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

My mom's printer just bit the dust.

Time to get a brand new one!

I want to buy from the United States.

It has to be an All-in-One inkjet, it should be less than about $80, and it has to have cheap ink available on eBay.

I'm looking at three printers, though I'm open to new ideas.

The first is the Canon PIXMA MX922.

It uses the same kind of ink as the printer that died, and that ink is pretty cheap.

The other options are the Brother MFC-J480DW or it's upgrade, the Brother MFC-J460DW.

It's ink is also pretty cheap.

I do not know which of the options has the cheapest ink, and I don't know which printer to pick.

If you have a suggestion, I'd love to hear it.

We have had HP printers over the last 3 years and they were all very bad. Horrible, actually. Ink always empty (not efficient use of ink), issues with the software client on Macs, overall build quality not good.

The one canon we have had (bought as the last printer) has been excellent so far.

Here we used a system called “continius ink injection”. It looks like 4 (6) bottles with ink connected to the stock (but hacked) cartridge. Im not sure it is available in States.
Upd. Probable available if it have wiki page: Continuous ink system - Wikipedia
Maybe you need to calculate this in comparation with more expensive (but more trouble-free) laser printer?

Thanks for the ideas, but I'll stick to regular ink cartridges and an All-in-One inkjet printer.

I had a regular Epson inkjet that was pretty good.

My mom had an HP All-in-One that used expensive ink.

The Canon that just broke was the best printer we've had, but it only lasted a little over two years.

I would totally avoid Epson.
Inkjet printers are a scam anyways!

I just noticed something.

Amazon says that the the Brother MFC-J460DW is a newer model of the Brother MFC-J480DW.

But the 460 was first listed on Amazon on December 1, 2015...

and the 480 was first available on Amazon on July 28, 2017!

That doesn't add up.

I’ve had the MX922 almost a year and it has performed fine. I have had no problems with aftermarket ink purchased on eBay. Canon ink prices are insane.

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.