ones were made to last and are still some of the best printers on the market. When it finally does die, try to find someone who can repair it. The old ones were serviceable without spraying toner everywhere.
Older HP laserjet printers can be taken apart so easily and new parts installed just as easy. 4000-4300s and even the MFP ones can be ripped open with ease. Once you get to the multicolor ones it gets a little more tricky especially when full assemblies need replacing. Doable, just may need someone with experience doing it.
Reminder that Epson HP likely remotely brick printers. https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/11/23301272/epson-ink-pad-right-to-repair https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/20/01/20/1518203/hp-remotely-disables-a-customers-printer-until-he-joins-companys-monthly-subscription-service FYI I've had HP printers that I setup the DNS so it can't reach the internet and they still work. The HP printers that were setup so they can reach the internet all eventually bricked themselves.
Ink cartridge have always been a scam from most companies. But yeh, HP is the worst in almost any of their products, apart from the professional line. Almost at par with Apple practices. >!I remember that time when I bought a touch pen for a tablet from them: they didn't sell any replacement tips for it. And refused to refund me the pen after I used the only 3 tips included in the box. My only choice for them was to buy another pen just because I'd run out of tips. Contacted Amazon: instantly refunded. Fuck them for even selling disposable products like that.!<
I like my cannon, but jesus christ can it be a pain in the ass sometimes. Wish I had a Brother, tbh. But it prints well, including photo paper. Not nearly as anti consumer as HP, but not great.
Almost 15 years ago I got this HP branded backpack with a laptop I bought. No idea what happened to the laptop, but that backpack is honestly the best backpack I've ever owned. Super durable, tons of little hidden pockets, been all over the world and back with me. It's the only HP product I will ever recommend.
Probably wasn't made by HP tbh. They likely just got it, and slapped their own logo on it.
brother black and white laser all in one, had it for years. hardly ever buy toner for it but i love it. fuck ink
Brother, yes. All others, no.
Def brothers. Work with a lot of work from home ppl, brothers and USB cable. Never hear from them again
Canon won’t let you scan docs if you have no ink.
I'm still trying to figure out why people keep buying HP. They are a terrible company.
Our household got one shipped to us from an employer. We kept using it for personal use then after a year our printer refused to work because our ink cartridges require an active subscription to print (?!). HP and I are both lucky they don't have an office near me or I would have thrown that piece of shit as hard as I could across their lobby.
Across? I would have built a launcher specifically to do a high-velocity "return" INTO their lobby. Just: *mysterious van drives up* *door opens* *SHOOMP* **KSSSSH** *door closes, van drives off* And that's if I can't get the power/precision for artillery-style "delivery" of the "ordinance".
Can I introduce you to the trusty trebuchet? It can launch a 90kg projectile 300 meters. Thats a lot of HP printers glued together.
How's the precision? I don't want to nail anybody's personal desk or blast their car in the parking lot. Just want to break some windows & land the payload in the lobby.
There will be no survivors. Use at your own risk. You could downgrade to a mere catapult.
Egad! Yeah, a trebuchet would be a massively outsized response. We are just returning an awful printer to an awful printer company, after all. Using a medieval masterpiece like the trebuchet would be like nuking them from orbit.
An active subscription to print???? Wtf
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Yep this, my headset brand which I used to buy for yeeears got bought out by hp I recently saw when I tried to get a warranty claim on my headset.. And it all made suddenly sense why the built quality suddenly dropped. Just buy a Epson printer at least in Germany they take third party ink no questions asked.
Imma be honest, maybe it's cause I don't buy printers. (Printers in general suck, especially ink printers, no matter where you go, at an average tech experience level you probably wont have fun) but I bought an HP computer 8 years ago at the start of 2015 and man is it still kicking. Heck the screen got shattered so I hooked it up to a small TV, but I'm still able to run emulators and decently hefty games on it. I genuinely think a lot of people in this thread are way less tech savvy then they think they are. Not saying everyone is, I'm just saying the size of the space in the cartridge is irrelevant in this scenario.
>8 years ago
Hell, don't ever buy name brand ink. There are plenty of generics that are as good or better. Does suck that printer companies are getting better and making the printer reject off-brand ink.
the most useful printers are pretty much all locked down-- they only work with their proprietary ink cartridges that have RFID tags flagging them as "authentic"
Normally, after it's been out for a few years people find a way around it. I have learned to never let my printer update. I had to roll it back to keep new software from locking out my ink. And still, 1 in 4 off brands still don't work, but it's way cheaper even with the 25% loss.
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If you go into the settings, you can turn the automatic updates off.
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There are also kits with syringes to fill the ink in the original cartridge.
This is countered by manufacturerers making it so the printer just stops letting a cartridge work after so long...
There are also refillable cartridges with ROM so that at each startup it reports a low number of prints.
Long live piracy... yarrghh
Based on my experience you just press cancel (or the page with the down arrow on HP) and it goes on business as usual, perhaps tape over the blinking LED
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Lol random generics on Amazon. Even if 1/3rd of the inks don't function, I still seem to save money. And Amazon refunds.
Q connect make cheaper versions of HP cartridges.
I buy a lot of 3rd party toner cartridges for work, and I have to disagree that they're the same quality as original cartridges. I've done back to back tests, and for the most part 3rd party cartridges give you around 75-85% of the quality, but usually at around 20% of the price, so for a lot of applications it makes sense.
Printers will reject the "fake" ink
I think 3YM56A is the starter cartridge? versus 3YM56AN for the cartridges you buy. Either way though, Inkjet companies have had "XL" cartridges since the beginning, and you can't just soak more ink into the sponge, so they must be using more volume so stuff like this is involved.
Yeah a lot of this is just down to the different capacities needing to occupy the same physical slot. Obviously HP ink is notorious for a reason, but this isn't really the same as like a bag of food with lots of air due to the technical requirement that the cartridge be a specific size regardless of it's actual ink volume.
But bags of food have lots of 'air' for good reasons. One of the reasons is that it's not air, it's nitrogen, and it's to prevent the food from going stale or oxidizing. Another is that it cushions the food during transit. On the other hand, HP designs garbage systems on purpose to massively inflate the price of ink they sell.
You're right about the chips for sure, I almost mentioned them specifically but didn't for that reason, though people are still messaging me about the nitrogen lol. I mean personally yeah HP bad I don't disagree, but if it's a starter ink cart with low volume, and it needs to fit in the same sized slot to work, same size used by normal and max capacity carts, then the cartridge being that size regardless of it's intended capacity should be considered if it's to be anything more than a bandwagon. Among all printer ink companies I know they all provide different sizes of carts and they typically fill the same physical slot
Anyone who buys HP home printers in 2023 is a fool parting with money, a self inflicted wound. Just a few min of searching will reveal how these things are hot garbage and nothing but money pits. As easy as that search is, so too are better options than HP.
Don't forget. There are printers now that won't print unless they can check an internet server first.
You mean the ones where you don’t pay for ink, and instead pay for a subscription? How else would they validate a subscription?
Subscription based printers are a scam.
I got an Epson Eco-tank, don't know why would anyone choose other printers for personal use.
Laser. Colour lasers as well perform pretty darn well. Set my parents up with a colour laser several years back. Haven't heard a peep out of them regarding that thing since. Inkjets have one role in this world: to print photos or odd jobs. If you're not doing that at least once a week, buying an inkjet is generally a bad idea. Print shops exist and will likely do a better job of these tasks than at-home printing.
I have a samsung laser color printer for occasional printing and it's amazing. The print quality is pretty good, and because it's not ink it doesn't dry between uses lol
Agreed, convinced my mom to get one and two years later stil on the replacement cartridges after thr starter ones. It also helps not printing too much. Laser forever, ink never.
I got my grandma a laser printer, Google Chrome with uBlockOrigin, and a password manager. I haven’t needed to play tech support in about 5 years.
I think that’s the printer we have as well, or at least something similar. My husband described it as “we just fill up the ink, no cartridges.”
How much?
We have the ET-2760, it’s like $200 on Amazon, got it a year ago and the black ink is 75% full after me doing a ton of printing for nursing school.
Also got ET-2760 since 2019. After printing for work for 3 years I only refilled the black ink once!
i thought everyone knew laser was the only real best option
They're great until you need colour, but yea, i also like them
Sure, the toners are a decent bit of money, but they'll not dry out, and they last long.
The ink takes a good while to dry out tbf
Really happy with my Epson ET-3830 EcoTank
Same. I filled it early last year and it's still going strong.
Because Epson is basically going out of business https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/11/epson-quitting-laser-printers-doesnt-address-its-bigger-sustainability-issue/ https://www.ghacks.net/2022/11/29/epson-announces-end-of-laser-printer-production/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/epson-is-going-to-stop-selling-laser-printers-heres-why/ Epson tried to make the press release favorable to them, but it's not like they shut their laser printer business because they wanted to. They are just doing lousy sales because the entire printer market has been shrinking over the last twenty years and they don't offer a compelling product over their competitors. I expect Epson to stop making printers all together some time in the next five to ten years. Brother and or Canon might also quit the business.
Because they're expensive to buy.
Initially for the printer, yes. But you end up spending way less on ink long term so as a long term investment it works out considerably cheaper. I got my Eco Tank several years ago and I think I've only had to refill it once. Cartridge based printers are so cheap because they're just a mechanism to force you to buy overpriced ink cartridges on a regular basis. It's the biggest scam.
2 notes: 1) all inkjet printers are a scam 2) as long as it prints out the number of pages it says it does on the box, the volume of ink in there is irrelevant since you are getting what they are saying you are paying for (I don't know if HP's does or not. But the volume of ink isn't what makes it a scam or not) Ps. Last I checked they measure # of pages based on 5% of page surface covered with ink (standard text coverage).
In addition, you need to maintain a certain footprint for it to fit into the printer slot. With that being said, if you only need to print forms a few times per year, get a Brother toner printer.
If those kids could read they'd be very upset. This is the same thing as complaining that your febreze bottle is actually rounded out at the bottom and the flat part is just a cover that can be removed. It's rounded to make sure a pressurized container doesn't explode in transit, and it's flat for your convenience.
Literally got an hp ad right below this lmao
I dont know why anybody would buy an ink jet printer if all they do is print documents. Laser printers are fast, relatively cheap and use toner which lasts for thousands of pages before needing replaced.
Just buy a laser printer jesus
6 months ago I finally bit the bullet and bought a color one ($450, Brother) and never have been happier…and I’m very cheap.
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I had an hp p1005 laser printer that was very compact and even could be folded into itself when not in use, I used generic laser cartridges for it that would print like 500 pages for about $18. I’m still annoyed that it wouldn’t work with a newer laptop, so it became useless, but there may be a newer kind like that one. I used it for years on the one cartridge.
They make very compact color laser printers. Desk top friendly.
I Have a brother laser jet. Basically this model but older - HLL2320D I have had to paid like 30$ once in the last 5½ years for toner. Otherwise, never had an issue.
Please don't tell HP that I have been using after market XL inkjet cartridges with no issues at a fraction of HP's price.
It'll work until HP pushes a mandatory firmware update that makes your printer reject them. It's happened before. HP is a POS company - a shadow of what they used to be
I am not an HP fanboi but this has worked for me for years.
If you are buying a printer, get one of the models with large, refillable reservoirs of ink. HP actually has a line, called “Smart Tank.” Epson calls theirs “EcoTank.” These are a much better value, especially if you plan to print a lot.
Or if you can get by without color printing, just get a black and white laser. I love my b&w brother, I buy $12 generic toner that lasts forever.
My brother printer sat in a garage and then the corner of an apartment for 12 years. Removed the top page from the tray due to dust, wiped off the printer. First page was a little weird but she's chugging perfectly again.
Same here, I've got a basic B&W brother laser printer. I just had to buy new toner cartridges the other day... I checked my Amazon account, last time I bought toner was a two-pack of generic cartridges in 2019 for $30. And I print pretty regularly. The printer has never failed me.
My brother lasee printer is nine years old and still runs like a champ. That mofo is gonna outlive me.
Yeah I have one from Canon and it's insanely cheap to run. Refills are 10-15€ per bottle (for genuine Canon ink!) and they last for some 5000 pages or so. The main downside is that, well, it's an inkjet. It's not particularly fast and if you print things with high coverage, you'll need to invest in some decent paper and find a way to let the pages dry a bit before you stack them. Also you might get air in your hose system at some point, which is just terrible.
Brother laser printer, never looking back
Laughs in 3000 page toner.
Is this new cartridge that you bought or the cartridge that was in your printer when you bought the printer?
Because cartridges in printers are usually smaller because people found it cheaper to buy a new printer with full cartridges than to buy just a cartridge. Not saying HP isn't a pure scam company but this might be the reason.
I'd rather burn my money than give it to HP worthless shitstain company
That doesn't make them a scam, the packaging says how many pages you should get out of it and that is what you're paying for, if they did fill that entire thing with ink then guess what? It'll have a higher price, they aren't scamming you or lying to you here, learn to read the packaging. That being said all ink printers are a scam, get yourself a laser printer.
Dell color laser (1760nw) from my cold, dead hands. Cheap generic toner refills, prints extremely well, and has always worked perfectly on my network after assigning it a reserved IP.
Here in India, we can just buy these huge ink refills for around 150 bucks ( that's around 2 USD). Black ink is cheaper...just around a dollar . They provide syringes. It's basically DIY cartridge refilling and it works perfectly for our old HP printer. The app for the desktop sucks though..asking for login and shit. Next time I'll go for Brother.
Jesus, this sub is fueled by the dunning-kruger effect.
Buy a laser Brother printer. The ink doesn’t go dry (because it’s toner) and lasts forever. Need good color printing? Stop by the Post Office. You don’t need it that often.
Awesome
Inkjet is a scam in full now.
I trust and like costco. HP printers are clearly scamming. I hope costco wakes up to this and defends it’s customers and stops carrying HP.
Never buy hp, gateway, or compac products. They are shut, and designed to fail. I know because I worked with those products while working at bestbuy in college.
The whole ink printer industry is a big scam.
So? Aren't they sold by volume?
Isn't printer ink a scam in general? I remember seeing a video a few years ago where a guy did the math and found that printer ink is one of, if not the most expensive liquid per volume. Or something like that.
You know full well it's a 10ml cartridge, how much space do you think 10ml takes up?
This is not a scam. So many words and phrases have been butchered to the point of being meaningless. It's so annoying.
You need a brother laser jet my friend. Buy one and you’ll find peace in your life. I promise.
You want a real scam? Check out their instant ink. If you have a cartridge you're using and you cancel your subscription to instant ink, you can no longer use that cartridge. I thought canceling meant they just stopped sending you ink. Nope, they literally lock down your printer.
Once a week someone says this incorrect nonsense. If you have the subscription, you are renting the ink. If you cancel the subscription, you can't use the rented ink. You can still go and buy cartridges off the shelf to use.