4 ms·

Somehow I never knew about these. Seems too good to be true. What's the catch? If there is no catch I might pick one up next week!

derekp7 7y ago
The catch is that you don't get the printer for $50 bucks. You pay the actual price for the printer, since it isn't subsidized by ink sales.
- adem 7y ago
  You saying this made me realize that buying an inkjet printer is akin to buying a phone with a contract - crazy.
  - arcticbull 7y ago
    Razors and razor blades
    - chrisseaton 7y ago
      I've never understood this example. A razor without the blade is just a handle. All the engineering is in the blades. Of course the handle is cheap and the blades are expensive.
      - arcticbull 7y ago
        In this specific case it’s about margins. They sell the razors (and starter packs) at cost then make all the money selling high margin blades. Quantity of engineering isn’t relevant, they’ve got their production lines well and truly set up, now they just hit “run” and "overcharge" you. That’s why dollar shave club exists. Even Harry’s bought an existing maker of blades in Germany. This is evidenced by the fact that safety razors sell in 100-packs for $15 on Amazon ($0.15 each) while a 15-pack of Mach 3 cartridges (the simplest/oldest variety AFAIK) sells on Amazon for $22 ($1.45 each). Unless you're suggesting that the "engineering" it took for them to sell you 1.5 safety razors in a piece of plastic is worth 10X the price of the blades alone, I'd posit that's where the margin is.
- steve19 7y ago
  I wonder what the lifespan of the printers are.
- hdra 7y ago
  Theres also plenty of modification kit available to install those tanks on regular cartridge printers. That way you can still get the cheap printers, though it is considered an "unauthorized modification", so you can forget about warranties and such..
rstuart4133 7y ago
There is no catch, if you define a catch is something you learn after you've paid for the product. But at first I was so skeptical that I went down to the local stationery supplier to price a bottle of ink for the Epson EcoTank before purchasing the printer. It really was $14 for bottle rated at 6K pages. The print nozzles were guaranteed not to dry out if unused for 2 years - and the printer came with a 3 year warranty so I guess that's real. I owned a Brother Colour laser before this. It was a lovely printer. It cost the same as the EcoTank and was a bit faster, but a set of genuine toner cartridges cost almost as much as the printer. And the inkjet is lighter, smaller and uses far less power. The only down side is Epson's Linux drivers truly suck. They looked to provide source but it turns out that's just the front end - the rendering engine is shipped as pre-built libraries that get linked in at the end. And of course those libraries get SIGSEGV's, yielding only a bank page. Looking for the reason is how I found out there was no source for them. The scanner software their download centre offers didn't work at all. When I chased that down I found it was open source, provided presumably for free by kind person from Norway and Seiko rebranded it and made it available in their download section for my printer. That kind person did list the hardware it worked with, and my printer wasn't in the list so I don't know why Seiko put it there. Finally the PWG/Raster protocol, aka cups internal raster format, aka "cups driverless", aka cloud print didn't work at all. Way to go, Epson. What did work is CUP's native escpr drivers. So I can print, and even with these old drivers the colour quality is better than the laser. So I'm happy. But brickbats to Seiko/Epson for their godawful software nonetheless.

derekp7 7y ago

The catch is that you don't get the printer for $50 bucks. You pay the actual price for the printer, since it isn't subsidized by ink sales.

adem 7y ago
You saying this made me realize that buying an inkjet printer is akin to buying a phone with a contract - crazy.
- arcticbull 7y ago
  Razors and razor blades
  - chrisseaton 7y ago
    I've never understood this example. A razor without the blade is just a handle. All the engineering is in the blades. Of course the handle is cheap and the blades are expensive.
    - arcticbull 7y ago
      In this specific case it’s about margins. They sell the razors (and starter packs) at cost then make all the money selling high margin blades. Quantity of engineering isn’t relevant, they’ve got their production lines well and truly set up, now they just hit “run” and "overcharge" you. That’s why dollar shave club exists. Even Harry’s bought an existing maker of blades in Germany. This is evidenced by the fact that safety razors sell in 100-packs for $15 on Amazon ($0.15 each) while a 15-pack of Mach 3 cartridges (the simplest/oldest variety AFAIK) sells on Amazon for $22 ($1.45 each). Unless you're suggesting that the "engineering" it took for them to sell you 1.5 safety razors in a piece of plastic is worth 10X the price of the blades alone, I'd posit that's where the margin is.
steve19 7y ago
I wonder what the lifespan of the printers are.
hdra 7y ago
Theres also plenty of modification kit available to install those tanks on regular cartridge printers. That way you can still get the cheap printers, though it is considered an "unauthorized modification", so you can forget about warranties and such..

rstuart4133 7y ago

There is no catch, if you define a catch is something you learn after you've paid for the product. But at first I was so skeptical that I went down to the local stationery supplier to price a bottle of ink for the Epson EcoTank before purchasing the printer. It really was $14 for bottle rated at 6K pages. The print nozzles were guaranteed not to dry out if unused for 2 years - and the printer came with a 3 year warranty so I guess that's real. I owned a Brother Colour laser before this. It was a lovely printer. It cost the same as the EcoTank and was a bit faster, but a set of genuine toner cartridges cost almost as much as the printer. And the inkjet is lighter, smaller and uses far less power. The only down side is Epson's Linux drivers truly suck. They looked to provide source but it turns out that's just the front end - the rendering engine is shipped as pre-built libraries that get linked in at the end. And of course those libraries get SIGSEGV's, yielding only a bank page. Looking for the reason is how I found out there was no source for them. The scanner software their download centre offers didn't work at all. When I chased that down I found it was open source, provided presumably for free by kind person from Norway and Seiko rebranded it and made it available in their download section for my printer. That kind person did list the hardware it worked with, and my printer wasn't in the list so I don't know why Seiko put it there. Finally the PWG/Raster protocol, aka cups internal raster format, aka "cups driverless", aka cloud print didn't work at all. Way to go, Epson. What did work is CUP's native escpr drivers. So I can print, and even with these old drivers the colour quality is better than the laser. So I'm happy. But brickbats to Seiko/Epson for their godawful software nonetheless.