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What's a brand of printer that doesn't sell the printer at a loss and then has you pay through the nose for tiny cartridges of ink? I made the mistake of buying

What's a brand of printer that doesn't sell the printer at a loss and then has you pay through the nose for tiny cartridges of ink? I made the mistake of buying a Canon once and now I'm looking for a new printer.

opencl 8y ago
If you don't do a lot of photo printing I'd highly recommend getting a laser printer. Far more reliable than inkjets, never dry out, and the toner is cheap. I got an $80 black and white Brother nearly a decade ago and it still works fine. These days you can get color laser machines under $200 and the toner remains far cheaper than ink cartridges. The other way to avoid paying through the nose for tiny ink cartridges is to get a printer with refillable ink, i.e. Epson's EcoTank branded models or one of the many third party refillable cartridge solutions. But these always end up drying out and clogging if they're not used frequently enough.
- ams6110 8y ago
  I second the laser printer for people who only print occasionally. I have a cheap Samsung ML-1710 laser printer. Bought it for under $100. Unfortunately neither Apple nor Foomatic include drivers for it any longer so it's become a doorstop. If anyone knows where to find a working driver from a reputable source I'd love to know. Edit: Apparently splix driver works for this one. https://www.openprinting.org/driver/splix https://www.openprinting.org/driver/splix I swear the ML-1710 model did not show up last time I checked the printer list. Maybe I just missed it.
  - mpol 8y ago
    Samsung gives out drivers for download. A simple search found it: https://driver-samsung.com/samsung-printer-ml-1710-drivers/ https://driver-samsung.com/samsung-printer-ml-1710-drivers/ I own a ML-1660 for now 7 years and the drivers still work fine for me. Just no duplex printing, which is a shame.
    - ams6110 8y ago
      Yes but the drivers they have don't work on current MacOS. Mac OS X (Tiger) v10.4 is the latest.
      - secabeen 8y ago
        Interestingly, this is to some degree an Apple problem. Microsoft has no problem supporting printer drivers from Windows 7 (or before) in Windows 10, or Windows XP drivers in Windows 7. It's so very Apple to regularly throw out history.
- sevensor 8y ago
  Brother also has halfway decent Linux drivers, depending on the model. We have one in the office. It's mostly OK, except I can't un-confuse it about letter versus A4, and it won't duplex. But at least it doesn't lock up hard when I send it print jobs, like the Canon does.
- abawany 8y ago
  I was able to get a Ricoh 250SF (all-in-one color laser with fax) for under $200 last year. It is an overbuilt and heavy tank with slight driver unfriendliness but I have no complaints with its superb print quality, ability to scan to a USB drive/Samba share/email, and good support on Win 7/8/10 and OSX.
timfoden 8y ago
I asked myself the same sort of question a couple of years ago and ended up buying an Epson L355. This printer has ink tanks on the side that you refill, and tubes going to the print head. The ink refills are way cheaper than normal "attached-to-the-print-head" ones on a price-to-volume-of-ink basis. Also there's no way for the printer to tell whether or not Epson branded ink was used. The only problems I have with it are: (1) it's WiFi seems to drop the DHCP lease after it auto-powers off, so I fix this by telling the router to always give it a fixed address, otherwise the PC's that saw the printer before can no longer talk to it, and (2) over time the odd "pins" on the print head get gummed up, and you have to run the process to fix this through a number of cycles to fix them all.
- indigodaddy 8y ago
  I've had an Epson Workforce 845 for many many years and it's been an excellent printer, and I buy the aftermarket ink usually. Even though I use it nominally, I don't think it's an ink hog like the other big names..
mikestew 8y ago
What's a brand of printer that doesn't sell the printer at a loss Brother B&W laser printer. You want color? Go to Kinkos. That's what we do at our house, at least. It is rare that the printout really needs to be in color, so rare that I can't remember the last time we actually went to Kinkos to print something. And Brother makes a solid printer. Consumables prices? Dunno, I change the toner so rarely. I do remember that the last time I bought one, they were so cheap that I bought two instead of the one I planned.
dragonwriter 8y ago
> What's a brand of printer that doesn't sell the printer at a loss and then has you pay through the nose for tiny cartridges of ink? You can't tell by brand (at least company) because all the manufacturers do it at the low end, because the dynamics at the low end of the market make it a losing strategy to do otherwise.

opencl 8y ago

If you don't do a lot of photo printing I'd highly recommend getting a laser printer. Far more reliable than inkjets, never dry out, and the toner is cheap. I got an $80 black and white Brother nearly a decade ago and it still works fine. These days you can get color laser machines under $200 and the toner remains far cheaper than ink cartridges. The other way to avoid paying through the nose for tiny ink cartridges is to get a printer with refillable ink, i.e. Epson's EcoTank branded models or one of the many third party refillable cartridge solutions. But these always end up drying out and clogging if they're not used frequently enough.

ams6110 8y ago
I second the laser printer for people who only print occasionally. I have a cheap Samsung ML-1710 laser printer. Bought it for under $100. Unfortunately neither Apple nor Foomatic include drivers for it any longer so it's become a doorstop. If anyone knows where to find a working driver from a reputable source I'd love to know. Edit: Apparently splix driver works for this one. https://www.openprinting.org/driver/splix https://www.openprinting.org/driver/splix I swear the ML-1710 model did not show up last time I checked the printer list. Maybe I just missed it.
- mpol 8y ago
  Samsung gives out drivers for download. A simple search found it: https://driver-samsung.com/samsung-printer-ml-1710-drivers/ https://driver-samsung.com/samsung-printer-ml-1710-drivers/ I own a ML-1660 for now 7 years and the drivers still work fine for me. Just no duplex printing, which is a shame.
  - ams6110 8y ago
    Yes but the drivers they have don't work on current MacOS. Mac OS X (Tiger) v10.4 is the latest.
    - secabeen 8y ago
      Interestingly, this is to some degree an Apple problem. Microsoft has no problem supporting printer drivers from Windows 7 (or before) in Windows 10, or Windows XP drivers in Windows 7. It's so very Apple to regularly throw out history.
sevensor 8y ago
Brother also has halfway decent Linux drivers, depending on the model. We have one in the office. It's mostly OK, except I can't un-confuse it about letter versus A4, and it won't duplex. But at least it doesn't lock up hard when I send it print jobs, like the Canon does.
abawany 8y ago
I was able to get a Ricoh 250SF (all-in-one color laser with fax) for under $200 last year. It is an overbuilt and heavy tank with slight driver unfriendliness but I have no complaints with its superb print quality, ability to scan to a USB drive/Samba share/email, and good support on Win 7/8/10 and OSX.

timfoden 8y ago

I asked myself the same sort of question a couple of years ago and ended up buying an Epson L355. This printer has ink tanks on the side that you refill, and tubes going to the print head. The ink refills are way cheaper than normal "attached-to-the-print-head" ones on a price-to-volume-of-ink basis. Also there's no way for the printer to tell whether or not Epson branded ink was used. The only problems I have with it are: (1) it's WiFi seems to drop the DHCP lease after it auto-powers off, so I fix this by telling the router to always give it a fixed address, otherwise the PC's that saw the printer before can no longer talk to it, and (2) over time the odd "pins" on the print head get gummed up, and you have to run the process to fix this through a number of cycles to fix them all.

indigodaddy 8y ago
I've had an Epson Workforce 845 for many many years and it's been an excellent printer, and I buy the aftermarket ink usually. Even though I use it nominally, I don't think it's an ink hog like the other big names..

mikestew 8y ago

What's a brand of printer that doesn't sell the printer at a loss Brother B&W laser printer. You want color? Go to Kinkos. That's what we do at our house, at least. It is rare that the printout really needs to be in color, so rare that I can't remember the last time we actually went to Kinkos to print something. And Brother makes a solid printer. Consumables prices? Dunno, I change the toner so rarely. I do remember that the last time I bought one, they were so cheap that I bought two instead of the one I planned.

dragonwriter 8y ago

> What's a brand of printer that doesn't sell the printer at a loss and then has you pay through the nose for tiny cartridges of ink? You can't tell by brand (at least company) because all the manufacturers do it at the low end, because the dynamics at the low end of the market make it a losing strategy to do otherwise.