My Brother inkjet printer didn't have electronic DRM on their cartridges, but it would still waste a ton of ink through periodic "cleaning cycles" (in which it dumps a bunch of ink into a sponge hidden inside the printer) and would declare a half-full cartridge "empty" unless you put electrical tape on the sensor window. Even if I didn't print anything it would run out of ink every few months. If you unplugged the printer to avoid those cleaning cycles it would eventually clog up. I agree that other companies like HP make it extra shitty with stupid DRM chips on their cartridges. But even without that, inkjet is just a bad technology.

Now I have a Lexmark laser printer and I've printed through a whole stack of paper in the over 8 years I've had it and it's still running the original toner cartridge. No cleaning cycles, no clogging and if I haven't used it in months I know the toner level will have remained completely unchanged when I eventually use it again. And when it finally runs out I know there are 3rd party toner cartridges available for it because no DRM.