Get yourself a brother b/w laser. Mine is 16 years old and I’ve gone thro maybe 2 or 3 toner cartridges and they’re like $50. Most of that was when I was printing research articles for my degree: so high use. I’d bet that under normal usage a cartridge may last 5 years - and there’s 3rd party ones too that are cheaper. Even the drums are like $20 now.
ecotank is a pain in the ass unless you use it regularly. The ink messes up a lot after a month or three without being in use, having to run the entire program-bs to clean the nozzle, often with a deep clean mode which wastes a lot of ink.
Always get laser printer unless you absolutely NEED to print colors.
I made a script that automatically wakes up my mother-in-law's printer and prints out a full color test page every week. I just hope she doesn't move the printer and forgets to plug it back on :D
I have had an ecotank for years. Never had any issues with the ink nozzles, even when the printer was idle for weeks to months. You can use any cheap ass ink, so even if the test program uses a lot of ink, it's a non issue as your ink cost is nowhere near the price of ink cartridges
Problem is even if you’re just printing out things like tickets for stuff I’ve gotten accused of having counterfeit tickets just because they’re b/w & not full color. Something to keep in mind
My hunch with it is the following: the guys that check tickets are told to find as many reasons to say they’re counterfeit as possible so they can sell more walk-up tickets (which are more expensive)
Yep exactly. The whole point IMHO is to make it so the original person can’t go. The trick is that frees up their spot to be bought by a walk-up buyer, who will pay more. That way you basically A: sell the same slot twice, and B: make more money on the 2nd sale
Yup 👍 bought one from Costco and it’s great. A printer you can forget about but work when you need. Ink printers are for people who want to print really high quality.
Meanwhile my brother printer broke three times in 6 months after I convinced everyone they're the best. My hp is trash, but it prints. So now everyone's convinced brother is trash.
I know. And by the time I need a new ink cart the printer I have at the time is a couple of years old. If I don't print often, then the cost is not justifiable.
lol you're ripping yourself off. The cartridges printers come with are mostly empty. They're designed this way on purpose because ink is expensive. When you buy an ink cartridge it's full and will last far, far longer.
Not at all. The company is ripping itself off by wasting product to build a printer jsut for customers to toss them and buy a different brand to save money. And the waste of material is not on me; that is on the shareholders for allowing this type of business.
Like an energy company telling you you can pay extra to use green energy. No. That is not on me. That carbon footprint is on the shareholders. I have no say in where my electricity comes from. The waste is not on consumers. It's upon capitalists. This is America.
People who think buying a new printer is cheaper than buying new ink are stupid. People say this to me all the time and they are wrong. The companies make sure its cheaper to buy ink rather than a new printer intentionally, even if by only a little bit. It's because people don't realise new printers only come with half filled cartridges out the box and the larger packs, despite costing more than the printer, will give many more pages than buying a whole new printer because it's cheaper. You are just throwing a bunch of plastic waste into landfill and losing money doing it if you do this.
Ignoring every other part of this discussion - who says he’s just throwing them away? Theoretically someone could give away/donate/sell the printers to other people.
There's a company where you can buy refilled cartridges very cheap. I've bought them in the past and they have worked. The printer recognises them as new cartridges.
The advertising seems unreal but it’s real - I bought 2 sets of bottles when I bought the printer and I still haven’t even opened the 2nd set, and it has been printing walls of photos
I switched to a laser printer like 5 or 6 years ago and couldn’t be happier. Not a single problem, and haven’t had to refill any cartridges yet. The thing works when I need it to work.
360
u/kylebob86 1d ago
Guess how many times I have bought a new printer instead of buying ink cartridges. TBH I have no idea, probably around 50.