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I stopped buying inkjet printers. They are a scam, the ink costs a fortune and they are built as cheap as they can, meaning that they will break and you have to

I stopped buying inkjet printers. They are a scam, the ink costs a fortune and they are built as cheap as they can, meaning that they will break and you have to throw them away because they are impossible to repair, they are slow and when you need them they don't work because they were not used for too much time. After having 5 broken printers in the garage I said enough, that is a useless waste, and invested some money in a mid range laser printer (only b/w, but I don't need to print in color anyway) that doesn't give me any problem, and with a toner that costs 10$ on Amazon (not original, but who cares?) I print 2000 pages. That means that in 5 years that I own it I only changed it 2 times. I really don't see a reason for inkjet printers to exist, I hope they will disappear from the market.

colanderman 5y ago
Careful with off-brand toner. The toner particles are often jagged rather than smooth, which can damage the fuser roller, requiring replacement. This happened to me after a few years of using off-brand toner. I was able to perform the repair myself, and granted the cost wasn't as much as buying on-brand toner, but it was challenging (lots of delicate parts) and I don't wish to repeat the experience.
- EvanAnderson 5y ago
  The bigger problem I've seen w/ off-brand toner are refilled cartridges that are poorly plugged and end up leaking toner all over the inside of the printer. Toner is a nightmare to clean up, and once you get toner deep into the nooks and crannies of a printer you'll never get clean paper output again.
klodolph 5y ago
The exception is if you print photos. There’s not really a good alternative to inkjet, except RA-4, which is out of reach for consumers.
- evgen 5y ago
  If you print photos yourself then you are doing it wrong. Send them to a service that actually has a photo printer that is not a piece of shit and you will find your prints actually lasting longer than the ink cartridge you used to print them with.
- orev 5y ago
  There really is no reason to be printing photos on your own printer (for consumers, though I suspect it’s similar for pros). Every corner drug store (in the US) can print them with better quality and at a lower cost. Maybe it’s a slight hassle, but how many people are printing a significant quantity of photos anymore?
  - mixmastamyk 5y ago
    Don’t they keep copies of your photos and/or metadata? Can’t trust anyone any longer.
  - rdtwo 5y ago
    It’s kind of a pain to go to the drug store at 9pm to Print your kids solar system project. Just saying
    - throwaway09223 5y ago
      Wow, I just use regular paper for school projects lol. I think the disconnect here may be that most people rarely print glossy, so stopping by a store isn't a big deal for the vast majority. If you're really printing glossy on short order demand then of course owning the machine might make sense.
    - lazide 5y ago
      Sounds like something that would be pretty trivial to solve by a ever so slight application of advance planning?
      - factotvm 5y ago
dv_dt 5y ago
After similar shenanigans from HP, I went to Brother laser printers and haven’t looked back since.
- sillyquiet 5y ago
  Yep. Have had a Brother HL-2270 (b&w laser printing) for years, and couldn't be happier with it, especially coupled with a PI-based CUPS server for AirPrint capability and the like. The only thing I miss about not having an inkjet is color printing and at-home photo printing, but there are so many on-demand online print shops nowadays, I can't say it's a big deal.
  - willswire 5y ago
    Pi-based CUPS is the way to go. I developed an image for balenaOS to manage a fleet at the previous enterprise IT company I was with. https://github.com/willswire/balenaPrint https://github.com/willswire/balenaPrint
  - ghaff 5y ago
    It was going to cost me $100+ to refill the inks on my large format HP inkjet photo printer. I took it up to the attic a few months back from whence it will likely go in the trash in a few years. I have the same Brother printer and it just works for occasional B&W printing. The rare color photo prints I want are easily handled (better) online and, while I'd like to print a color map or something now and then, it's not worth having an inkjet printer that will be used so seldom the ink will dry out.
    - KingMachiavelli 5y ago
      For that purpose a color laser jet works just fine although are are much more expensive.
      - ghaff 5y ago
        If I were in need of a new laser printer I'd probably consider color at this point, but it's not worth replacing my existing B&W printer for a once in a blue moon color print.
orev 5y ago
At the low number of pages printed at home, I don’t mind buying the actual name-brand toner. If you’re only changing it every 2 years, the cost doesn’t matter much, and at least the company (i.e. Brother) gets some profit from being a good citizen. Going with non-OEM toner in that situation just drives the company into needing to find more revenue streams, such as locking down the cartridges, which undermines you. At some point people need to be willing to pay a little more to a company that treats them with respect.
- discreditable 5y ago
  I switched to OEM toner after using up some generic stuff I'd been working on for two years. It's barely more expensive and it was nice they included a prepaid shipping label for me to return the used cartridge to them.
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  How about they make their money by selling a good printer? I don't have to buy has from my car company if I want a good car.
  - vlovich123 5y ago
    Would you rate the typical car buying experience as one that’s fair where the customer generally isn’t taken advantage of?
    - throwaway09223 5y ago
      In terms of vendor lock-in on the fuel supply? Yes absolutely.
  - kube-system 5y ago
    It’s has historically proven difficult to sustain that model because the consumer printer market for the past 20 years has been race to the bottom. It’s hard to compete when competitors are selling their printers at or below cost. Consumers mostly tend to make their purchase decisions on the margin, and so the razors-and-blades model works well. I guess there may be a few recent exceptions to this like the Epson Ecotank, although I don’t know how profitable that has been for them.
js2 5y ago
I had a contrary experience and I stopped buying laser printers. I had to toss two Brother lasers in the trash because Brother's customer service on warranty repairs required more hoops than I was willing to deal with. Meanwhile, I ended up with an HP OfficeJet Pro 8620 that was recommended years ago by The Wirecutter and I use HP's ink subscription service. It's never failed on me. It never jams. No fuser or toner to worry about. Ink just magically shows up at my house when I need it. The old cartridges go back to HP for recycling. It is the most reliable printer I have ever owned, and I've owned dozens of printers since the early 1980s of almost every technology. I love it. It is one of the few devices in my home that I can say it Just Works. I will be sad if it ever dies and I can't fix it. Edit: I purchased the HP for $150 in May 2016 on closeout from Office Depot. I've been on the $5/mo or $10/mo plan since then depending upon family needs, so let's say I've spent another $500 since then on ink costs, so I'm at ~ $650 since May 2016. I've printed 16,083 pages, so my lifetime per-page cost is ~ $0.04. Maybe my mistake was going with a cheap color laser. But I've been thrilled with this particular HP and the convenience of their ink subscription program. Meanwhile, Brother's customer service on the laser printers which failed under warranty was terrible. It was the Brother HL-3170CDW. This isn't my review, but it matched my experience, except I mistakenly bought a second printer so I could re-use supplies I already had for the model: https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R32TEW142QU2G6/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B00BQU141C https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R32TEW142QU2G6/re... Edit: reworded for tone. Thank you for the feedback below.
- vlovich123 5y ago
  You probably print a lot if an ink cartridge service is cost effective for you. I’ve had 2 b&w laser printers my entire life, both Brother (after getting annoyed with Epson inkjet printers that were “affordable” in high school). The first got me through engineering school printing maybe 300+ pages a year, so like 2000 pages. Did not replace the toner once and don’t recall any meaningful problems. That printer stayed with my mom and works to this day for her odds and ends (maybe has had one toner replacement). The second is a printer I bought after I moved to California when I ended up needing a printer (went without for a while). It has also lasted a very long time without issues although maybe the toner hasn’t lasted quite as long (but I’ve done things like print out game manuals). It sucks that Google cloud print went away but that’s not Brother’s fault. The wifi connectivity is serviceable although a PITA to set up after a move. Other than that, works flawlessly. No drivers, no maintenance, nothing. Just print, wait ~10s and the printer starts printing at a quick pace. My point is we all have our stories about the printers that work or don’t for us. Objectively though laser printers have lower maintenance on all fronts and used to have a higher upfront cost (although these days, they seem competitive). I’m not sure why you got a couple of lemons. I don’t claim the entire Brother product line is gems either. But I do my research and look for a no-frills standalone H&M’s laser printer that seems particularly beloved by the community. Some times you might need to look for it second hand if it’s not being sold right now or look for it’s spiritual successor. Hasn’t failed me yet but I also don’t buy and use enough printers at volume to have a complete comparative picture.
okl 5y ago
On some toner cartridges you can even tape a piece of paper over the sensor window on the side, that is used to determine fill state with an optical sensor, to get another ~500 pages. Example pictures: https://geekanddad.wordpress.com/2014/03/02/ https://geekanddad.wordpress.com/2014/03/02/
systemvoltage 5y ago
Let's not throw the baby with the bathwater. Injket printers have advantages and can be cheap if we dismantle the highway robbery of inks. Just because inks are expensive does not mean that we should get rid of inkjet technology. > I really don't see a reason for inkjet printers to exist, I hope they will disappear from the market. Perhaps you should investigate why they exist. Seems too naive to wish for their disappearance due to lack of knowledge. https://www.precisioncolors.com/ https://www.precisioncolors.com/ I've been using these for years for Photo printing. Can vouch for excellent quality and affordable price. You need a color calibrator to calibrate these inks + paper.
- thekid314 5y ago
  I'll have to look into them. I've been using https://www.octoink.co.uk https://www.octoink.co.uk for my photo printing and they have been great. The sad thing is that there aren't any good review sites.
  - systemvoltage 5y ago
    I've been using PrecisionInks for 10+ years. It is an old school family business and never once disappointed me. I use this spectrophotometer for calibration: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1369004-REG/x_rite_eostudio_i1studio.html https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1369004-REG/x_rite_eo...
- captn3m0 5y ago
  The highway robbery is what keeps them cheap? Honest Question: Would inkjets remain cheap if they all accepted $STANDARD bottles available everywhere and compatible with all printers.
  - systemvoltage 5y ago
    We solved the similar problem for exchangeable storage media in the form of SD-Cards. Before SD Cards, the whole thing was fragmented like the printer industry. CF cards, minidisks, and proprietary memory sticks. It can be done.
dsego 5y ago
Are the new ones with refill bottles instead of ink cartridges any better?
- Bluestein 5y ago
  Own one, Epson. Ink clogs in piping out of reservoirs ... ... but no big deal.-
- juniperplant 5y ago
  I own an Epson EcoTank ET-2650. Despite costing more than traditional inkjet printers, I find that build quality is not that great (cheap creaking plastic, scanner bed occasionally detatching from its hinge). Another issue I have with it is that ink level reporting is inaccurate; indeed, the manual itself recommends to visually inspect the tanks, which are semi-transparent and can be observed without opening the printer. However, I found that it's impossible to do that because dried ink covering the inner surface of the tank makes it impossible to distinguish the actual ink level line. Because of that, I have to remember to look inside the tanks to check if a refill is needed from time to time. That said, ink lasts ages and refilling is cheap compared to cartridges, so overall I'm happier with it than with any other traditional inkjet printer. If you don't need color printing, laser is the way.
- pepoluan 5y ago
  I have a Brother printer. The ink bottles are so cheap I don't think twice about buying original ink (only saves me less than £0.50 if I buy a third-party ink, not worth it.) The printer itself is quite well-built, never clogged even if I don't use it for weeks. (I do cover it with a table cloth if not in use, though) In short, I'm quite satisfied and will definitely recommend Brother printers to others.
megous 5y ago
Dunno, I have the same cheap HP DeskJet 6940 for 14 years, just buy non-brand b/w ink[head] every 2 years or so and it works fine for occasional home use. I had a laser printer before at home before, and it's slow to warm up, tonner is 10x as expensive as refilled ink head and I kinda fear the tonner particles getting into the air and I breathing them. Page output is similar for much higher price. Quality is better, but for home use I'd only consider laser printer if I was still making PCBs at home.
dreamcompiler 5y ago
Inkjet printers can do a fantastic job of printing photos and color documents, and maybe four times a year I would really like to do that at home. Unfortunately nobody seems to have built an inkjet printer with nozzles that don't gunk up, and cleaning the nozzles doesn't work very well and uses more ink and time than the document you wanted to print in the first place. It's probably possible to design an inkjet printer that actually works as well in the real world as a laser printer, but it would threaten the business model of all the printer manufacturers so I'm not holding my breath.
- dylan604 5y ago
  If your only color print needs are for photos, look into dye sub printers. You can go years in between printing, and use the same roll with no issues. These are pretty much what you get when you order from any brick&mortar store printing from digital files or any modern photobooth kiosk
  - dreamcompiler 5y ago
    Yes dye subs do a great job and they don't gunk up. But unfortunately as you said they are only for photos, they require special paper, and they only print in smaller sizes (i.e. you cannot use one to print a color page of a business report). Their supply costs are high too but that's not a big deal if you use them rarely.
    - dylan604 5y ago
      Why did you feel the need to explain this when as you've said I've already stated for photos? Nobody made a reco to use for doing a report. Not sure if you are aware, but you can get 8x10 prints from a dye sub. For the dye sub market, their prices have definitely gotten much cheaper relative to themselves. They are more expensive that shitting $99 ink jet, but that's the point of this thread.
- toast0 5y ago
  Inkjets work ok and get a lot less gunky if you use them frequently. The problem that I have (and I assume you do too), is if I'm printing a couple of times a year, it's hard to spend two or three times the amount on a laser printer than a cheak inkjet. Even though the laser printer is the right answer. I did end up getting a laser printer last year when my child was printing a lot from chromebooks and Chrome OS stopped supporting cloud print, but also didn't support my inkjet (via network or usb). Shopping at CDW Outlet helped a bunch with pricing, but you have to be in the shopping phase when the right inventory is there.
bigboy12 5y ago
100%. I’ve had 4 Epson printers. All junk.
sxt 5y ago
My friend, if you have the time, learn to refill your cartridges on your own. I own one of them cheap HP 25XX for home use, I simply refuse to buy new cartridges and give in, I instead got a refill kit with 100ml bottles of all colours for ~9$, and now all I need is 15 min of time for refill and the slight risk of creating a mess during the process. The HP cartridge holds an approx 9ml, so that gives an idea of how long those bottles should last(Also colour is 9/3 ml colours). Once these are done, I can just go ahead and get just a few more bottles which drives the price down further. I've had no issues in printing apart from the first time I had done it. I obviously would recommend getting one of those brother Ink tank ones, but there's no need to trash an HP if you can figure to do this and keep a backup cheap maintenance printer. Btw, I still use the stock cartridges that came with the printer, saving on a ton of cash and pain of hunting for cartridges. P.S: I've tried this on 2 other models too with no issues
- koheripbal 5y ago
  15mins here and there, isn't much, but I still paying slightly more for a laser printer and changing the toner cartridge once per year. It takes one minute, and I really dont mind being limited to black/white. My brother MFC has lasted over 10 years now - no repairs needed. It's so old it only allows WEP wifi connection and my kid loves the beeping noises the fax button makes.
JustAnonymous 5y ago
> I really don't see a reason for inkjet printers to exist, I hope they will disappear from the market. What's preventing the exact same thing happening to laser printers? You have to buy toner as well.
jader201 5y ago
I got my first printer in high school, around 90-91. It was an HP laserjet printer, when they were first going mainstream. I loved it, it always printed well, and the toner seemed to last forever. Of course, it was B/W, but that was all I needed. Fast forward to today, I have never owned an inkjet printer. Over the past 30 years I’ve owned a total of 3 laser printers. The second was in 2005, because I wanted a scanner. The third in 2014, because I wanted network. So each one has lasted around 10 years each, and not because they broke, but because I wanted new features. I have forever told anyone asking my advice on printers to avoid inkjets. When they do, they have problems with the ink, either drying out or having to replace them all the time. I agree, inkjets should’ve died a long time ago. The only reason to buy one in the past was if you were on a tight budget and had to have color. But nowadays, color lasers are dropping, or it’s super easy to send something off to X to print it for you.
- EvanAnderson 5y ago
  Fed a diet of the necessary consumables-- toners/drums, fusers, rollers, separation pads, etc-- a 1990s LaserJet will outlive us all. For me, "peak LaserJet" was probably the LaserJet 4 w/ an integral JetDirect. The 4000 that followed was pretty solid and faster but more plastic-ey than the 4.
  - willis936 5y ago
    A fun thought, but my HP LaserJet 4050N from ~1998 crapped out after ~16 years.
    - jacquesm 5y ago
      Ah, just out of warranty... too bad, really! But do not despair, you could probably fix it if you set your mind to it, or make one working one out of two broken ones, assuming you can find another broken one.
      - willis936 5y ago
        This was years ago. I went without for a while but recently decided my demand for color printing and scanning in my home exceeded my supply of cash needed to get a crappy injket. Even used color laserjets are hard to come by for mortal prices.
dghughes 5y ago
And even inkjet vs laser doesn't matter since many companies may do like HP and require you sign into an HP account just to print.
- bluGill 5y ago
  Return it then. Notice that every other thread is saying just buy a brother?
  - dghughes 5y ago
    It's at least five years old and it wasn't a problem until a recent update by HP.
Natsu 5y ago
The last time I bought one, a new printer and ink cost less than just refilling ink. That was a very long time ago. I print infrequently, but need to have color prints available at any time for family, so I got a color laser printer something like 15 years ago. It has wireless so it's on our wifi and I've never had any issues with it, nor have I even run out of the original toner. It was definitely worth it, I never want an inkjet again.
rdiddly 5y ago
Yeah I badly want revenge on the whole industry, or at least a way of banishing them from my life forever, but the local maximum I've attained thus far is to buy bottles of ink, drill small holes in the top of the cartridges, inject ink and cover the holes. The printer still complains of low ink (i.e. it's lying and probably always was), but you can suppress the warning. So it costs me one sheet of paper to find out the truth about my ink levels, and I haven't bought a cartridge in years. I have two color & two black, so I can swap a full one in and refill the empty one at my convenience.
quijoteuniv 5y ago
Exact same situation. Avoid inkjet. Laser b/w if you need photo quality send to print
- Jenda_ 5y ago
  Unfortunately, laser printers have chips counting the lifetime too, e.g. https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-e&q=Samsung+ML-1865+chip https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-e&q=Samsung+M... . Or the HP logic bomb mentioned above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28889672 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28889672 (it was actually a logic bomb, as the check was AFAIK activated several months after the FW upgrade was released).
  - quijoteuniv 5y ago
    This is true in some form, my printer says I am low in ink when I used a non original catrdrige. Slightly annoying
chefandy 5y ago
I constantly print with heavy color usage as a Junior in a graphic design/interaction design BFA program. After painstaking research, I bought a Canon and some refillable ink cartridges. I pay more for paper than ink, which I get for about $15/liter! The print drivers don't accept CMYK— they only accept RGB and do their own internal conversion— so exact color correction is a challenge. Even still, it's passable for proofing/critique prints without fussing or even decent prints of photographs. It would absolutely meet the needs of a casual user. The thing is pretty cheaply built so it's janky as all get-out, but ink included, I haven't touched the expense of the cheapest laser printers— maybe half. I'll upgrade when its limitations outweigh the benefits. (watch out— it won't work on every model. It looks like some cartridge companies sell refillables for models they know won't work without official cartridges, so do some reading!)
greggman3 5y ago
I felt lucky in Japan in that you can print at every convenience store so I'd just walk 1-2 mins to the local store when I needed to print. 10 cents for B/W, 50 for color. In SF you can print at the library which I've done once.
- ksec 5y ago
  I still dont understand why printing as a services has not caught on anywhere else.
  - klodolph 5y ago
    Has it not caught on in the US? You can print as a service nearly everywhere in the country, at places like Fedex Office, Staples, Office Depot, etc. Photo prints can be done at drug stores like CVS and Wallgreen’s (not all locations, though).
officehero 5y ago
> and with a toner that costs 10$ on Amazon If you haven't tried replacing toner without replacing cartridge (the only way to achieve this level of cost efficiency), there may be some intermediate steps that are good to know about: https://youtu.be/HaGQlP23Fqc https://youtu.be/HaGQlP23Fqc
skjoldr 5y ago
I've got two A3 inkjets, an older Epson Stylus Photo 1410 with 3rd party ink tanks installed and externalized waste ink container mod, and a newer Epson L1800 with built-in ink tanks, at my workplace. Both are 6 color photo printers. I've kept them running for years with few problems. Long-term maintenance consists in keeping the nozzle clear of dried pigment, chaniging the rubber paper feed roller every couple of years, and keeping an eye on the ink levels in the tanks and the waste ink container. The 1410 had printed over 110,000 pages by now and is stil going strong. Printing with 3rd party inks is incredibly cheap, I use Korean Ink-mate ink with these two and it costs a fraction of a cent per page. Now, it is true that inkjets are fussy and you need to keep printing with them to keep them operational, but I managed to clean out a very dry nozzle twice with nothing more than a pack of lint-free paper, some specialized cleaning fluids, a pack of syringes, and a thin rubber tube, simply using guides found on the Internet. And I haven't had any mechanical failures yet that weren't caused by the paper feed roller being worn out (which is expected) despite both printers being used daily for years. Maybe I'm just lucky, or maybe Epson did really good with these two models in particular, I don't know.
- jSherz 5y ago
  Any tips on choosing an ink supplier? It seems to be a bit of a crap shoot.
  - skjoldr 5y ago
    I was recommended this ink by local printer servicemen. It turns out they really don't like working on broken inkjets (it's really messy and it's not guaranteed that a dirty nozzle will work even after ultrasonic cleaning), so they tend to give sound advice on how best to keep them running, including ink choice. It really depends on the printer manufacturer and model so YMMV.
ChuckMcM 5y ago
I think that not buying printers is the correct answer, difficult to get everyone to do it, but it is the metric most likely to change behavior. Inkjet technology is fine, it was the exploitation of it by HP which lead to copy cats that really made it ridiculous. I've got an HP inkjet wide format plotter (36" wide) that was built both before HP was all in on ink as a profit center and built by a different division (plotter division). It has been a reliable workhorse for over 20 years now and while I don't use HP ink any more (they don't sell it) third party ink works fine. I replaced my desktop printer with an Epson Eco-tank printer. They claim it comes with 2 years of ink (at my rate that is probably 4 years :-) and they the ink is not expensive. So there are people trying this model of "let's not bother screwing people on ink" and I'm trying to reward them by buying their printer.
- quercusa 5y ago
  I don't think I've ever seen an inkjet plotter in action. Does the paper go through a single pass? I was always fascinated by pen plotters, especially when drawing diagonal lines or changing pens.
  - bondarchuk 5y ago
    It's called a plotter but it's really just a large inkjet printer these days.
  - ChuckMcM 5y ago
    Yes it is single pass, this particular model is an HP750C+. I had a wide format pen plotter before it and it would send the paper back and forth which was pretty mesmerizing but it required a lot of maintenance on the paper handling system so that the paper wouldn't slip. The HP inkjet "plotter" works by rasterizing the plot in the host computer's memory and then sending strips of raster to the plotter. The dot resolution of the print head (replaceable, but not part of the ink system) matches the 0.7mm resolution of the pen plotters it replaced.
- dvdkhlng 5y ago
  Can second the praise for the Epson Eco-Tank printers. Ink is cheap and lasts extremely long. Also I never had any problem with clogged nozzles etc which I used to face frequently on the cheaper printers. (though my Eco-Tank printer is black-and-white only which maybe alleviates many of those problems). Also the integrated scanner worked out-of-the box for me under Debian, after I compiled and installed utsushi [1] from sources (edit: I'm only scanning from the utsushi command-line, no experience WRT integration with sane etc.). [1] https://gitlab.com/utsushi/utsushi https://gitlab.com/utsushi/utsushi
saidajigumi 5y ago
Inkjet printers are fine, so long as you don't need or buy the terrible low-end consumer offerings. As an occasional-use around the house printer, I agree they're absolutely terrible, even without the scammy behavior of virtually every manufacturer. Just inkjet head clogging alone is enough to put anyone off. Inexpensive laser printers have been cheaper, more reliable, and much faster for a decade or more. Pay a bit more these days and you get a nice color laser printer with duplex printing. It's worth noting that even low-end lasers aren't immune to scammy behavior. Manufacturers have pulled sleazy tricks like hard page counts for the toner cartridges, so that even if the cart is still good it won't print. At least in the past, there are often embarrassingly easy workarounds (e.g. a minute to Google, then another minute with a sharpie). That said, once you get up into the (semi-)pro photo/art printers, they're fantastic for that application. i.e. very much not an office printer. The ink per ml in the bigger cart sizes is often one or more orders of magnitude cheaper. You still need to run them enough to keep the heads nice and clean, but they also usually have decent auto-cleaning support built in to help maintain the print head so long as it's getting used periodically.
andrew_ 5y ago
I've got a 20 year old Xerox Laser that's rock solid. Picked it up second hand. I print so little that I'm still on the first toner cartridge I bought. The scanner works well and gets lots of use (only downside is that it doesn't work over the network on Mac, which I can live with)
jonplackett 5y ago
The simple reply is ‘I need colour and I don’t have space for a gigantic colour laser jet printer in my room’ I’d love a master jet but it’s just not in any way affordable / practical.
jolmg 5y ago
> I really don't see a reason for inkjet printers to exist, I hope they will disappear from the market. They're still useful for cheap printed confections. You can use them with edible ink and paper. It's quite nice to print photos on cakes and stuff.
TedShiller 5y ago
I bought an HP LaserJet in 2003. It still works perfectly and prints like a charm every day. I've only changed cartridges twice.
mleo 5y ago
I have been fairly lucky, I guess, with Canon printers. I purchased a large format printer in 2007 to print tabloid size photos. And then I purchased another in 2015 with a scanner. I believe the large format one still worked, but it was large (obviously) and I had less need for it or space for it with kids around. The current one is almost 7 years old. I keep looking at laser printers, but until this one actually dies, there is no point to replace it and I would lose the option to print photos.
cletus 5y ago
Since I've seen this many times before, I would be willing to pet you were buying "cheap" inkjet printers. By "cheap" I mean they take ink cartridges. Never ever ever buy a cartridge inkjet printer. instead buy a tank printer (eg Epson Eco-Tank). They are more expensive. You fill up the ink from a bottle. Cartridge printers are sold at a loss and designed to make a profit from the cartridges. This is why printer manufacturers are constantly fighting third-party cartridges with unnecessary firmware "upgrades". Additionally, the printer will use some of that ink to clean the printer heads so the printer will run out of ink even if you don't print anything. Also, retail printers are typically sold with less-than-full ink cartridges. It's a good example of how consumers buy based on price rather than value. But don't confuse cartridge vs tank inkjet printers. They're completely different beasts.
moonchrome 5y ago
Laser scanner combos are huge compared to an inkjet.
helij 5y ago
I disagree. A few years ago I bought Epson XP-6000 after a few years of laser printers. It's the best printer I ever had. Ink is ok in price but I don't use the printer much. It works whenever I need it though. On top of it, it's also a great photo printer. Printed tens of photos to date and all come out ok - comparable to consumer shop photo printers (the ones you can use in big shops).
Springtime 5y ago
>After having 5 broken printers in the garage I said enough ... I really don't see a reason for inkjet printers to exist, I hope they will disappear from the market. Since I've seen a few negative experiences in this topic, as a contrasting anecdote I've had the one inkjet (Epson) for the past 15 years which has worked fine all through and been useful for printing images and also for the time I used the feature printing on discs.
pepoluan 5y ago
Inkjet printers that use ink tanks are more "honest". In fact, such kind of Inkjet printers are fast replacing the cartridge-based ones in my country. The ink is very inexpensive, you can purchase individual ink bottles (about $3 per bottle, and on average will last about 1000-2000 pages) and not the whole set, and the printers actually were built quite tough. Sure, they're more expensive than the cartridge-based ones (4-5x the price), but one gains economy of operation + more well-built devices.

colanderman 5y ago

Careful with off-brand toner. The toner particles are often jagged rather than smooth, which can damage the fuser roller, requiring replacement. This happened to me after a few years of using off-brand toner. I was able to perform the repair myself, and granted the cost wasn't as much as buying on-brand toner, but it was challenging (lots of delicate parts) and I don't wish to repeat the experience.

EvanAnderson 5y ago
The bigger problem I've seen w/ off-brand toner are refilled cartridges that are poorly plugged and end up leaking toner all over the inside of the printer. Toner is a nightmare to clean up, and once you get toner deep into the nooks and crannies of a printer you'll never get clean paper output again.

klodolph 5y ago

The exception is if you print photos. There’s not really a good alternative to inkjet, except RA-4, which is out of reach for consumers.

evgen 5y ago
If you print photos yourself then you are doing it wrong. Send them to a service that actually has a photo printer that is not a piece of shit and you will find your prints actually lasting longer than the ink cartridge you used to print them with.
orev 5y ago
There really is no reason to be printing photos on your own printer (for consumers, though I suspect it’s similar for pros). Every corner drug store (in the US) can print them with better quality and at a lower cost. Maybe it’s a slight hassle, but how many people are printing a significant quantity of photos anymore?
- mixmastamyk 5y ago
  Don’t they keep copies of your photos and/or metadata? Can’t trust anyone any longer.
- rdtwo 5y ago
  It’s kind of a pain to go to the drug store at 9pm to Print your kids solar system project. Just saying
  - throwaway09223 5y ago
    Wow, I just use regular paper for school projects lol. I think the disconnect here may be that most people rarely print glossy, so stopping by a store isn't a big deal for the vast majority. If you're really printing glossy on short order demand then of course owning the machine might make sense.
  - lazide 5y ago
    Sounds like something that would be pretty trivial to solve by a ever so slight application of advance planning?
    - factotvm 5y ago

dv_dt 5y ago

After similar shenanigans from HP, I went to Brother laser printers and haven’t looked back since.

sillyquiet 5y ago
Yep. Have had a Brother HL-2270 (b&w laser printing) for years, and couldn't be happier with it, especially coupled with a PI-based CUPS server for AirPrint capability and the like. The only thing I miss about not having an inkjet is color printing and at-home photo printing, but there are so many on-demand online print shops nowadays, I can't say it's a big deal.
- willswire 5y ago
  Pi-based CUPS is the way to go. I developed an image for balenaOS to manage a fleet at the previous enterprise IT company I was with. https://github.com/willswire/balenaPrint https://github.com/willswire/balenaPrint
- ghaff 5y ago
  It was going to cost me $100+ to refill the inks on my large format HP inkjet photo printer. I took it up to the attic a few months back from whence it will likely go in the trash in a few years. I have the same Brother printer and it just works for occasional B&W printing. The rare color photo prints I want are easily handled (better) online and, while I'd like to print a color map or something now and then, it's not worth having an inkjet printer that will be used so seldom the ink will dry out.
  - KingMachiavelli 5y ago
    For that purpose a color laser jet works just fine although are are much more expensive.
    - ghaff 5y ago
      If I were in need of a new laser printer I'd probably consider color at this point, but it's not worth replacing my existing B&W printer for a once in a blue moon color print.

orev 5y ago

At the low number of pages printed at home, I don’t mind buying the actual name-brand toner. If you’re only changing it every 2 years, the cost doesn’t matter much, and at least the company (i.e. Brother) gets some profit from being a good citizen. Going with non-OEM toner in that situation just drives the company into needing to find more revenue streams, such as locking down the cartridges, which undermines you. At some point people need to be willing to pay a little more to a company that treats them with respect.

discreditable 5y ago
I switched to OEM toner after using up some generic stuff I'd been working on for two years. It's barely more expensive and it was nice they included a prepaid shipping label for me to return the used cartridge to them.
tsimionescu 5y ago
How about they make their money by selling a good printer? I don't have to buy has from my car company if I want a good car.
- vlovich123 5y ago
  Would you rate the typical car buying experience as one that’s fair where the customer generally isn’t taken advantage of?
  - throwaway09223 5y ago
    In terms of vendor lock-in on the fuel supply? Yes absolutely.
- kube-system 5y ago
  It’s has historically proven difficult to sustain that model because the consumer printer market for the past 20 years has been race to the bottom. It’s hard to compete when competitors are selling their printers at or below cost. Consumers mostly tend to make their purchase decisions on the margin, and so the razors-and-blades model works well. I guess there may be a few recent exceptions to this like the Epson Ecotank, although I don’t know how profitable that has been for them.

js2 5y ago

I had a contrary experience and I stopped buying laser printers. I had to toss two Brother lasers in the trash because Brother's customer service on warranty repairs required more hoops than I was willing to deal with. Meanwhile, I ended up with an HP OfficeJet Pro 8620 that was recommended years ago by The Wirecutter and I use HP's ink subscription service. It's never failed on me. It never jams. No fuser or toner to worry about. Ink just magically shows up at my house when I need it. The old cartridges go back to HP for recycling. It is the most reliable printer I have ever owned, and I've owned dozens of printers since the early 1980s of almost every technology. I love it. It is one of the few devices in my home that I can say it Just Works. I will be sad if it ever dies and I can't fix it. Edit: I purchased the HP for $150 in May 2016 on closeout from Office Depot. I've been on the $5/mo or $10/mo plan since then depending upon family needs, so let's say I've spent another $500 since then on ink costs, so I'm at ~ $650 since May 2016. I've printed 16,083 pages, so my lifetime per-page cost is ~ $0.04. Maybe my mistake was going with a cheap color laser. But I've been thrilled with this particular HP and the convenience of their ink subscription program. Meanwhile, Brother's customer service on the laser printers which failed under warranty was terrible. It was the Brother HL-3170CDW. This isn't my review, but it matched my experience, except I mistakenly bought a second printer so I could re-use supplies I already had for the model: https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R32TEW142QU2G6/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B00BQU141C https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R32TEW142QU2G6/re... Edit: reworded for tone. Thank you for the feedback below.

vlovich123 5y ago
You probably print a lot if an ink cartridge service is cost effective for you. I’ve had 2 b&w laser printers my entire life, both Brother (after getting annoyed with Epson inkjet printers that were “affordable” in high school). The first got me through engineering school printing maybe 300+ pages a year, so like 2000 pages. Did not replace the toner once and don’t recall any meaningful problems. That printer stayed with my mom and works to this day for her odds and ends (maybe has had one toner replacement). The second is a printer I bought after I moved to California when I ended up needing a printer (went without for a while). It has also lasted a very long time without issues although maybe the toner hasn’t lasted quite as long (but I’ve done things like print out game manuals). It sucks that Google cloud print went away but that’s not Brother’s fault. The wifi connectivity is serviceable although a PITA to set up after a move. Other than that, works flawlessly. No drivers, no maintenance, nothing. Just print, wait ~10s and the printer starts printing at a quick pace. My point is we all have our stories about the printers that work or don’t for us. Objectively though laser printers have lower maintenance on all fronts and used to have a higher upfront cost (although these days, they seem competitive). I’m not sure why you got a couple of lemons. I don’t claim the entire Brother product line is gems either. But I do my research and look for a no-frills standalone H&M’s laser printer that seems particularly beloved by the community. Some times you might need to look for it second hand if it’s not being sold right now or look for it’s spiritual successor. Hasn’t failed me yet but I also don’t buy and use enough printers at volume to have a complete comparative picture.

okl 5y ago

On some toner cartridges you can even tape a piece of paper over the sensor window on the side, that is used to determine fill state with an optical sensor, to get another ~500 pages. Example pictures: https://geekanddad.wordpress.com/2014/03/02/ https://geekanddad.wordpress.com/2014/03/02/

systemvoltage 5y ago

Let's not throw the baby with the bathwater. Injket printers have advantages and can be cheap if we dismantle the highway robbery of inks. Just because inks are expensive does not mean that we should get rid of inkjet technology. > I really don't see a reason for inkjet printers to exist, I hope they will disappear from the market. Perhaps you should investigate why they exist. Seems too naive to wish for their disappearance due to lack of knowledge. https://www.precisioncolors.com/ https://www.precisioncolors.com/ I've been using these for years for Photo printing. Can vouch for excellent quality and affordable price. You need a color calibrator to calibrate these inks + paper.

thekid314 5y ago
I'll have to look into them. I've been using https://www.octoink.co.uk https://www.octoink.co.uk for my photo printing and they have been great. The sad thing is that there aren't any good review sites.
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  I've been using PrecisionInks for 10+ years. It is an old school family business and never once disappointed me. I use this spectrophotometer for calibration: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1369004-REG/x_rite_eostudio_i1studio.html https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1369004-REG/x_rite_eo...
captn3m0 5y ago
The highway robbery is what keeps them cheap? Honest Question: Would inkjets remain cheap if they all accepted $STANDARD bottles available everywhere and compatible with all printers.
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  We solved the similar problem for exchangeable storage media in the form of SD-Cards. Before SD Cards, the whole thing was fragmented like the printer industry. CF cards, minidisks, and proprietary memory sticks. It can be done.

dsego 5y ago

Are the new ones with refill bottles instead of ink cartridges any better?

Bluestein 5y ago
Own one, Epson. Ink clogs in piping out of reservoirs ... ... but no big deal.-
juniperplant 5y ago
I own an Epson EcoTank ET-2650. Despite costing more than traditional inkjet printers, I find that build quality is not that great (cheap creaking plastic, scanner bed occasionally detatching from its hinge). Another issue I have with it is that ink level reporting is inaccurate; indeed, the manual itself recommends to visually inspect the tanks, which are semi-transparent and can be observed without opening the printer. However, I found that it's impossible to do that because dried ink covering the inner surface of the tank makes it impossible to distinguish the actual ink level line. Because of that, I have to remember to look inside the tanks to check if a refill is needed from time to time. That said, ink lasts ages and refilling is cheap compared to cartridges, so overall I'm happier with it than with any other traditional inkjet printer. If you don't need color printing, laser is the way.
pepoluan 5y ago
I have a Brother printer. The ink bottles are so cheap I don't think twice about buying original ink (only saves me less than £0.50 if I buy a third-party ink, not worth it.) The printer itself is quite well-built, never clogged even if I don't use it for weeks. (I do cover it with a table cloth if not in use, though) In short, I'm quite satisfied and will definitely recommend Brother printers to others.

megous 5y ago

Dunno, I have the same cheap HP DeskJet 6940 for 14 years, just buy non-brand b/w ink[head] every 2 years or so and it works fine for occasional home use. I had a laser printer before at home before, and it's slow to warm up, tonner is 10x as expensive as refilled ink head and I kinda fear the tonner particles getting into the air and I breathing them. Page output is similar for much higher price. Quality is better, but for home use I'd only consider laser printer if I was still making PCBs at home.

dreamcompiler 5y ago

Inkjet printers can do a fantastic job of printing photos and color documents, and maybe four times a year I would really like to do that at home. Unfortunately nobody seems to have built an inkjet printer with nozzles that don't gunk up, and cleaning the nozzles doesn't work very well and uses more ink and time than the document you wanted to print in the first place. It's probably possible to design an inkjet printer that actually works as well in the real world as a laser printer, but it would threaten the business model of all the printer manufacturers so I'm not holding my breath.

dylan604 5y ago
If your only color print needs are for photos, look into dye sub printers. You can go years in between printing, and use the same roll with no issues. These are pretty much what you get when you order from any brick&mortar store printing from digital files or any modern photobooth kiosk
- dreamcompiler 5y ago
  Yes dye subs do a great job and they don't gunk up. But unfortunately as you said they are only for photos, they require special paper, and they only print in smaller sizes (i.e. you cannot use one to print a color page of a business report). Their supply costs are high too but that's not a big deal if you use them rarely.
  - dylan604 5y ago
    Why did you feel the need to explain this when as you've said I've already stated for photos? Nobody made a reco to use for doing a report. Not sure if you are aware, but you can get 8x10 prints from a dye sub. For the dye sub market, their prices have definitely gotten much cheaper relative to themselves. They are more expensive that shitting $99 ink jet, but that's the point of this thread.
toast0 5y ago
Inkjets work ok and get a lot less gunky if you use them frequently. The problem that I have (and I assume you do too), is if I'm printing a couple of times a year, it's hard to spend two or three times the amount on a laser printer than a cheak inkjet. Even though the laser printer is the right answer. I did end up getting a laser printer last year when my child was printing a lot from chromebooks and Chrome OS stopped supporting cloud print, but also didn't support my inkjet (via network or usb). Shopping at CDW Outlet helped a bunch with pricing, but you have to be in the shopping phase when the right inventory is there.

bigboy12 5y ago

100%. I’ve had 4 Epson printers. All junk.

sxt 5y ago

My friend, if you have the time, learn to refill your cartridges on your own. I own one of them cheap HP 25XX for home use, I simply refuse to buy new cartridges and give in, I instead got a refill kit with 100ml bottles of all colours for ~9$, and now all I need is 15 min of time for refill and the slight risk of creating a mess during the process. The HP cartridge holds an approx 9ml, so that gives an idea of how long those bottles should last(Also colour is 9/3 ml colours). Once these are done, I can just go ahead and get just a few more bottles which drives the price down further. I've had no issues in printing apart from the first time I had done it. I obviously would recommend getting one of those brother Ink tank ones, but there's no need to trash an HP if you can figure to do this and keep a backup cheap maintenance printer. Btw, I still use the stock cartridges that came with the printer, saving on a ton of cash and pain of hunting for cartridges. P.S: I've tried this on 2 other models too with no issues

koheripbal 5y ago
15mins here and there, isn't much, but I still paying slightly more for a laser printer and changing the toner cartridge once per year. It takes one minute, and I really dont mind being limited to black/white. My brother MFC has lasted over 10 years now - no repairs needed. It's so old it only allows WEP wifi connection and my kid loves the beeping noises the fax button makes.

JustAnonymous 5y ago

> I really don't see a reason for inkjet printers to exist, I hope they will disappear from the market. What's preventing the exact same thing happening to laser printers? You have to buy toner as well.

jader201 5y ago

I got my first printer in high school, around 90-91. It was an HP laserjet printer, when they were first going mainstream. I loved it, it always printed well, and the toner seemed to last forever. Of course, it was B/W, but that was all I needed. Fast forward to today, I have never owned an inkjet printer. Over the past 30 years I’ve owned a total of 3 laser printers. The second was in 2005, because I wanted a scanner. The third in 2014, because I wanted network. So each one has lasted around 10 years each, and not because they broke, but because I wanted new features. I have forever told anyone asking my advice on printers to avoid inkjets. When they do, they have problems with the ink, either drying out or having to replace them all the time. I agree, inkjets should’ve died a long time ago. The only reason to buy one in the past was if you were on a tight budget and had to have color. But nowadays, color lasers are dropping, or it’s super easy to send something off to X to print it for you.

EvanAnderson 5y ago
Fed a diet of the necessary consumables-- toners/drums, fusers, rollers, separation pads, etc-- a 1990s LaserJet will outlive us all. For me, "peak LaserJet" was probably the LaserJet 4 w/ an integral JetDirect. The 4000 that followed was pretty solid and faster but more plastic-ey than the 4.
- willis936 5y ago
  A fun thought, but my HP LaserJet 4050N from ~1998 crapped out after ~16 years.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    Ah, just out of warranty... too bad, really! But do not despair, you could probably fix it if you set your mind to it, or make one working one out of two broken ones, assuming you can find another broken one.
    - willis936 5y ago
      This was years ago. I went without for a while but recently decided my demand for color printing and scanning in my home exceeded my supply of cash needed to get a crappy injket. Even used color laserjets are hard to come by for mortal prices.

dghughes 5y ago

And even inkjet vs laser doesn't matter since many companies may do like HP and require you sign into an HP account just to print.

bluGill 5y ago
Return it then. Notice that every other thread is saying just buy a brother?
- dghughes 5y ago
  It's at least five years old and it wasn't a problem until a recent update by HP.

Natsu 5y ago

The last time I bought one, a new printer and ink cost less than just refilling ink. That was a very long time ago. I print infrequently, but need to have color prints available at any time for family, so I got a color laser printer something like 15 years ago. It has wireless so it's on our wifi and I've never had any issues with it, nor have I even run out of the original toner. It was definitely worth it, I never want an inkjet again.

rdiddly 5y ago

Yeah I badly want revenge on the whole industry, or at least a way of banishing them from my life forever, but the local maximum I've attained thus far is to buy bottles of ink, drill small holes in the top of the cartridges, inject ink and cover the holes. The printer still complains of low ink (i.e. it's lying and probably always was), but you can suppress the warning. So it costs me one sheet of paper to find out the truth about my ink levels, and I haven't bought a cartridge in years. I have two color & two black, so I can swap a full one in and refill the empty one at my convenience.

quijoteuniv 5y ago

Exact same situation. Avoid inkjet. Laser b/w if you need photo quality send to print

Jenda_ 5y ago
Unfortunately, laser printers have chips counting the lifetime too, e.g. https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-e&q=Samsung+ML-1865+chip https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-e&q=Samsung+M... . Or the HP logic bomb mentioned above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28889672 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28889672 (it was actually a logic bomb, as the check was AFAIK activated several months after the FW upgrade was released).
- quijoteuniv 5y ago
  This is true in some form, my printer says I am low in ink when I used a non original catrdrige. Slightly annoying

chefandy 5y ago

I constantly print with heavy color usage as a Junior in a graphic design/interaction design BFA program. After painstaking research, I bought a Canon and some refillable ink cartridges. I pay more for paper than ink, which I get for about $15/liter! The print drivers don't accept CMYK— they only accept RGB and do their own internal conversion— so exact color correction is a challenge. Even still, it's passable for proofing/critique prints without fussing or even decent prints of photographs. It would absolutely meet the needs of a casual user. The thing is pretty cheaply built so it's janky as all get-out, but ink included, I haven't touched the expense of the cheapest laser printers— maybe half. I'll upgrade when its limitations outweigh the benefits. (watch out— it won't work on every model. It looks like some cartridge companies sell refillables for models they know won't work without official cartridges, so do some reading!)

greggman3 5y ago

I felt lucky in Japan in that you can print at every convenience store so I'd just walk 1-2 mins to the local store when I needed to print. 10 cents for B/W, 50 for color. In SF you can print at the library which I've done once.

ksec 5y ago
I still dont understand why printing as a services has not caught on anywhere else.
- klodolph 5y ago
  Has it not caught on in the US? You can print as a service nearly everywhere in the country, at places like Fedex Office, Staples, Office Depot, etc. Photo prints can be done at drug stores like CVS and Wallgreen’s (not all locations, though).

officehero 5y ago

> and with a toner that costs 10$ on Amazon If you haven't tried replacing toner without replacing cartridge (the only way to achieve this level of cost efficiency), there may be some intermediate steps that are good to know about: https://youtu.be/HaGQlP23Fqc https://youtu.be/HaGQlP23Fqc

skjoldr 5y ago

I've got two A3 inkjets, an older Epson Stylus Photo 1410 with 3rd party ink tanks installed and externalized waste ink container mod, and a newer Epson L1800 with built-in ink tanks, at my workplace. Both are 6 color photo printers. I've kept them running for years with few problems. Long-term maintenance consists in keeping the nozzle clear of dried pigment, chaniging the rubber paper feed roller every couple of years, and keeping an eye on the ink levels in the tanks and the waste ink container. The 1410 had printed over 110,000 pages by now and is stil going strong. Printing with 3rd party inks is incredibly cheap, I use Korean Ink-mate ink with these two and it costs a fraction of a cent per page. Now, it is true that inkjets are fussy and you need to keep printing with them to keep them operational, but I managed to clean out a very dry nozzle twice with nothing more than a pack of lint-free paper, some specialized cleaning fluids, a pack of syringes, and a thin rubber tube, simply using guides found on the Internet. And I haven't had any mechanical failures yet that weren't caused by the paper feed roller being worn out (which is expected) despite both printers being used daily for years. Maybe I'm just lucky, or maybe Epson did really good with these two models in particular, I don't know.

jSherz 5y ago
Any tips on choosing an ink supplier? It seems to be a bit of a crap shoot.
- skjoldr 5y ago
  I was recommended this ink by local printer servicemen. It turns out they really don't like working on broken inkjets (it's really messy and it's not guaranteed that a dirty nozzle will work even after ultrasonic cleaning), so they tend to give sound advice on how best to keep them running, including ink choice. It really depends on the printer manufacturer and model so YMMV.

ChuckMcM 5y ago

I think that not buying printers is the correct answer, difficult to get everyone to do it, but it is the metric most likely to change behavior. Inkjet technology is fine, it was the exploitation of it by HP which lead to copy cats that really made it ridiculous. I've got an HP inkjet wide format plotter (36" wide) that was built both before HP was all in on ink as a profit center and built by a different division (plotter division). It has been a reliable workhorse for over 20 years now and while I don't use HP ink any more (they don't sell it) third party ink works fine. I replaced my desktop printer with an Epson Eco-tank printer. They claim it comes with 2 years of ink (at my rate that is probably 4 years :-) and they the ink is not expensive. So there are people trying this model of "let's not bother screwing people on ink" and I'm trying to reward them by buying their printer.

quercusa 5y ago
I don't think I've ever seen an inkjet plotter in action. Does the paper go through a single pass? I was always fascinated by pen plotters, especially when drawing diagonal lines or changing pens.
- bondarchuk 5y ago
  It's called a plotter but it's really just a large inkjet printer these days.
- ChuckMcM 5y ago
  Yes it is single pass, this particular model is an HP750C+. I had a wide format pen plotter before it and it would send the paper back and forth which was pretty mesmerizing but it required a lot of maintenance on the paper handling system so that the paper wouldn't slip. The HP inkjet "plotter" works by rasterizing the plot in the host computer's memory and then sending strips of raster to the plotter. The dot resolution of the print head (replaceable, but not part of the ink system) matches the 0.7mm resolution of the pen plotters it replaced.
dvdkhlng 5y ago
Can second the praise for the Epson Eco-Tank printers. Ink is cheap and lasts extremely long. Also I never had any problem with clogged nozzles etc which I used to face frequently on the cheaper printers. (though my Eco-Tank printer is black-and-white only which maybe alleviates many of those problems). Also the integrated scanner worked out-of-the box for me under Debian, after I compiled and installed utsushi [1] from sources (edit: I'm only scanning from the utsushi command-line, no experience WRT integration with sane etc.). [1] https://gitlab.com/utsushi/utsushi https://gitlab.com/utsushi/utsushi

saidajigumi 5y ago

Inkjet printers are fine, so long as you don't need or buy the terrible low-end consumer offerings. As an occasional-use around the house printer, I agree they're absolutely terrible, even without the scammy behavior of virtually every manufacturer. Just inkjet head clogging alone is enough to put anyone off. Inexpensive laser printers have been cheaper, more reliable, and much faster for a decade or more. Pay a bit more these days and you get a nice color laser printer with duplex printing. It's worth noting that even low-end lasers aren't immune to scammy behavior. Manufacturers have pulled sleazy tricks like hard page counts for the toner cartridges, so that even if the cart is still good it won't print. At least in the past, there are often embarrassingly easy workarounds (e.g. a minute to Google, then another minute with a sharpie). That said, once you get up into the (semi-)pro photo/art printers, they're fantastic for that application. i.e. very much not an office printer. The ink per ml in the bigger cart sizes is often one or more orders of magnitude cheaper. You still need to run them enough to keep the heads nice and clean, but they also usually have decent auto-cleaning support built in to help maintain the print head so long as it's getting used periodically.

andrew_ 5y ago

I've got a 20 year old Xerox Laser that's rock solid. Picked it up second hand. I print so little that I'm still on the first toner cartridge I bought. The scanner works well and gets lots of use (only downside is that it doesn't work over the network on Mac, which I can live with)

jonplackett 5y ago

The simple reply is ‘I need colour and I don’t have space for a gigantic colour laser jet printer in my room’ I’d love a master jet but it’s just not in any way affordable / practical.

jolmg 5y ago

> I really don't see a reason for inkjet printers to exist, I hope they will disappear from the market. They're still useful for cheap printed confections. You can use them with edible ink and paper. It's quite nice to print photos on cakes and stuff.

TedShiller 5y ago

I bought an HP LaserJet in 2003. It still works perfectly and prints like a charm every day. I've only changed cartridges twice.

mleo 5y ago

I have been fairly lucky, I guess, with Canon printers. I purchased a large format printer in 2007 to print tabloid size photos. And then I purchased another in 2015 with a scanner. I believe the large format one still worked, but it was large (obviously) and I had less need for it or space for it with kids around. The current one is almost 7 years old. I keep looking at laser printers, but until this one actually dies, there is no point to replace it and I would lose the option to print photos.

cletus 5y ago

Since I've seen this many times before, I would be willing to pet you were buying "cheap" inkjet printers. By "cheap" I mean they take ink cartridges. Never ever ever buy a cartridge inkjet printer. instead buy a tank printer (eg Epson Eco-Tank). They are more expensive. You fill up the ink from a bottle. Cartridge printers are sold at a loss and designed to make a profit from the cartridges. This is why printer manufacturers are constantly fighting third-party cartridges with unnecessary firmware "upgrades". Additionally, the printer will use some of that ink to clean the printer heads so the printer will run out of ink even if you don't print anything. Also, retail printers are typically sold with less-than-full ink cartridges. It's a good example of how consumers buy based on price rather than value. But don't confuse cartridge vs tank inkjet printers. They're completely different beasts.

moonchrome 5y ago

Laser scanner combos are huge compared to an inkjet.

helij 5y ago

I disagree. A few years ago I bought Epson XP-6000 after a few years of laser printers. It's the best printer I ever had. Ink is ok in price but I don't use the printer much. It works whenever I need it though. On top of it, it's also a great photo printer. Printed tens of photos to date and all come out ok - comparable to consumer shop photo printers (the ones you can use in big shops).

Springtime 5y ago

>After having 5 broken printers in the garage I said enough ... I really don't see a reason for inkjet printers to exist, I hope they will disappear from the market. Since I've seen a few negative experiences in this topic, as a contrasting anecdote I've had the one inkjet (Epson) for the past 15 years which has worked fine all through and been useful for printing images and also for the time I used the feature printing on discs.

pepoluan 5y ago

Inkjet printers that use ink tanks are more "honest". In fact, such kind of Inkjet printers are fast replacing the cartridge-based ones in my country. The ink is very inexpensive, you can purchase individual ink bottles (about $3 per bottle, and on average will last about 1000-2000 pages) and not the whole set, and the printers actually were built quite tough. Sure, they're more expensive than the cartridge-based ones (4-5x the price), but one gains economy of operation + more well-built devices.