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After avoiding inkjet printers for some 30 years, I purchased a colour inkjet printer after comparing the cost per page to a colour laser. Granted, I went for a

by II2II 3y ago

After avoiding inkjet printers for some 30 years, I purchased a colour inkjet printer after comparing the cost per page to a colour laser. Granted, I went for a tank based (rather than cartridge based) printer. Will I be happy with the decision 10 years down the road (which is the age of my current laser printer)? I have no idea. But the point is that you can avoid the cartridge based inkjets and get something where you refill the colours according to your needs. I also suspect that some of the applications mentioned in the article aren't using the built-to-a-price-point inkjet printers. Quality varies. Sometimes you have to check the reviews and pay a bit more for that quality.

tombert 3y ago
Which model did you get?
- LoganDark 3y ago
  I don't know if this is what they purchased, but EcoTank is a good term to search for if you want an inkjet that won't charge you an arm and a leg for proprietary cartridges. The basic idea is that instead of swappable cartridges, they just have ink tanks that you top up from a squirt bottle. These bottles are cheaper than any cartridge while containing like ten times the amount of ink.
- II2II 3y ago
  I ended up getting an Epson EcoTank printer (ET-4850). Specifications claim to have 7500 page (black) and 6000 page (cym) yields, which is around what I would expect for a similarly priced monochrome laser printer. The ink itself costs about 1/2 of that for toner a similarly priced monochrome laser printer (black only, verses all four bottles). Colour lasers are more expensive for supplies. Would I recommend it? No idea. I'm still new to the inkjet printer market. I'm sure hiccups will pop up along the way. On the other hand: it works in Linux, is quiet, and the lights don't dim when it comes to life. (It is also worth mentioning that it is more of a document printer than a photo printer.)
  - throwanem 3y ago
    I happened to pick up the same model a little while back, to replace an HP that died after most of a decade of good service - Instant Ink's an amazingly good deal, if you use it for photos, but I wanted something I could easily use better than stock inks in. The resolution is reasonable, though the default color settings produce a blue cast (vs. both on-screen rendering and my Pixma Pro 100, as well as the HP it replaced) that I haven't figured out how to reliably prevent yet. As a photographer this irks me greatly, enough so that I won't print my own work on it until the problem is solved; others may not care. It tends to go into deep sleep and need a poke to start listening to the network again, which is annoying when it lives with the other printers in the attic. I work around this with a homelab cron job that curls the printer's admin web interface once a minute. Other than that it's been solid thus far, though admittedly I've only had it a few months. Certainly it'll be a while before I need to refill it.

by II2II 3y ago

tombert 3y ago

Which model did you get?

LoganDark 3y ago
I don't know if this is what they purchased, but EcoTank is a good term to search for if you want an inkjet that won't charge you an arm and a leg for proprietary cartridges. The basic idea is that instead of swappable cartridges, they just have ink tanks that you top up from a squirt bottle. These bottles are cheaper than any cartridge while containing like ten times the amount of ink.
II2II 3y ago
I ended up getting an Epson EcoTank printer (ET-4850). Specifications claim to have 7500 page (black) and 6000 page (cym) yields, which is around what I would expect for a similarly priced monochrome laser printer. The ink itself costs about 1/2 of that for toner a similarly priced monochrome laser printer (black only, verses all four bottles). Colour lasers are more expensive for supplies. Would I recommend it? No idea. I'm still new to the inkjet printer market. I'm sure hiccups will pop up along the way. On the other hand: it works in Linux, is quiet, and the lights don't dim when it comes to life. (It is also worth mentioning that it is more of a document printer than a photo printer.)
- throwanem 3y ago
  I happened to pick up the same model a little while back, to replace an HP that died after most of a decade of good service - Instant Ink's an amazingly good deal, if you use it for photos, but I wanted something I could easily use better than stock inks in. The resolution is reasonable, though the default color settings produce a blue cast (vs. both on-screen rendering and my Pixma Pro 100, as well as the HP it replaced) that I haven't figured out how to reliably prevent yet. As a photographer this irks me greatly, enough so that I won't print my own work on it until the problem is solved; others may not care. It tends to go into deep sleep and need a poke to start listening to the network again, which is annoying when it lives with the other printers in the attic. I work around this with a homelab cron job that curls the printer's admin web interface once a minute. Other than that it's been solid thus far, though admittedly I've only had it a few months. Certainly it'll be a while before I need to refill it.