The market is saturated with cheap (typically loss-leader) printers because the vast majority of people do not give any serious consideration to the printer(s)

The market is saturated with cheap (typically loss-leader) printers because the vast majority of people do not give any serious consideration to the printer(s) they buy; they go to a store or to Amazon and buy something that's cheap, looks decent, and (on Amazon) has decent reviews. You will not be able to build a better printer than the unreliable garbage on the consumer market without finding some way to get people to pay significantly more than they presently are, and if reliability and ink prices could drive that decision I don't think we'd have arrived at this situation in the first place. The other fundamental option seems to be abandoning consumer printers altogether in favor of Printing-as-a-Service; but people often need to print things on short notice and often need to print paperwork that may contain very private/sensitive information. I don't think fast (not just same-day but within say 1hr) delivery is feasible without driving the price so high that a consumer inkjet is financially the better choice for most people. As for privacy concerns, they seem pretty fundamentally unavoidable as far as I can see. I wish you luck; the market as it is sucks. Like others here have already commented I just settled for a Brother B&W laser printer for on-demand document printing needs and Printing-as-a-Service for photos.