this post was submitted on 06 Dec 2024

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Why Is Printer Ink So Expensive? (www.digitalrightsbytes.org)

submitted 2 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

Consumables drop in cost per page the more you pay for the printer. Business printer consumables are cheaper per page.

Lasers are often overkill for many home owners who print a few dozen pages per year. Also, Lasers are inferior for printing photos. Even a cheap inkjets if printing on photo paper are way superior for photos. That said, pay services are the better option for most.

I print quite a bit, so I own a BW Brother for volume, and an Epson for photos and other stuff. I realize I-m not a n average user, though.

I generally use compatible cartridges. I can buy toner for my Brother for something like 15 25 Euro from amazon, and carts for Epson for 25 Euro for an 8 pack. They work fine. BTW, I bought the brother laser, new, in the box, from a second hand marketplace for 60 Euro. Basic printer, not a MFP, no scanner, b duplex but not wifi, which is probably why they sold it, probably a mistake buy and outside the return window.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago

Shoutout to Brother laser printers and their provided linux drivers! CUPS is then what you can use to print to that basic USB printer from all of your networked devices.

Linux and Brother, get those MapQuest directions printed out like a boss

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I feel printer company CEO's should avoid Manhattan...

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Nah, while all consumer oriented ink jet printer business models are scummy, they haven't caused death, misery, and financial ruin. Put the CEOs on your list if you must, but I think we have bigger fish to fry.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

I see you haven't had to use printers a lot. Printer design has reached a point where you're just wondering if Satan uses them as tools to torment people on earth.

Having said that, yeah, you're right. There are way bigger fish to fry

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

I didn't read the article but the straight reason is this: Printer companies adopted the "blades and razor" business model. The model was invented by Gillette, and if any of you here shave, you already know how it works.

Sell a new razorblade "system" for a loss price. Design it with a unique attachment system, locking purchaser into buying blades only supplied by that business.
Sell two pack blade replacement at about double the price of the original razorblade. 3 Stagger the prices of 3 pack, 4 pack and 5 pack, so they appear to add value, when actually the 5 pack cost of manufacture is still lower than the whole new razorblade "system" that was sold at a loss. But the 5 pack is marketed as "one free blade" based back on the two pack pricing.

Printer Companies did the same thing, sell a cheap inkjet at a loss (last Epson I bought was $49, a miniscule amount of ink and it had a scanner built in!!)

Now I offer you a challenge! (not really, you'll already know the answer if you have an inkjet and had to buy original refills).

A Brother MFC-L3760CDW is a colour laser printer/scanner/photo copier/fax/full duplex. It comes with (3 colours and black) enough toner for 3000 colour pages at purchase for a retail price $499.00

How much do you think it would cost you to get a inkjet printer, and enough ink to print 3000 colour pages? Also consider having a full duplex printer/photo copier/scanner/fax at your disposal.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

There are some inkjet options that do not follow that pricing model. The printers with an ink tank (epson ecotank, canon megatank, ...) with ink for 3000 pages start at about $150, but are probably slower than the laser.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I've not seen them, but I would imagine they are for office use, rather than home use. You would run into the same problem low volume inkjet users always run into, the ink dries out or clogs up the jets.

Toner has no such problem, and you can print 3000 pages regardless of if it takes 3 months or 3 years.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

With their slow print speed, those cheaper tank inkjets are maybe usable for mostly paperless offices, or a home user that likes to print more often. You'd have to print at least one or two color pages per month to keep the jets clean.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

It would probably be more appropriate to compare a brother inkjet... But yeah.

FWIW if you're reading this and you're sick of wasting tons of money on ink because you just print a handful of documents in black and white every year ... Get a Brother TONER-based printer. I bought mine almost 5 years ago and I've yet to have to change the toner or waste a single page on a bad print. When I need to print it just works, no "clean the cartridges" nonsense.

Toner is just a better printing technology, both for high and low volumes of printing. The only people that win out on inkjet are maybe the rare folks that print like a handful of things every single week.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

The only people that win out on inkjet are maybe the rare folks that print like a handful of things every single week.

Also those who regularly print on certain things other than paper—print-on-fabric systems are usually inkjet, which makes sense when you think about it. And as of 10-15 years ago, some of the more expensive and complex inkjets (not the <$100 consumer loss leaders) had better colour fidelity than the average colour laser, which visual artists are willing to pay extra for.

The inkjet printer has a place, but it's a small niche, and 98% of people buying them really should be buying lasers instead.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago

As always, most consumers ignore the maintenance costs and buy the option advertised with the lowest price tag.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 weeks ago

So are you saying laser printers are the safety razors of the printing world?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 weeks ago

Because fuck you, that's why!

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

I have a black-and-white Brother laser printer. My toner isn't expensive.

I also get generic copy paper. My paper isn't expensive either.

My printer also doesn't clog up if I don't print with it for six months or whatever the way inkjets do.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

Only peoblem is if your environment is too humid for long periods of time, no?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Yup. If I need color, I print at tree library for <$0.10/sheet. If I need pictures, I order them.

But 99% of my printing is black and white. I've printed thousands of sheets, and I only recently replaced the starter toner, and I'll probably throw out the printer to save space before I run out of toner again.

Oh, and I spent practically nothing on it. I think I paid $150 or so for the printer, another $50 or so on toner (maybe a little more), and maybe $50 on paper? I think I printed 3k pages (too lazy to check), and I should get 5000+ more without doing anything (maybe I'll buy another case of paper?). As it stands, I'm already under the library print costs... Oh, and my printer scans and copies too, which was totally essential during COVID for my kids' school.

Why are inkjets so popular? If you're going to print with and frequency, get a laser printer.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

If you're going to print with any infrequency get a laser printer as well. The stability of toner is the huge selling point for me. I wasted so much time on "cartridge cleaning" print cycles every time I went to print when I had an inkjet because I print so infrequently my ink cartridges would dry out (and I'm sure HP considered that a feature not a bug).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

Yup, we don't print very often, but when we do, we print a lot. I imagine a lot of people are similar.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 2 weeks ago

greed

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 weeks ago

Because they can make people pay it. Next question.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

I'd like to ask a different question: why do people keep buying inkjet printers with horribly expensive ink?

Is it the case that people print that many photos that getting a hilariously cheaper-per-page laser just not an option, or is there something else that's causing people to keep buying crappy inkjets with DRM and subscriptions and that somehow require magenta ink to print black when it has separate black ink already?

Always been confused by the popularity of inkjet printers since they've always been kind of awful.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I bought an Ink-jet before I even knew about laser printers. Inkjets had the marketing and I used to be really into photography. Now I would want a laser printer but don't print enough to justify a second printer

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

If you're into photography, you'll want professional prints. Send them off to a professional printer, and you can get pretty much any size you want.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

And it'll be cheaper too.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

There's a print shop in my area that I used the last time I made business cards, and they do same day orders (in reasonable quantities). You can ask for pretty much anything and they'll do it.

There's really no reason to get an inkjet IMO. We have a small, portable photo printer for family gatherings (it's fun to make small batch prints as a keepsake), but other than that, we only have a laser printer and order everything else.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

I've certainly done that but experimenting with different papers at home is fun

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Because they've become kinda the standard and people don't know any better; I may be wrong, but for the average user there's the 'printer' which uses ink, and thern there's the copier which uses toner. About them "always been kind of awful".. I dunno, looking back it was harder for them to clog, they were cheap and simple; then they started the race to the smallest nozzles, realized they could upcharge the ink 1000x.. and here we are.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Well, my laser printer jammed once in >10 years of ownership, and it's because the paper was loaded weird. My parents' inkjet jammed all the time as a kid, so much so that we ended up replacing it with another when my mom started working from home, and it still sometimes jammed.

Maybe things got way better since I was a kid, but inkjets always kinda sucked.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

That's just a problem of the feeding mechanism. Laser can do that just as much. It may just be dirty, something may be broken, or it was just terribly designed.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago

For me, because I was able to get a good nearly 20 year old HP printer that doesn't actually care about reported ink levels and I can just refill the cartridges with ultra-cheap ink from AliExpress.

You can get a 250ml bottle for around 10 bucks. Just make sure to get the correct one (dye vs pigment). My black cartridges were re-filled, but the company used dye ink in them even though they should have had pigment ink. I keep refilling them with dye ink, no idea what would happen if I mixed the remains.

This works, unlike doing it the other way around (pigment ink in dye heads), but it's a bit of a firehose situation. I have to use at least 120gsm paper (regular is 80), otherwise it just leaks through.
I also refilled a fountain pen with it. That leaks even through the 120gsm paper, but it's pretty black. Anyway, I could probably only use that with cardstock paper.

It's cheap enough for me to play around with like this too, or print "dark mode" documents.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

We pretty much exclusively print photos, for all sorts of things. We never really need to print text pages.

We didn't buy a crappy inkjet with subscriptions and DRM though

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago

Just look at the stupid photos on your devices