Fstoppers on YouTube: Printer Ink, It's a SCAM

Laser printers are great also if you just need black.
- I have a brother laser, cost me 80bucks. Had to replace my toner once, after about 4000 pages. Cost me 34 bucks to get a new toner. Another 2000 pages in. It just doesn't stop. Unplug it. Leave it unplugged for a month or two. Plug it in, wait a couple minutes, wireless print 50 pages with no driver installs. Unplug.
  
  Pretty much the same story. Got pissed at an inkjet one night when my wife needed to print something for school. Still going strong 1 toner replacement later.
  
  Seriously; I feel like I learned the inkjet-cartridges-are-a-scam lesson when I was a kid and have been all about laser printers ever since. I don't understand how anyone is still falling for that.
  
  I bought an HP laser printer in 2016 or thereabouts. I only just had to replace the "starter" toner cartridge on it a couple months ago (despite it warning me it was low on toner probably 3 years ago). Bought an off-brand toner cartridge for like $20.
- They're spendy but you can get color laser printers as well. But yes, I love my brother laser printer.
  
  I splurged a little while back on a Brother HLL3290CDW. A bit spender than a monochrome laser, but the image quality is fine and it lets my wife print off as many stickers as she wants without having to spend big bucks on ink every couple of weeks.
- I bought a canon color laser printer two years ago with the starter toners. After about 6 months or so, warning came that one of the colors is empty. It was still printing fine so I continued printing. One by one, warning came for all colors, so I bought a 3rd party toner set, but still didn’t replace them because they were still printing fine. 2 years later, I’m still getting warnings that all colors are empty, but just the other day, I printed color pictures of all the 700 Pokémon for my daughter. They’re still going good. I don’t know if they’ll ever actually run dry, or if I should preemptively replace the toners.
  
  Never open it, you've stumbled upon an infinite duplicate bug. Don't tell the admins
  
  My HP color laser (178?) acts the same, with the added "extra low" that you have to allow to accept in some shady parameter in the config or it won't print.
- I splurged a few years back on a Brother Color Laser. So worth it. I just send photos to CVS or Snapfish for printing.
- Really hard to justify its cost if your ever print like, 50 pages a year.
  
  Quite the opposite. Black and white laser printers are very cheap, and unlike inkjet printers they don't dry out and clog if you don't use them regularly. You can literally spend less than $100 for one that can print thousands of pages just with the toner cartridge it comes with. Color laser printers are the ones that are expensive.
  
  If you print rarely inkjet is going to dry out and stop working, making them even more expensive and annoying.
  
  My printer was constantly getting clogged because I only print every few months. I was literally buying a new ink cartridge every time. Laser printers can be left quiet indefinitely without wasting ink/toner, they're much better for intermittent use.

Brother Laser. Solved.
- This is the way
- My man, you're not supposed to snort the toner powder
  
  What just happened? Where am I?
  
  Sounds like the tiny room and lack of adequate ventilation is to blame there much more than the printer. Inkjet may not be much better, huffing printer ink can't be good for you either.

This is a scam as old as time. An old professor of mine did the math, realized buying a new bottom tier printer was cheaper than buying its corresponding refills. Her husband was understandably furious at the stack of pristine printers pilling up in the garage.
While you do save money on ink for larger printers (laser/pro photo inkjet) you are losing a lot of money just to start up. Its also worth noting that liquid ink has a shelf life, drying out, hardening, and a hassle to clean out if not used.
On an interesting note: the EcoTank system is a reversal of the Stylus Pro and SureColor tank system. Instead of slotting in a fresh tank, you're just pouring a bottle into a permanent tank. Good to see Epson taking a practical and consumer friendly approach.
- Epson is a surprisingly good company when it comes to products. I can’t find fault with their projectors or printers.

Just get laser. InkJet has always been trash, besides the expensive ones used for printing photos. Never use an ink printer for office work.
- Yes and if you only occasionally print things at home you'll also want to have a laser. Never again experience clogged nozzles.
- "Just print at a FedEx shop" should be considered, too.
  But thanks for mentioning photo printers. Pro photographers use inkjets for a reason, but they cost several hundred dollars, minimum. The sub $100 inkjets market had no good reason to exist.

I hate to be that guy but he doesn’t measure how much ink is actually in the cartridge in the video. He just cracks one open and complains about the ink soaked foam. He could have at least tried to measure how much ink was in it.
- How? He can't weigh it without also weighing the foam.
  
  Could possibly weigh the foam thats soaked in ink then wash the foam to remove the ink and dry it out then weight it again and compare. Might not be very accurate but it would be an attempt at closer numbers at least.

An ecotank printer is the best printer I ever bought. I rarely print anything. Like a few times a year. My biggest problem with the cartridge printers wasn't that I would run out of ink, they would just dry out and not work after extended periods of non-use. So to print my few pages every now and then I would have to spend $50 on cartridges. Not really worth it. The ecotank has a flush option that clears out the printing head. So if it did have an issue it would clear I out. Usually it was just fine after sitting 6 months. And a refill is like $30. 3 years in I have yet to have e to refill it. And the printer was only like $70
- I'm also using a brother with ink tanks. So far, very happy. I noticed it auto cleans the heads every other day around noon or so, without asking. So far really happy with its performance, although the Linux implementation for the scanner leaves to be desired, and the windows version is also hit or miss.
  
  Only thing I would change is I would have bought the one with the feeder scanner. Scanning a multipage document is a pita. Mine doesn't automatically clean the heads. I have to tell mine to do it. And it gives me a warning that it wastes ink if you do it unnecessarily. Mine is old though. I got it when they were brand new. Maybe they changed some things. But maybe look into it? If you don't use it that often it might be worth changing the setting to make it not do that automatically (if possible) and just do it when you use it. But, like I said I use mine ony a few times a year. Your use case may be different and they may have changed the way it cleans/flushes the heads.

Brother has been good for my use.

EcoTank for the win

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- good bot

Had my Epson AcuLaser C1100 for I don't know how long. It is sometimes unplugged for months. Plugged in ... prints... done.

I have an Eco Tank for work. It's okay. The print quality isn't impressive, but it does the job. The ink is about $100 CAD for the 4 colours, but we get many hundreds of pages out of that. Just be sure to use it regularly because the nozzles are finicky bitches.

I got a brother MFC 7460dn years ago and 12 unbranded toner cartridges and converting my whole family to opensuse later it's still running with zero problems. I also have a colour laser from brother that I use to make bootleg cards for playing card games I don't want to invest in with friends but it is still on the second cartridge.

I'm out so can't watch the video but did he open the cartridge that came with the printer or a replacement cartridge? Ones that come with printers regularly have less ink than the replacement cartridges. So if he got the ink volume from the website or whatever he my have gotten the replacement cartridge ink volume amount.
Printers and their replacement ink cartridges are absolutely a scam, just wanted to ndering if thi person is making an accurate comparison which could lead to people thinking they've been more ripped off than they actually have.
- A replacement cartridge.
  I kinda miss the days when printer ink cartridges actually comes with a reservoir bag for the ink. These days I just do my printing in the office. Honestly speaking, there should be laws against these kinds of cartridges.
  And then there's the environmental impact with these kinds of cartridges, where these same companies white wash themselves as "we are ecologically cautious" spiels.