The best cheap printer with cheap ink... Advice needed.

It looks like the 480 has more functions and is cheaper than the 460, so I'm no longer interested in the 460.

I love aftermarket ink.

It probably decreases the lifespan of the printer, but I consider them disposable anyways.

That's why I won't pay much for a printer.

All printers, especially inkjet are a ripoff. They would probably give a printer if you would agree to buy a few sets of replacement cartridges. The cartridges are where the ripoff begins. Trust me on this. Buy a laser, then just replace the toner with toner powder bought off of Ebay or Amazon. Do this, search ebay for laser toner and see which model printers come up, buy one of those. You can replace the toner many times before the waste area(forgot what it is called) fills up.

Link to toner powder on ebay. Many more available.

today they make the printers dirt cheap with tiny ink cartriges —- therefore you always need more—-especially the included with the printer ones

I just bought a Canon 2410 on Saturday. I have 3 dead printers at home, on all of them the ink cartridges cost a fortune and dried up, replacing them cost as much as the printer.

The canon cost 3 times as much as the cheapest cartridge inkjet, but is an ink tank model, which comes with enough ink to print thousands of pages of black and colour, and you buy big bottles instead of cartridges, so you don’t waste much when clearing the jets etc, and you can see through the transparent tanks what the level is like. Ink should be 1/10 the cost per page.

They tell me since it is water based ink it doesn’t clog like the cartridge ones?

3 year warranty. I hope it works out as intended. At least with the huge amount of ink available I won’t be worried about wastage if I print regular pages just to keep it from drying up. Don’t even need to connect to do that, can do a colour photocopy.

That Canon PIXMA G2410 looks pretty cool.

(I don't think it's available in the U.S.)

Picked up a HP on sale last year at Walmart for $15.99 including Ink. That's about all I would pay for any inkjet printer as all brands have let me down. A year later and this one is still working.

The higher end Epson Printers that use the ‘eco-tank’ technolgoy are reasonbly good, and use ink that comes in bottles and goes into a tank. The bad news is these start at about $240. Because the printer price reflects the real cost of manufacture, there is no need to recover the cost via the cost of ink cartridges so on a per page bases, they are much less expensive to use than any of the ink cartridge printers… However none of the inkjet printer work very well unless they are used frequently. None of the color lasers can produce photo quality images, but none of them care very much whether you use them daily or monthly, the ink jet printers generally don’t work well with only occasional use. So I have an Epson that I use for photos, but understand I am going to need fresh cartridges almost every time. I only use it on rare occasions. For things that don’t need photo quality is use an HP laserjet Pro. High initial cost, but pretty low per page cost. Any printer that uses a cartridge and drop on demand technology are going to be expensive per page. Drop on demand cartridge have very finite life compared to ‘pump’ driven ink jet printers.

My mom uses her printers frequently, and if the ink is super cheap on eBay, the overall cost is actually pretty low.

I would recommend going to Amazon or ebay, searching for “ink cartridge”, then sorting by price, then seeing what models of printers are compatible with that cheap cartridge. Once you find a printer that fits your needs, you know you have the cheapest ink on the planet.

What I've been doing is finding highly rated printers on Consumer Reports and Amazon, then researching the price of the ink for that printer on eBay.

(The vast majority of highly rated printers have expensive ink.)

I think your method would take many times longer, but I may try it out.

Racoon, you didn’t say how often your mom uses the printer.
If it’s daily with fairly heavy usage, then cheap ink is important.
I don’t use my printer very often any more so my ink cartridges last quite a long time.
(especially now that my daughter’s moved out!! - she could bleed cartridges dry in no time at all)
I generally buy a cheap Epson printer when it’s on sale for about $50. I replace the black ink a few times but when the color cartridges empty, I go and buy a new printer which is cheaper than replacing all the ink.

i hate ink-jet printer, they’re cheap, but their ink (genuie) is totally insane to me
it’s like they give away printer but make money from selling thier ink, not their machine

My mom uses the printer about once a week.

She prints about six color pages and six black and white pages per week.

I buy the ink.

I've paid about $16 for ink over the last 2 years and 4 months.

And we haven't used up all the ink before the printer broke.

My older model Brother has been good . It uses separate color inks that can be found after market. I think it cost about $50-$60 on sale .

I'm leaning towards Brother right now.

I'm hoping it'll last longer than the Canon did.

The Brother is $50 at a few places.

I only link to Amazon because I like the customer reviews on Amazon.

By the way, a lot of the complaints on Amazon for that Brother model is because of the ink system the printer has, but there's an easy hack for that.

You're right.

A lot of manufacturers do make little money on the printer, and plenty of money on the ink.

If you buy a new printer for the new ink cartridge, check the fill. Usually the cartridges it comes with new printers are full sized… but only filled 10% full! So the “expensive” replacement cartridges might be cheaper per drop of ink than a new printer. Somewhere in the fine print it will tell you if that new printer has near-empty cartridges when you buy it.

Raccoon,

If you only spent $16 on ink in all that time, you’ve done really well.
My very first printer, a Canon, also only lasted about 2 years.
At $50 or $60, I don’t think they make these things to last too long.
I reckon there’s not much difference between those 3 printers you’re looking at.
I’d go with the one with the cheapest ink.

Hi Joshk,

I have heard that before about the ink in new printers, but so far I have had a fairly good run with ink lasting.
I may have just been lucky. Usually it’s the black that finishes before the colors.