this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2023
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In this video, a Canon print cartridge is opened up and revealed not to contain the meagre 11.9 ml (0.4 fl oz) of ink it is advertised. The proposed solution is to buy a printer designed to be manually refilled with bottles of ink (such as the featured Epson EcoTank ET-2850), though it has only been tested briefly.

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[–] [email protected] 91 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Laser printers are great also if you just need black.

[–] fkn 73 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I have a brother laser, cost me 80bucks. Had to replace my toner once, after about 4000 pages. Cost me 34 bucks to get a new toner. Another 2000 pages in. It just doesn't stop. Unplug it. Leave it unplugged for a month or two. Plug it in, wait a couple minutes, wireless print 50 pages with no driver installs. Unplug.

[–] TornadoRex 14 points 1 year ago

Pretty much the same story. Got pissed at an inkjet one night when my wife needed to print something for school. Still going strong 1 toner replacement later.

[–] Lev_Astov 6 points 1 year ago

Seriously; I feel like I learned the inkjet-cartridges-are-a-scam lesson when I was a kid and have been all about laser printers ever since. I don't understand how anyone is still falling for that.

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

I bought an HP laser printer in 2016 or thereabouts. I only just had to replace the "starter" toner cartridge on it a couple months ago (despite it warning me it was low on toner probably 3 years ago). Bought an off-brand toner cartridge for like $20.

[–] ChihuahuaOfDoom 22 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They're spendy but you can get color laser printers as well. But yes, I love my brother laser printer.

[–] HenloHowl 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I splurged a little while back on a Brother HLL3290CDW. A bit spender than a monochrome laser, but the image quality is fine and it lets my wife print off as many stickers as she wants without having to spend big bucks on ink every couple of weeks.

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

I have this same model. It's fantastic. The color isn't perfectly spot-on, but the contrast is there and it works. I've printed off a half dozen print-and-play games as well as three Netrunner sets with clear, legible results.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I bought a canon color laser printer two years ago with the starter toners. After about 6 months or so, warning came that one of the colors is empty. It was still printing fine so I continued printing. One by one, warning came for all colors, so I bought a 3rd party toner set, but still didn’t replace them because they were still printing fine. 2 years later, I’m still getting warnings that all colors are empty, but just the other day, I printed color pictures of all the 700 Pokémon for my daughter. They’re still going good. I don’t know if they’ll ever actually run dry, or if I should preemptively replace the toners.

[–] Brunbrun6766 19 points 1 year ago

Never open it, you've stumbled upon an infinite duplicate bug. Don't tell the admins

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

My HP color laser (178?) acts the same, with the added "extra low" that you have to allow to accept in some shady parameter in the config or it won't print.

[–] Waldowal 13 points 1 year ago

I splurged a few years back on a Brother Color Laser. So worth it. I just send photos to CVS or Snapfish for printing.

[–] OptiZonion -3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Really hard to justify its cost if your ever print like, 50 pages a year.

[–] orclev 29 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Quite the opposite. Black and white laser printers are very cheap, and unlike inkjet printers they don't dry out and clog if you don't use them regularly. You can literally spend less than $100 for one that can print thousands of pages just with the toner cartridge it comes with. Color laser printers are the ones that are expensive.

[–] Falmarri 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And not even that expensive. 200 bucks will get you a good color laser printer

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Mine cost 90€.

[–] _jonatan_ 14 points 1 year ago

If you print rarely inkjet is going to dry out and stop working, making them even more expensive and annoying.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

My printer was constantly getting clogged because I only print every few months. I was literally buying a new ink cartridge every time. Laser printers can be left quiet indefinitely without wasting ink/toner, they're much better for intermittent use.