Are there still inkjet printers that don't try to screw you on ink somehow?

My reliable printer of 20 years has died, and I'm dreading looking for a replacement. It was a Canon, and I was always satisfied with it. But I got a Canon for my parents a few years ago and it freaking sucks. A random ink will run out every 2-3 months, despite not even being used for printing more than a few pages a week. Like it evaporates ink or something.

I heard HP is even worse, they try to sign you up for a subscription and refuse to work with aftermarket ink, if they work at all. I also heard that the USB port on them is fake, and it needs to connect to wifi to work, for spying and OTA, I guess?!

So are there any good alternatives?

I need a multifunction printer with scanner and the ability to print duplex without having to manually flip the paper. And I don't want laser, because it sucks for photos.

I have to disagree regarding HP. I have had a HP Envy 6055E for 4 yrs now. I pay monthly for ink refills based on pages printed per month. Three yrs ago I was still working and printed 15-30 pages per week. I think it was $6 per month. Every 3 to 4 months I'd get ink sent to me. Never ever ran out. When it starts running low they automatically send more in the mail. No returns needed. It just seemed like the ink lasted forever compared to the Epson I had before. Now I'm on the lowest tear ($2 monthly) and occasionally go over the amount allowed. additional 2 bucks covers me. Had I remained on the $6 plan they would have sent me a new printer by now, also a part of the program at that teer level. I can actually upgrade to that plan today and they will send a new printer. I literally went just over a year needing black ink and still don't need color that's over a year old. I've never seen anything like it in 30 years of dealing with printers.

Well, i doubt it has a "fake" USB port...

Also, inkjets are known to stop working if not used regular, so several months, ink prob dried out on the nozzle..

high % isopropyl or everclear can clean the nozzles out, I did that with my Canon mp620 a few times over before it failed entirely.

I decided to get the Epson EcoTank Photo ET-8500, the no-cartridge design convinced me to give it a shot. A lot of the other EcoTanks didn't seem as nice, this one was one of the few that competed with the venerable mp620. I've been happy! Ink will eventually cost me about $20-50 depending on source. I think I got this printer on a deal looking at the prices nowadays, maybe wait till black Friday if you don't want to spend $600.

The et-8550 is a larger format if you want 13x19 or something like that. Both can do some pretty cool stuff - take the back off and you can print longer media or thicker cardstocks, cd/dvds, etc. They both use 6 inks for better photo printing.

MrGuvernment said:

Well, i doubt it has a "fake" USB port...

Also, inkjets are known to stop working if not used regular, so several months, ink prob dried out on the nozzle..

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Yep. I have a color inkjet - same reason the OP wanted one. Lasers suck at photos. Also have a B&W laser. The inkjet is an expensive pain in the ass. Gums up if you don't use it, ink costs too much, etc. The laser is using a 12+yo toner cartridge and can sit for a year, then fire up at tax time and work perfectly. Guess what happened to the inkjet? I didn't use the inkjet for a while and now it won't print at all. Probably all gummed up. So probably a full set of cartridges and maybe a print head if I can't figure out how to clean it properly.

Years ago I had a workgroup size color laser. Samsung CLP-550N I think. I bought it in maybe 2005? I kinda wore it out in law school. Most of my printing was black and white and I ran through several B&W toners. Black toner was rated at 7000 pages & color at 5000. They got pretty close to that, at least 6000/4000. Toner cartridges were ~$110 back when I had it. The printer was fine, but I ran 10s of thousands of pages through it and it needed a new drum, transfer belt, and all the toners were low. I ran the numbers and decided it would be cheaper to just get a new printer than get it back up to fully working. It still worked, the worn out drum & transfer belt just caused a little ghosting on color prints. But by that point I was done with school and didn't really need it anymore, so it just sat until I moved, then got tossed.

I'd consider two printers unless you mostly print photos. Dedicated photo printer + a laser for everything else. If you want the all-in-one printer/scanner/fax thing get a laser version. That's assuming you'll use the inkjet enough to keep if from gumming up. If you need photo printing but won't use it enough to avoid gumming up without including your other printing you're kinda stuck with inkjet. Or maybe laser plus some sort of non-inkjet photo printer. I think there is/was such a thing.

Next time I buy a printer I'm getting a color laser all-in-one and I'll think about a photo printer if I can get one that doesn't gum up. As much as I print photos I think I'm better off just sending them out to some online service that prints them on a pro grade printer and mails me the prints. And yeah, buying that inkjet AIO so I could print photos was a mistake. It's a lovely printer. Wide carriage, automatic duplexer, scanner, can do 13x19, etc... I just don't really use it and when I do I'm more likely to scan something.

This is why the good lord baby Jesus invented Walgreens. Buy a laser. The actual 2 photos a year you print that matter will cost 50 cents at Walgreens and look twice as good as your crappy desktop inkjet.

As we all ran to lasers, even laser manufacturers (especially you HP) are making the "ink jet" mistakes. Hard to find a good (especially color) laser printer that doesn't force you into extremely high priced toner and requisite name brand only maintenance parts. And they wonder why their sales are down? Could it be due to the attack on the consumer?

owcraftsman said:

I have to disagree regarding HP. I have had a HP Envy 6055E for 4 yrs now. I pay monthly for ink refills based on pages printed per month. Three yrs ago I was still working and printed 15-30 pages per week. I think it was $6 per month. Every 3 to 4 months I'd get ink sent to me. Never ever ran out. When it starts running low they automatically send more in the mail. No returns needed. It just seemed like the ink lasted forever compared to the Epson I had before. Now I'm on the lowest tear ($2 monthly) and occasionally go over the amount allowed. additional 2 bucks covers me. Had I remained on the $6 plan they would have sent me a new printer by now, also a part of the program at that teer level. I can actually upgrade to that plan today and they will send a new printer. I literally went just over a year needing black ink and still don't need color that's over a year old. I've never seen anything like it in 30 years of dealing with printers.

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cjcox said:

And they wonder why their sales are down?

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The paperless office is happening. Or the paperless home office anyway. Approximately zero of my regular friends have printers at home. Very few have a desktop and some of them don't have laptops either.

The frankly alarming number of people who do their taxes on their smartphones don't print them. Yeah yeah, I did my first tax return by phone too... But somewhere, maybe, I have the paper form I filled out to use with teletax; touchtone phone required.

toast0 said:

The paperless office is happening. Or the paperless home office anyway. Approximately zero of my regular friends have printers at home. Very few have a desktop and some of them don't have laptops either.

The frankly alarming number of people who do their taxes on their smartphones don't print them. Yeah yeah, I did my first tax return by phone too... But somewhere, maybe, I have the paper form I filled out to use with teletax; touchtone phone required.

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That's one thing I always print. My tax return. I do my taxes on a computer and e-file, but I always print out a copy as a backup. Guess I'm old fashioned or something.

Other than that, my office at work is paperless. We just don't use the printers. Been there 3.5 years and I don't think I've seen anyone using a printer. We have 1 printer for several hundred people on my floor. I kinda think we should ditch that printer on my floor and if we actually need to print something, which basically never happens, it should get spit out of a printer in the department that handles regulatory compliance so they can check it first. Printing is that rare. If someone prints something it's a weird thing to do and someone probably ought to check what they're doing because we just don't print. So, basically, printing is so rare it's kind of a red flag. I'm sure someone somewhere in the company prints something regularly, but I'm in IT and we just don't print. I hardly print at home anymore either. The catch is sometimes I need to print something. So I want the ability, just don't want to spend much on it or buy more than I need to print a form unless it's going to last a long time. So laser it is. My toner cartridge is over 10 years old and works perfectly.

MrGuvernment said:

Well, i doubt it has a "fake" USB port...

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By fake I meant non-functional, ie you can't use the printer simply by plugging in the usb.
I just picked up a Canon printer, from the supermarket that is advertised as a "wireless" printer. It physically has an USB port, but it's never mentioned on the box. We'll see if it works through usb or it requires wifi to be set up.

MrGuvernment said:

Also, inkjets are known to stop working if not used regular, so several months, ink prob dried out on the nozzle.

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rhkcommander959 said:

high % isopropyl or everclear can clean the nozzles out, I did that with my Canon mp620 a few times over before it failed entirely.

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Nope it's definitely not a nozzle issue, ink simply runs out even if doesn't print more than 20 pages. After replacing the tank it works again until it says it's empty again. It either wastes a ton of ink when turning on and priming, or the ink simply evaporates from the tank due to bad design. I don't think there is any other reasonable explanation.

I've never had a nozzle issue with my inkjets, when I moved my old printer sat in a closet unused for years and when I got it out it still worked. All of them failed with mechanical issues. Unable to feed through or pick up the paper.

bigddybn said:

Buy a laser

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To that my answer is:

techie81 said:

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M76 said:

Nope it's definitely not a nozzle issue, ink simply runs out even if doesn't print more than 20 pages. After replacing the tank it works again until it says it's empty again. It either wastes a ton of ink when turning on and priming, or the ink simply evaporates from the tank due to bad design. I don't think there is any other reasonable explanation.

I've never had a nozzle issue with my inkjets, when I moved my old printer sat in a closet unused for years and when I got it out it still worked. All of them failed with mechanical issues. Unable to feed through or pick up the paper.

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The ink carts have a timer in them, so when they hit a certain timeframe they will cease to work wether they are full or not. This has been around a long time, I ran into it at a previous job 20 years ago where I would stockpile toner carts for our laser printer. Turns out the dell printer we used would not use any toner carts that were over a year old, they would deactivate based off the timer. I put an older one in and it wouldnt work, figured it was defective so put another in that worked. It stopped working after 2 weeks and said it needed to be replaced. Corporate finally sent a waring to all the stores not to stockpile toner as this would happen.

Starfalcon said:

The ink carts have a timer in them, so when they hit a certain timeframe they will cease to work wether they are full or not. This has been around a long time, I ran into it at a previous job 20 years ago where I would stockpile toner carts for our laser printer. Turns out the dell printer we used would not use any toner carts that were over a year old, they would deactivate based off the timer. I put an older one in and it wouldnt work, figured it was defective so put another in that worked. It stopped working after 2 weeks and said it needed to be replaced. Corporate finally sent a waring to all the stores not to stockpile toner as this would happen.

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I have only seen that in commercial grade printers and it only applied to the installation time, if the ink is already in it won't stop working if it expires, but if it is already expired when you try to put them in as new it won't work. At least that's how it was with HP plotters.

My problem is not related to this however. When I take out the tanks I can see that they are bone dry, and they are no more than 6 months old anyway.