FYI, the included cartridges in a new printer are typically a 'low capacity' type. This has been true for 20+ years. You may find yourself both spending a large amount of money, and generating a significant amount of e-waste if you pursue this strategy.
It is important to check consumable cost when buying a printer. They aren't all the same in this regard.
Pro tip: Sometimes refurbished printers have the actual full cartridge. I once bought a refurbished Xerox laser printer and used it for 12+ years and it was still printing when I threw it away despite the low ink indicator having come on for the last couple of years. I went through all of high school and university with the same $60 printer (and cartridge).
That means it's possible to make a printer that has a cartridge that outlives the life of the printer for typical home users. Getting people to replace the cartridge is mostly artificial and not some inherent technology limitation. If they really wanted to, they could make 50% of the interior space of the printer just one big laser ink cartridge that prints like 5000 pages, which in 2025 means it's going to last the rest of your life.
The seeming paradox reminds me of a simlar flavor one: the fact that if you accidentally knock a hole in your drywall, it's cheaper to cover it with a flat screen TV than to pay someone to fix the hole.
The floor on refurbished laser printers is about $100 on Amazon and remanufactured toner cartridges are dirt cheap often times less than $15 for 2000-6000 pages.
This is the way. There is no reason to buy ink based anymore.
The wild part is that this isn’t really a pricing mistake, it’s the business model. That $65 Canon isn’t “a printer”, it’s a subsidized acquisition channel for a customer who will buy OEM ink at a huge margin or sign up for some kind of recurring refill program later. Accounting is fine eating some or all of the printer cost if the average buyer turns into years of cartridge revenue.
If you buy a new printer every time you run low on ink, you’re basically arbitraging that CAC line item. On paper it can be a “life hack” as long as only a few people do it and you ignore the e-waste and friction. If it ever became common, the easy knobs for the manufacturer are obvious: even smaller starter carts, more lock-in, more activation hoops, and less of the subsidy that makes this trick work in the first place.
If you don't need color I recommend going with a laser printer. Not only for lower consumable costs, but better software support too. In 2009 I bought a Lexmark laser printer new for $120 at Frys. It has native postscript support, so it will work with anything without having to load software from the manufacturer. I systems ranging from an old Macintosh Quadra running System 7 to new Mac running MacOS Tahoe, a PC running Windows 11 and everything in between. It even works in Linux too.
The consumables are cheap too. I have just replaced the toner cartridge once and a new OEM one was about $80 on Amazon.
They are more expensive. Because the lock-in isn't as tight.
I still like them because, ironically, for sporadic printing, they're more resilient than many ink cartridges.
So far, I haven't experienced any clogging (dried up ink in the print heads) or the printer resorting to ink consuming processes every time it's turned on after not having been used for a couple of weeks.
This is after some years of usage where I've refilled the tanks once.
Not great. They still clog, the printer still wastes a ton of ink on cleaning or adjustment or whatever. Last time I had one I woke up one day to find that all of the yellow ink was gone. Several ounces of ink presumably dumped into a sponge inside the printer. I chucked the whole damn mess in the trash and bought a Brother laser printer.
Ink tank printers ftw. They are much more expensive than these cheap printers bundled with small cartridges, but from my limited experience they are somewhat decent, and the ink is quite cheap too. They don't like not being used for long periods of time, but I run one page through it once a month or so and it seems quite content to just sit there the rest of the time and do nothing.
Inkjets are a no go if you're printing any significant amount of pages or if you're only printing sporadically. That's like 99% of their use case. The other 1% is photo printing, which I see a bit pointless when you can get a real photographic, not ink, print for a few cents.
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It is important to check consumable cost when buying a printer. They aren't all the same in this regard.
That means it's possible to make a printer that has a cartridge that outlives the life of the printer for typical home users. Getting people to replace the cartridge is mostly artificial and not some inherent technology limitation. If they really wanted to, they could make 50% of the interior space of the printer just one big laser ink cartridge that prints like 5000 pages, which in 2025 means it's going to last the rest of your life.
Dead Comment
This is the way. There is no reason to buy ink based anymore.
If you buy a new printer every time you run low on ink, you’re basically arbitraging that CAC line item. On paper it can be a “life hack” as long as only a few people do it and you ignore the e-waste and friction. If it ever became common, the easy knobs for the manufacturer are obvious: even smaller starter carts, more lock-in, more activation hoops, and less of the subsidy that makes this trick work in the first place.
But I upgraded the printer driver some months ago (on macOS) and Hey, Presto! No more functioning printer.
The consumables are cheap too. I have just replaced the toner cartridge once and a new OEM one was about $80 on Amazon.
I still like them because, ironically, for sporadic printing, they're more resilient than many ink cartridges.
So far, I haven't experienced any clogging (dried up ink in the print heads) or the printer resorting to ink consuming processes every time it's turned on after not having been used for a couple of weeks.
This is after some years of usage where I've refilled the tanks once.