imo the best printer is somebody else's printer, i.e your school's, work's, or library's. Not worth dealing with that shit
We have a cheap and reliable black and white laser printer at home for convenient printing of stuff like return labels.
On the rare occasion colour of photo prints are needed, there’s a great little independent print and photo place in town that does prints for pennies.
Seems to be the best of both worlds.
My brother laser fits into the same basic role. I paid extra for the colour version however. The key is that laser toner never goes bad, unlike inkjets.
Sure but what if you're in your underwear and want to print a pretty page right now?
If your employer won't let you in to print a picture off in your underwear... what are they even doing!?
Not to mention those prudish bus drivers
That's my strategy. If I add up all the printing I've done at libraries, schools, work, etc. it would cost a fraction of buying my own.
They take up so much space that can be used for more useful things, too.
The only printers Ive seen "publicly" cost money to use. I'd rather firewall my brother printer and manually refill the cartridge with 3rd party ink. More private that way
My local library lets you print up to 30 pages for free. I was pretty shocked, because I was ready to pay when I needed to print something last time I was there.
People printing 30 pages at the library is likely rare enough that getting a member through the door is worth the $3 they could have charged.
I'll have to check out what my library offers, just in case. Also I havent been in there in a while. I like libraries :)
Like owning a boat. Best if your friend has one and you bring the beers (paper).
Laser printers are the best. You sacrifice the quality of dense pictures, but gain incomparable speed and reliability. It's especially worth it if you print less often, because the ink dries up if you don't print every once in a while and you end up buying new ink even though the cartridge is full, but the toner just sits there indefinitely.
I’ve been in the color laser gang since 2006 when they started to go under $500
I have a HL3170CDW color laser. It was on sale for under $200 at the time.
I got a pair of used Brother color lasers for $50 each.
I’m normally the one in my house trying to get rid of things, but keep those (and/or send them to me, lol).
Ink drying up is intentional btw. My old HP inkjet does not have that problem and it takes refills, prints black and white without needing color ink, does not have an internet connection, require a subscription or come with any other bs. We perfected inkjet printers 20 years ago and then started the enshittification process.
you forgot the best part, the papers are all nice and warm
My home office used to be extremely cold in the mornings, somewhat humid. And printer lives by the window. Meaning if I printed in the morning as the sun rose, I could see just a bit of steam coming off the page at the rollers as it was printing. Along with the warmth of the paper, and a cup of coffee... Nirvana.
Nnnnnneeeeeeerrrrrrdddddd
People love laser printers (and rightfully so compared to inkjets), but ink tanks fix most of the issues with inkjets.
Ink tanks are refilled with generic ink, as opposed to proprietary cartridges. They thus have vastly cheaper running costs, even more so than lasers, which still needs replacements for their drum units every few years.
Also, laser toner is literally fine microplastic powder, and printing works by depositing and "baking" this powder onto paper. Laser printers result in terrible indoor air quality without adequate ventilation.
First off, inkjet printers have way more issues than the ink being expensive.
Secondly, the average household isn't going to be printing enough to have to replace the drum every few years, or for toner dust to have an actual impact on indoor air quality.
My laser printer is nearly 20 years old, and I've only ever changed the drum because it came packaged with the toner cartridge, and I've only had to change that once.
I'm printing at home and I had to replace toner cartridge twice over 10 years... still way better in the inkjet.
I'm unfortunately very sensitive to those particles from laser printers. They're really good at triggering migraines, so I could never have a laser printer at home.
Holy shit. I'm going to have to pay attention to the next time I print a bunch and headaches...I'm beginning to think there might be a correlation that you just solved for me.
You guys still print your stuff on paper? In the year 2025?
What should we be printing it on?
Sometimes you gotta.
I've never used an ink-tank printer, but I've read that they have “pads” that wear out, and some ink-tank printers require you to throw away the entire printer when that happens. Doesn't sound too great.
Also, inkjets suffer a lot of clogging, smearing, and other such problems stemming from the use of liquid ink. These problems go away (temporarily, at least) when you replace the ink cartridge, but how do you solve them when there's no ink cartridge and the print head is part of the printer?
Ink tanks have a waste ink pad, which is essentially a sponge that soaks up ink, which may be replaceable depending on how shitty the manufacturer is.
Canon Megatanks don't have a pad at all just dump the ink randomly, so you have to throw the printer out.
Epson's Ecotank pads are replaceable, but have a DRM chip for a sponge (though quite cheap).
In a rare W for HP, their smart tanks have user replaceable pads (albeit labour intensive).
Print heads for ink tanks also tend to be fairly cheap, around $50 for a colour set. Issues with clogging etc are also overblown, with most modern models with auto clean cycles.
Soaks up ink? I'm confused. How does ink end up somewhere other than the paper being printed on?
Head cleaning. Modern inkjet printers shoot some ink out every so often to keep the heads from clogging with dried ink. They also pump a bunch through if you run the manual cleaning function to fix an existing clog.
Are the kids still printing things on paper for class these days?
Sometimes, especially after ChatGPT became a thing. Most recently I printed a bunch of stuff for a Swedish writing assignment were I had to print out all of my online sources. They can't let have computers then, people will just generate some slop for the assignment
That probably made no sense but TLDR I'm 16 and in school and I regularly print stuff
No, print it as PDF.
I still use an inkjet but I hate myself more for it everyday.
What's the reason to keep the inkjet?
Don’t feel like dropping $400
A decent Brother toner printer isn't more than $100-150 though... assuming USD.
Don’t care for Brother. Never understood the circlejerk for them. Cheap flimsy parts that break easily and are almost impossible to repair. I’d probably want something nicer than the base model too.
You just defined printers in general. Brother is just an edge better than most...
Probably true. My ideal printer doesn’t exist. I’ve really had some bad luck with Brother printers in particular.
you're entitled to your own opinion, but I've never had anything but good experiences with my own Brother laser printer. I was the one who picked it out and bought it since my family needed to print a lot of stuff and I didn't want to deal with troubleshooting it for them, and it has been by far the most reliable, easy to use printer any of us have ever dealt with. We used to have shitty HP inkjets, and those can all die in a fire along with HP.
Maybe they’re fine for home use, but they’re always the first ones to breakdown on me at work. Actually had way better luck with HP LaserJets. But all printers are evil this is like comparing various grades of manure.
I use an inkjet that I refill the ink in (I cut open the carts). I get the ink in bulk (1pint of each color) for like 12usd. Its not as good as a laser, but its a lot cheaper than paying $32 for 1oz of fluid.
Try printing color with your $150 laser printer.
Ok. My HL-3170CDW color laser was on sale for like $160 when I got it almost 10 years ago. Still on the original oem toner and drums, and just printed off a bunch of stuff in color last week.
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