When you run low on ink do you buy new ink cartridges or do you buy a completely new printer/all in one unit? In many cases replacement ink cartridge sets (color and black) cost more than half of a new printer/all in one unit.
I checked that I buy new cartridges. That’s if the printer is fairly reliable. The cartridge starter sets don’t contain as much ink as the replacement cartridges do.
I’ve been buying replacement ink cartridges for mine but I’m currently in the market for a new all in one unit.
I almost always buy cartridges, but twice now I have bought a new printer when I hadn’t planned to do so. Both times were just unpassupable deals, so the printer actually came out to be *cheaper *than new cartridges, buy quite a bit.
I couldn’t bear to send the old, perfectly functional printers to the landfill, though, and my local thrift store doesn’t want 'em. So they still sit on a shelf, sulking, looking at me forlornly, like those shelter animals in fundraising ads…
I had an exceeding bad experience with various all-in-one printers. Mostly, they all seem to jam easily. I finally went with just a single-purpose ink-jet. It is only a little better.
Luckily, I don’t print much.
I don’t use an inkjet printer, but bought a laser printer in 1993 when HP released one that seemed better suited for home use than their previous models (an HP LaserJet 4L for about $700). But I didn’t print very often, so I continued to use the same printer and the same toner cartridge for thirteen years. When it became clear in 2006 that I needed more toner, I looked at what a new cartridge would cost (about $90), I chose to replace the printer. (The old printer could do only 300x300 dpi printing, so I replaced it with one that could do 600x600 dpi printing, scanning, copying and faxing for about $250.)
upgrading to an all-in-one can be worth it. shop carefully and look at features. some are wireless, some can fax. some will cease to do any function without ink (by its re-conning not yours).
if you print seldom/low volume and only do black then a laser may be a far better deal in the long run.laser prints better and faster.
Yup laser printers own business for a reason even high volume black only. Laser printers are orders of magnitude more reliable than their inkjet cousins.
I hate those.
I believe they sacrifice quality to match the price of a stand alone printer.
The notion that it’s just as cheap to buy a new printer as a set of cartridges is probably flawed - much of the time, the cartridges supplied in the box with a new printer are ‘starter’ versions containing a small amount of ink compared to the regular cartridges you may buy subsequently.
I don’t do either - I chose a printer that I knew I could get third party refillable cartridges for - when they run out, I just pop them out and top them up (then spend an hour scrubbing stains off my fingers, muttering that I’ll use gloves next time).
The cost of ink this way is cheaper by a factor of 20 or more.
You left “I refill my cartridges” out of the poll, which is what we do at my household.
I refilled them for work, and it was a pain.
How often can you reuse a cart, and did you lose some in the learning curve?
With purpose-made refillable cartridges, it’s not too bad - they’re transparent, so you can see how full they are (and avoid overfilling), they have a hole plugged with a rubber bung for easy filling and they have a button to reset their own onboard ink level counter chip - if they’re the type that don’t include inbuilt print heads (i.e. just an ink tank), they can be refilled many times.
About 15 years ago, Best Buy was selling color inkjet printers for $10 apiece on Black Friday. I stood in line next to a guy who was buying ten of them; he was going to take the color cartridges out of nine of them and contribute those nine to his local schools, and keep the color cartridges and the tenth printer for himself.
Since then, as explained above, the starter cartridges are much smaller than the replacement ones, so this isn’t as good a deal.
My color inkjet has individual-color tanks (no printhead on the cartridge) so it is economically viable for me to buy a set when they’re on sale, then replace the colors individually as they run out. My laser B/W does the mass-quantities work.
That doesn’t sound like a very generous gift, unless the schools have some cheap or free way to get replacement ink.
Cool!
What brand are they? I believe HP and most printer manufacturers intend on making most of their money from the cartridges.
Some printers can be fitted with a Continuous Ink Supply System (CISS). So that could be another solution.
I’ve got an Epson printer, but the refillable cartridges I got are third party/unbranded - just picked them up on eBay - and they’ve been great. As Epson inkjets have piezo jets that are part of the print head, not the cartridge, the cartridges themselves are little more than containers.
I was going to get a CISS, but fitting it involved:
Cutting a hole in the printer casing
Running through some very flimsy-looking silicone tubes
Installing large ink reservoirs to stand alongside the printer
All in all, I saw that as probably not ending well - and it wasn’t any cheaper than buying the refillable carts and just popping them out for a fill every couple of months.
Mine is an HP copier/printer/scanner that does indeed have color - but I stopped buying the color toner as I really don’t need color for anything I print. That has saved me a bunch!
So, just buying black toner, and sometimes even buying the re-filled cartridges, means I am spending about $15 every couple of months.
OK - so I don’t print out all that much, but it suffices for me at home.