Washington Post: Americans waste $10 billion each year on name-brand ink. So we tested low-cost options including remanufactured cartridges, ink injection kits — and even making our own.
My advice: get a mono laser printer. Printing is handy but relatively infrequent for a lot of people these days. If that’s your use case, mono laser is the way to go. Toner does not dry out or go bad.
I have a Brother laser printer that works fine since undergrad. $100, almost 15 years ago. Good colors still, but it came with this thing where you have to block it at the firewall from the Internet so it doesn’t spy on you (something about reporting to Amazon servers?) and it will pretend that your toner is low on purpose, but you can cover up the sensor with electrical tape and it works fine. Prints with Linux, BSD.
I also have a Canon inkjet. I was on a trip and needed a printer and … $25 dollars out of pocket, I ended up with a device that has scanning and color printing and works with Linux. Five years later and it still works, although the aftermarket cartridges I use are $33, more than the printer itself cost. There’s no DRM making me buy just Canon ink. Works with Linux.
After reading that Epson was getting out of the laser printer business altogether for environmental reasons, I called BS on it. Likely a reason for them to sell nothing but DRM’d junk inkjets that are even more wasteful because they break every other year.
But the truth is somewhere in the middle.
Laser printers are also horrible for the environment. The fusers and toner cartridges cannot be recycled and the toner itself is nothing but microplastic that never breaks down.
I hope to never buy a printer again. Fuck that anymore, It’s the 21st century, I have a PDF editor and a tablet.
This is good to know. I had no idea toner is so bad for the environment. It’s yet another reason to use ink tank printers.
I’ve got a Canon Pixima 5000 series. My family tends to print a good percentage in color (because thankfully I don’t have to print many documents in this day and age). It uses individual color cartridges (C, M, Y, K and a second large K), so if one goes out you just replace that color. I generally pick up the off brand refills on Amazon for fairly cheap. Last time I got a 5 pack of sets for $20. It’s lasted us 2 years at this point. The ink carts are literally JUST ink and a foam block. No electronics or drm like HP. Highly recommend.
One caveat: there were some reports of health effects of inhaling toner fumes, so make sure wherever you keep your laser printer is reasonably ventilated.
Commercial printer here! There’s some validity here, but health risks for at-home printing would be minimal in my opinion unless someone is printing a lot. Toner machines tend to release ozone from the corona wires that are used to charge the drums.
Toner machines tend to release ozone from the corona wires that are used to charge the drums.
I’m doing my part to plug that hole in the ozone layer!
There is a safety concern that you shouldn’t clean anything involving toner with ammonia-based products (window cleaners, etc.) It reacts with the plastic in the toner. Isopropyl alcohol can be mixed with a smaller ratio of water to use as a cleaner. I do agree with the original message and always recommend people buy laser over inkjet for most tasks.
Absolutely, I got inkjet printers for years between ~1990 and ~2010, ink is expensive, dry, smear, etc. I bought a Samsung color laser wifi printer in 2012, more than 10 years ago, I changed toners a few times, it still work perfectly fine. I’ll never again go to inkjet.
IMHO, inkjet printers as a whole are a scam. That is, unless you buy a really high end one for professional photo printing.
Print at work.
If you can’t, print at an office supply store.
Seriously, how much do you need to print?
You can also print at a library in the US
Print. At. Your. Local. Library.
Not. Everyone. Has. Easy. Access. To. A. Local. Library.
😞
Printing on a printer that isn’t yours is a privacy risk.
I love my mono laser printer. It’s an older Canon I got from a retired lawyer, so it has probably printed a million pages already for all I know. Haven’t had to futz with it since I popped in a new toner cartridge that was ~$40. If I need to print color, I go to the local copy store, but that’s rare anyways. Been recommending the same for all my friends and family.
I bought a cheap Canon inkjet and have started refilling it with cheap off-brand ink. It’s not particularly as good as the original ink, but for my purposes it works great.
Lasers are definitely a great option, but we got a printer with liquid ink and it’s been great. Much cheaper than proprietary cartridges and they don’t go stale if you don’t print anything for a few weeks.
I have been using laser for so long, while so many people use ink. I could always understand it if you needed to print photos on photo paper genuine photo quality, but laser - both monochrome and color, has always served me well. I could never understand why people went with ink, except maybe people so tech illiterate they just went to the store and bought what they were recommended (by a sales representative who knows they make a much higher markup in the long nrun by selling inkjets).
There are also lots of knock off cartridges for most laser printers too.
I have a brother laser printer copier - it works with budget cartridges that cost around $25.
I use my HP printer infrequently enough that every time I booted up my inkjet, I had to put it through a printer head cleaning cycle. I’d be surprised if I got more than 20 sheets of paper for each cartridge do to the wasted ink, and the dang thing malfunctioned frequently even after cleaning (streaks, blots, complaining about missing colors when printing b/w, etc).
After switching to a Brother mono laser, I haven’t had to do any maintenance in 3 years and it’s still on the original toner cart which it came with.
This is the way.
Also using a Brother laserjet, it’s lasted ten times longer than any inkjet I’ve ever had, and still going strong. Although I rarely need to print, it hasn’t failed me yet when I do need it.
This is the way.
I bought a Brother color laser printer in 2020 after deciding I was fed up with buying ink cartridges. The Staples guy was annoyed I wasn’t buying toner cartridges also. He said “These starter cartridges don’t have much toner. You’ll need a new one before you know it!”. I told him I’d take my chances and come back if needed. Three years later, I print regularly and haven’t replaced anything at all yet. I would have bought a number of ink cartridges over the last few years. Great investment as far as I’m concerned.
As a former tech associate at Staples; I can easily attest to how annoyed my bosses were that I always pushed people to buy laser printers.
Their reasoning was simple; the bosses hated the volume at which we sold toner; and literally nothing else…once I had paired all of their problem customers with drama-free laser printers that would stay in operation for at least 5 years.
Nobody who bothered to ask my professional opinion on printers and actually took it seriously bought anything but a Laser Printer. Many of the shitty DRM riddled Inkjets actually collected dust on those shelves unless they were sold by someone more clueless than I.
I bought an used color laser printer meant for business. Drivers made by manufacturer for Linux and Windows are bad as always, but CUPS for Linux works really well.
I wish there was a right-to-repair and privacy friendly printer, which required only Creative Commons drivers in Windows, and no bs, poorly made drivers + control software as always. Luckily rgb is becoming standardised.
