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.
I had a Brother DCP 7065DN B/W laser printer for a couple of years and it works great, the toner ink is super cheap on ebay, not sure if the Color version is refillable…
Get the Epson L250
External ink may be messy when refill but with care it should be fine.
Crack and hacks are available online so aftermarket ink could be used.
With that being said I live in Malaysia and its easy for me to get both original ink and fakes and they both cost pretty cheap.
My office used one of these and a fresh refill of all ink the tank lasted us up to 2 years of almost every day printing photo reference
I never liked cartridges as they cheat consumer too much. With this you can refill fake inks and the hack can recalibrate the color of different ink.
But only use fakes if all you ever need is just visuals on paper. If you’re printing color accurate photo paper and such do stick back to original.
A few hacks have been suggested here. They are great for your own use, but don’t set your mother up with a hack :zipper_mouth_face:
Every ink printer under $100 is more ore less for dispose.
If you want less dried heads you have to buy business models. They print for less then a cent per text page.
Epson EcoTank got lately god reviews
Because I print 1 page in two months I got a 180€ SOHO monochrome laser printer.
hacks were great but I’ve never had problem with other people who are unaware of the hack being an issue once I set them up right.
But again it varies printer to printer so I wouldn’t comment much
From what I read, the Brother printer hack is pretty simple.
You just add a piece of non-clear tape to the printer cartridge window, and the printer thinks the cartridge is full so that you can use ALL of the ink.