I worked with HP, and got to see the sheer depths of depravity when it comes to screwing the customer. 1. They have one of the harshest cartridge ID systems, to the point that each cartridge knows the batch it was made from. The reason for this is so the printer can reject single-cartridge replacements, forcing the customer to replace them all. 2. They have multiple layers of detection to ensure the cartridge was never unsealed. The printers immediately break the seal on cartridges as a part of entering them, and it also knows if part of it has been peeled open because a customer attempted to open a secondary entry point. They do this to screw people that misaligned the cartridge or attempted to refill it. 3. They have detectors that err on the side of caution when determining ink levels. They use this to shut down the printer until new cartridges are added, which is to intentionally waste ink and force the customer to replace them all. 4. They have been "enhancing" your black ink with cyan, and there is no option to stop it. They do this to intentionally waste one of the smaller cartridges to force the customer to replace them all. 5. They intentionally slash quality assurance for cartridges. This means the IDs and detectors can randomly fail, which they've programmed to always deny access. This is because some people don't return faulty cartridges, which means they get a double sale. 6. This system creates a lot of ink-filled trash. Not only is the plastic going to last a few centuries, but the ink is highly toxic and has been proven to poison groundwater if allowed to seep. They know this is happening, and are simply trying to keep quiet to not draw attention to it. There's a lot of other ways they're hurting their customers, but I'll keep it to the ink side of things. If an Epson actually lets you refill the cartridges, I recommend shouting it from the mountaintops, because I was led to believe the printer industry had a gentleman's agreement amongst each other to keep ink artificially scarce by any means necessary.
That last bit sounds like a direct breach of TFEU Article 101. (EU Cartel laws) "Article 101 prohibits anti-competitive agreements between two or more independent market operators." Thats very big lawsuit waiting for happen, consider giving them anonymous tip to it.
I have a cheap HP printer that came with the free HP Instant Ink plan. I get 15 pages per month free, and pay $0.10 a page after that, and if the ink runs low, they send me a new cartridge for free. It's almost free since I rarely go over 15 pages per month.
@@LargeInCharge77 From what ive understood they do not need it on paper to find companies quilty. Just a formal agreement is enough, but your last point might be why they havent got those just a few billion fines yet
They are doing something wrong, they're misleading consumers about how much ink is inside the cartridge. Tesla tried this with misleading battery range, and they certainly fell foul of the law in doing so. @@leblueawoo
Yes, they need to be sued. Recently Taco Bell got sued for not supplying what they advertise. The only issue is that Canon will argue that they specify 11ml of ink per cartridge, which is soaked up by those sponges. 🤷🏽♂️
This must be the scenario that most fits this cliche of: “THIS THING IS BAD! SOMEONE NEEDS TO DO SOMETHING” … *proceeds to do nothing, status quo continues and nothing changes*
Printer manufacturers typically sell the printer for cheap with ink cartridges that are almost empty, just to force you into buying their super marked up "full" cartridges. If you almost never print anything, the best option might just be to buy a new printer every time you need more ink.
I needed new ink for my printer. Went online and saw a new printer at better specs for less than the price of the ink. I went in needing new ink, came out with a new printer and had enough money left to pay my rent for the next 6 months.
@@useraccount2507 I've got a HP printer, and you can get a good deal from an off-brand manufacturer. Basically twice the ink for half of the price, but HP recently updated the firmware to block all off-brand ink cartridges "because of security and quality" and as a EU citizen, I can't phantom how the F it can be legal to do that. Printer manufacturers reminds me way too much of the Phoebus Cartel
I remember buying an Olympia daisywheel typewriter in the 80s and was astonished when I typed only 4 pages of text and the ribbon had run out, a new one cost $15. My mother had used an old "Bluebird" typewriter with an ink-soaked fabric ribbon and it lasted 20+ years with no ribbon change! Now we have phones with built-in batteries so you throw away the phone when the battery won't take a charge anymore.
When you empty and recharge every time slightly damaged as every metal thing that runs electricity quality of materials and production will help with survival pf such batter but not batter can survived being charged and emptied so often
This is why I bought a FairPhone. User replaceable batteries, and a screen that can be replaced in literally a couple of minutes with just a screwdriver. Only problem is actually buying a battery for it in Australia, with shipping companies not wanting to ship lithium batteries from Europe.
Also to mention, if you’re not using the printer often enough, the cartridge will dry out. So you still have to continuously buy new ones if you’re printing a little or a lot
My biggest problems with inkjets was that the heads would clog up. At some point you could no longer get them unclog and quality would jump off a cliff. then it's new printer time because they're basically disposable. Ended up going to a laser because of it.
@@Froggy11235Ricoh/Savin/Lancer and HP service tech here: HP has some of the harshest OEM printer restrictions but you can turn it off and buy off brand cartridges. All you need to do is downgrade the firmware and disable the consumer protection option. On our public school accounts we do this to maximize profit.
Maybe this can help you to refill cheaper...I have a laser printer, and to which I installed a hacked driver that I found on the internet. What it does is that it allows working with original but refilled cartridges. When I need ink I just go to the local company where they refill cartridges at a fraction of the price.
The chip on the cartridge also counts the number of pages printed and tells the printer not to print any more when it estimates you're out of ink. This is why sometimes your printer says you're out but you're still getting sharp, clean printing and other times, you get faded printing before it tells you you're out. More often than not, your printer will lock out and tell you to replace the cartridge before it's even empty.
True. And H&P cartridges even expire. Who knew? Say there was a sale, and you buy a bunch of cartridges and horde it for later. If you install the cartridge after the expiration date, it won't work.
I got a Canon printer recently with the same ink cartridges as you. I printed maybe 30 shipping labels and the printer said I was out of black and color ink. I had never used color at all yet. It was a new printer. So I bought more. Just 20 shipping labels and it said my color was out again although I never printed a single color page to date. The printer will not work at all without both cartridges being full. I went through 3 black and two color cartridges in this so far before I gave up on it after half a year.
I used Canon printers, there’s a setting you need to uncheck so it won’t use color ink to print black - which means it will only print black from black ink By default I think the setting is ON so when black is about to run out, it starts to use color ink as well
@@ej6380media Thanks for the tip. I have to check. But 20 to 30 shipping labels are just a tiny bit of print on a fraction of a page. Something is still not right with that.
After nearly $200 dollars of ink, over a year, I could only printed 15 pages. It's infuriating that it would dry up in less than 2 weeks. Yes, this sbould be giant lawsuit to stop these criminals.
@@zakariasnagygoing to the library every time you need to print of a sheet of paper would be so fucking obnoxious unless you lived right next to one. You’re literally asking a person to turn a 30 second task into a 2 hour long ordeal to drive into town and back for a single sheet of paper. How is that not more wasteful?
I used to work at Staples and customers would REGULARLY ask why their cartridges get used up so quickly. We almost always had to default to "Well, it could have dried up if it was too hot or you wren't using your printer enough." since we weren't allowed to directly tell them that there's really not a lot of ink.
@@OverRule1 itll depend on your cartridge and printer, looks like theres plenty of people who do just that and decided to post it to YT. Just watched someone who had a system set up for it. Has 2 sets of ink cartridges for his printer, when set A runs out he will fill and replace them with set B, just to make the printer think its a new cartridge.
you work at staples and dont work for canon. are you being held hostage? why are you supporting this shitty printer company. tell the customers the truth they deserve
I've been using the same ink cartridge (canon) for two years. And one previously before that for 5 years. I drilled a hole on the top and refill it with ink. Lasts multiple years. Let it rest in a dish of water or alcohol before refilling it just to keep the heads moist.
@@OverRule1 yeah I bought an Epson eco tank just for this reason. It doesn’t use cartridges it has is own built in tanks that I can just fill up with original ink or cheaper knockoff ink
I was shocked when I moved to Thailand and walked into a computer shop and found that you can buy gallons of ink for your printer for a couple dollars and you could buy conversion kits that would run tubes into your printer from huge containers that you pour the ink from the gallon into. It made me furious that I was paying $50 for a tiny HP cartridge back in America.
Commercial multi cartridge printers that do high speed envelope printing have tubing to each cartridge from an IV bag of ink, allowing them to run continuously. O have the same printer... here is the TRUTH ( I do not get affiliate money ). The printer replaced a failed HP small business printer that HP offers no repair on..... the HP was AWESOME, with a good build quality. The Epson has been running at my business, kicking out about 100 sheets a day of B&W and Color... but no photos.... after 8 months, the INITIAL filling of Black is right now at half level, and the colo are at 5/8 on all 2 colors...... The downside, the machine is very cheaply built.... the sheet feeder fails, forget about multipages feeding correct. But the scanner is good, and it is just ok, but nothing like the HP PAGEWIDE, which has been discontinued.... which had FAST output of even the first page.... faster than a laser.
I remember customers back in 1994(!) complaining about printer ink prices and how much money they were making off of it, but truth is if the ink had been cheap, the printers would have been dead expensive. Complain all you want but the profit margins aren't as high as you might think. Of course still high, but not crazy high. And there have always been alternatives, like refilling with cheaper ink, despite manufacturers trying to prevent that.
That's because Thailand doesn't have the same kind of intellectual property laws, you'll find this in a bunch of other countries. There will be copy products of conversion kits we don't get in the US because they are sued out of existence.
@@paulmichaelfreedman8334 customers would rather pay a little more for the printer, than get ripped off for life on ink cartridges. Gilette razor has the same business model as printers
I’m surprised hp hasn’t tried to strike your video down. You’re definitely the biggest force of clarity on their scam industry - they even have just in time ink they auto enroll you in for normal printers on purchase.
I sell printers in a retail electronics store. I always thought printer cartridges were a scam and guided my customers to laser printers. Glad that my suspicions were confirmed.
Oh, man, you think ink cartridges are a scam? I bought a Canon color laser printer, thinking it would be more economical in the long run. A full set of OEM cartridges (standard capacity) is $250 USD. A high capacity black toner cartridge is $144 alone. The off brand cartridges mostly work, but every time the printer restarts, it won't do anything until you go over to it and dismiss a warning about non-Canon cartridges. I need to put that thing on a UPS so it doesn't power cycle every time there is a power event. If anyone knows how to run hacked firmware, I would pay to have it. I wish I could run the thing with a Raspberry Pi. Next time, I'm going to do more research before buying a printer. The print quality is fantastic, but I despise the printer because Canon makes it so expensive and annoying to operate.
@@Dwigt_Rortugal , I use a Canon MF220 series 3-in-1 printer/scanner and uses an ink toner, yes, its monochrome, and yes, the ink toner is a bit expensive... but its been around 2 years now and i still haven't replaced the toner that came with the printer. but yeah, i only used the printer with my kid's school work. it is way better than those ink cartridges that dries up over time, and you have to purchase a new set again even if you barely used the printer.
Ricoh/Savin/Lander and HP service tech here. They’re not really “ripping you off”. The actual price of the printer is almost double what you pay for it. In a lot of these printers the fuser alone is the price of the entire printer. You’re basically on a pay by the month plan with a 100 starter fee. These companies don’t make money (unless it’s an MFP line) until you begin purchasing supply items.
The people who run these companies need to be held accountable, but of course the people who run these companies are filthy rich members of the ruling class. They are above the law.
@@randodejambo2921 Shut the hell up. It's a complete and total ripoff, printers do not cost that much to make, and no one is going to believe some full-of-shit service rep that this isn't a very intentional scam. Keep squeezing that turnip, though.
thirty, more like over a hundred years. Its the razor and blades model. Printer wise, the market didn't originally start out that way, at least not until Inkjets started rolling in. The old dot matrix systems were designed to be user refillable and serviceable.
Deciding to buy a laser-jet printer was one of the smartest thing's we've ever done. We bought an HP one at least 6 or seven years ago and had to replace the toner ONCE a few months ago. ONCE. We don't print tons, but we use it quite regularly, so it was totally worth it!
I find this is best for black and white prints and printing faster as well. Color prints are better on the one shown in the video with refillable ink tanks rather than cartridges.
I am always amazed that no-one has taken the printer manufacturers to court over such a blatant rip off. I changed to a mono laser much better suited to childrens homework printing.
Because you are aware of what you are buying. Even still, modern printers have only been around for 30-50 years, so the market is relatively new for it to actually see competition
I think it is hard to make a judge, that knows about laws but little about printers, understand the scale and gravity of this scam. And no, not everyone "knows what they are buying". If people knew, nobody would buy 50€ printers.
@@mrcoder7327 they're much older than fking smartphones, yet smartphones have become one of the best/most efficient things one could have. Printers? They've been sitting on the same a** for that many years.. I hate the printers industry so much that I refuse to buy a fking printer, only keep electronic versions of things, and I'd rather go to printing shop if I need to, it's cheaper and less work, hence less resentful! 😂
@@COMPUTER.SCIENCE. I have a tank printer, still using the ink in the bottles that the printer came with. I don't even remember when I bought it and the ink just does not run out.
@@Military872 less than a dollar? No. It's the fraction of a penny. You don't understand mass manufacturing costs. An entry level $100 printer with ink would cost somewhere around a few dollars for these companies to produce in materials and shipping. Those kinds of consumer printers should cost like $20, but they rip the public off to create massive value for their shareholders.
I remember printing coloring pages for my classmates when I was in elementary school over 35 years ago. I printed over three hundred pages before my dad put a stop to it.... I only used up one printer ribbon in all that time. Dad complained about me using up his printer paper, not his ink. The ink for the printer was dirt cheap in comparison to the cartridges of today. You can buy bottles of ink for just a few dollars. It would take nothing to make a formula that would work in the printers. There is no doubt that the cartridges are a rip off.
oh but-but-but it's a special ink formula! they have to use special vehicles to make the ink, it's totally not like they use the most expensive but at the same time junkiest equipment intentionally to make 'high quality ink' to upcharge 900%!!
My old hp laserjet printer can print like 400 pages in a dollar just refill the cartiage with cartiage powder, Canon is scammer I have plotters for buisness to canon is very costly you even have to turn on ac for it to even print
@@kiraamv5507Just don't hook up your laser printer to the Internet. I made that mistake and now it refuses to print unless I buy a new cartridge. It's definitely a scam. HP is very pretty to disable printing on my old laserjets. I can continue to print on my subscription based inkjet but of course because they charge me per page. The same software blocked my laserjets.
I literally work in an electronics store and I keep on trying to urge customers to go for the Epson ecotank over the cheaper canon ones for this exact reason! But seems like not many people wanna spend 400 dollars on a printer but rather spend double that a year on ink 🙃
no. we buy new cheap shit printers on black friday every couple of years and it is the same price as an ink cart. and by the time the epson pays for itself we wont be printing things or something better will have come to market for a lower price until then. black friday shit ass printers that come with an ink cart the same price as the printer being purchased.
I've done the same thing. A Couple years back I bought 4 printers because the printer + ink carts cost less than just the ink carts. Instead of changing ink cartridges, I just installed a new printer when it's empty. I don't print much so it's lasted me awhile, but now I'm out of printers.@@kyledennis6772
I had a professor who would just buy a $20 printer when she would run out of ink. I think she would literally just throw it out. She said it was cheaper than buying new ink
Then you think of how many other consumers do the same thing, and calculate how much GARBAGE we drop into Earth so companies can make profit$. This tactic should be outlawed (the same goes to Apple with their un-fixable profit making strategy).
I bought an Epson ecotank around five years ago. It still works great and I've saved a fortune in ink cartridges. Yes, the heads do need cleaning from time to time but this is not a problem. Thanks for telling the world about this wicked ink cartridge scam. Andy B.
as a professional print person... all printers need heads cleaning. All of them. That's why they end up 'getting replaced' because most people do not know how to either flush them or replace just the print heads. my mom's printer she has had now for 12 years even though it was a $20 pixma. The advantage to the ecotanks are numerous starting with the tanks being able to be filled with different inks. They are also significantly easier to clean, flush and replace print heads. I currently use an epson workforce 7610 for sublimation but the ecotanks are much better for even that purpose.
I remember someone who helped my family with computer stuff, since I was a kid, he will connect ink reservoirs to the cartridge and it would be amazing, and that was yeaaaars before companies like epson finally join the "printing black market". Rest in peace Gustavo, you insane smart ass, love ya!
thank you for the story mr hair. i recently got a laser printer instead of an ink printer and i stop spending so much on ink. the only downside is that laser printers are more expensive and the cheaper ones that i bought only print in black and white
Decided to sell off my canon printer and that was one of the best decisions I have ever made. I went to purchase an Epson EcoTank and it's way better! At least we don't get ripped off like a sucker! Thank you Epson for saving us!
Well, before this they made a ton of money from their scamming ink also, remember? 😂 It's over $100 for each time refilling, they ain't any better than these rip-off companies, stop lying! 😂
@@COMPUTER.SCIENCE.Ecotank has been in the market for years. They were likely the only widely accessible brand using refillable ink. Also, it costs no where a $100 to refill the tank. Outside of laser printers, ecotanks are a great bargain in terms of cost of printing per page.
What Epson did was brilliant. They struggled to beat HP and Canon in their own game, so they started a new game! In a rare corporate move, they understood what we consumers need, and agreed to earn less per customer, in order to gain a ridiculous number of loyal customers. I switched to Eco-Tank this year and I'm not going back.
Companies that rip off customers should be dealt with severely! I had ink cartridges that were transparent where you could see the ink. Completely filled as you would expect. But such a non-transparent casing is quite unreliable.
I print over 150 pages a day and use Brother laser printer-black only. I get aftermarket 10 packs of drum and cartridge and fill it up with toner powder I got from ebay. I found that it is the lowest cost to print. just a little messy when dealing with the toner powder filling.
If any of you recall, there used to be an ink refill service at walgreens photo booth. Those cartridges that I would get refilled would work so much longer than the original fill, and I would assume, the company doesn't do it anymore because they lost a fortune.
In Southeast asia, some printer models are designed to be refillable. They have an ink tank placed outside But it took for several years for Canon and HP to officially acknowledge and launch such design Before that, ppl unofficially modify their cartridge to attach an external ink tank Or refil their cartridge by themself using cheap knock-off ink
They tried to scam us but here in the UK we had shops selling knock offs for a full set of inks for less than a fiver saving us like 80% of the retail price. Usually it was for Epson printers. Canon/Lexmark somehow continued to have a system in place to screw their customers.
I've only bought printers over the last 20+ years in the UK where I could buy Non-OEM ink. I currently have a Brother MFC-J4610DW, and 3x full sets of 'XL' fill Non-Brother ink was less than £10. I have an Epson laser black-only I was given, empty, because 'The toner cartridges are £60!' and I easily found a Non-OEM toner cart for £14. Re-engineering the chips seems to be the key, so maybe the USA has more of a stranglehold.
I bought a printer for £30 and the cartridges are £35 lol. I bought anotger printer(it comes with cartridges) because it's £3 cheaper and it's a true story.
Thank you !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I keep wondering why I'm not getting many full color prints of my 8x10 paintings. I have to pass on my ink and photo paper costs to my customers who buy my prints. There should be scam laws!!!!! They keep claiming lies in their ads. Can't anybody legally stop that?
My favorite was when years back they introduced the "XL" tanks under the guise that suddenly printer ink is cheaper. What they did was filled them halfway and called those the standard cartridges, which now only cost half as much.... so you think "wow, printer ink is finally affordable!" but really all they did was rename the "full" ink cartridges "XL" and then charged the same price as they did before.
EU directive that printer won't "selfdestruct" / automatically shutdown. -replaceable ink absorber (Canon G3200 Megatank printer Ink Absorber/Error Code 5b00) -user resettable inc cartridge counter and ink absorber counter. -user cleanable print heads -non overpriced and easily available spare parts EU directive for labeling the amount of ink that comes out of the tank through the print head onto the paper. Class action suit in the US. Just make a 501 for that :)
Not just a printer companies that are doing that. Look at all the food that we currently get that's only half the nutrition that used to be, it's half the size, and cost 5× more! Thanks Obama, i mean Biden.. Why did I think Obama attention to Obama's interviews he tells you that if Trump gets into office and they asked Obama to run things in the shadows with a front man that he would not be opposed to doing so.. these are Obama words! Obama got the most time in office and it should be illegal. The things they are putting Biden through are Criminal acts and he don't even know any better
@@mesmorrow they all collectively did it, I know HP and Epson both sell "XL" cartridges. HP was the one I remember advertising that ink shouldn't cost so much 🙄
I worked tech at staples for a long time. I tried to push ecotanks as much as I could, but due to their HP partnership, I was forced to push HP printers as an extreme priority. It got to a point where they were sending us to HP sponsored events to train us to push more HP printers. Their tech department as a whole got to be such an ethical problem I ended up walking out.
Yeah, I figured this out many years ago. I live in Brazil and the cartridges were twice the price as in the States. I bought a refill kit, but it didn't work. I went online and the problem was air entrapped between the ink sponge and the nozzles. One of the solutions offered was to put the cartridge inside a long sock and swing it around your head so centrifugal force caused the ink to flow. It worked! I redecorated the living and dining rooms with black polka dots 😂😂😂!
I’ve left jobs for ethical reasons too but every job is ran by evil people so there’s no escape. I wish I was taught this early but it’s really something you learn with experience.
@@jacksonrelaxin3425On one hand, you want to protect your kids from the world and let them enjoy their innocence as long as possible, but on the other it only hurts them in the long run. I knew the world wasn't perfect, but holy shit I had no idea it was THIS bad..😢 I was hoping for 50/50, not 90/10 to the negative.
I've been aware of the printer ink scam for multitude of years I took one of those things apart when I was a teenager and then again in my twenties But seeing how we are in the minority of awareness there's not much we can do about this, but I'm glad somebody's finally protesting about it. So thank you for putting up Your video.
I mean.. ruclips.net/video/AHX6tHdQGiQ/видео.htmlsi=tDCXGzhTNFGQJPFg This guy exposed more than this video, and like 5 years ago. But nothing was done about it. I doubt this will result anything either.
Everyone knows they're a scam, wdym? It's always been a huge meme that you get more ink for your money buying bic pens than you do buying ink cartridges.
At college, our Business Management instructor, who's a executive in Wall Street, told us that Epson makes practically ZERO MONEY manufacturing printers. The money they get is from ink because it's easier to deceive a customer with something he can't see. Most people, including me, didn't care about what's inside an ink cartridge. Thank you for this video review, or I should say for the head up!
As someone who has worked on and sold a variety of printers. The ecotank will do fine so long as you print at least weekly, and leave it plugged in so it can run cleaning subroutines. Worked at the store selling them for like two years, never had a report of failure that didn't involve it being unused in a closet for months.
wonder what happened to my friends ecotank then? he would use it almost every week, but then it started printing grainy photos and after clearing all the lines and resetting software etc., it still did that and has been sitting unused for months now. maybe i can get him to try and clean it up again and check if anything has changed
@@Lizardfiz12 If the cleaning subroutine doesnt seem to work, check that where the ink jet cleans itself isn't jammed with paper. Ours had a small piece jammed and it never cleaned itself properly. Had to take it apart a bit to get the paper out.
@@Lizardfiz12 I have a similar problem, I think it's because I don't print regularly enough. Fortunately printing in black & white still looks good but colour printing not so much.
On the other hand, people get demotivated to print often and instead share their files online or bring USB sticks. No ink, no paper and no plastic will be wasted.
I have my Epson Ink Tank printer for 6 years now and its still going strong. I just had to reset the counter bout 2 times but that is easy to do with a little free reset software from the internet. 👌😀👍
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Epson EcoTank owner over here, too. I'm also a teacher who always prints worksheets and presentations in full color for my students. It has been 7 years with my L395, and it's still printing without any problem at all. A BIG plus is that you don't need to refill the tanks with the ink that they call "official", I've got ink bottles that were Brother and Canon, used them on my printer, and it keeps on printing. You just made me appreciate my machine a lot more, thanks.
as a long term user of tank styles. Glad ya like em. Just one note for ya could save you a print head one day. Make sure the chimical base used in the ink's are compatible with what you have in there now. and ofcorse that the head can use the ink to. some heads get way hotter to spray the ink than others. And i once put in some epson ink in a cannon. both were large format printers just didnt pay atention. when the epson ink hit the cannon ink they gelled. all - the - way - up - the - tubes. Fortunitly it didnt hit the print head. fast large format print heads are hella expinsive.
You are wrong there is no way you could have had this for 7 years when they barely been out for the last four years as it was released in 2019.
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@@SHSPVR You are right, I forgot I survived my first teaching year with a Brother laser printer. Then I bought my Ecotank during 2017. This is a video about the L395 made 6 years ago ruclips.net/video/ypz32_XPVlM/видео.html Maybe the printers are sent to different countries in different timesets, and it arrived late to your country.
@@Zagroseckt epson printer are using piezoelectric printhead not like other printer that are using heat to spray the ink but still it might not recommended to use other print ink as there might be some other chemical that might harm the epson printer
although to be fair the cartridges that come with most printers are starters with less than normal print capacity, plus given how many pages a laser printer can print its still not as bad as an inkjet (inkjet will cost about $100 for oem ink for B/M/Y/C and print around 750 pages - per HP specs on the 902xl cartriges, my laser printer is about $400 for B/M/Y/C toner, which will net you about 10x the pages 7600 for black oem canon 055h cartridges' and 6800 for the C/M/Y cartridge's) so price per page at minimum for inkjet is around 13cents a page on OEM XL cartridges, for price per page on the laser at its minimum colored yield is about 5cents per page, so while a laser has a higher upfront cost for the toner, its cheaper in the long run. Technically i have been running the same starter cartridges' for years and have a page count of around 1700, half being b/w and half being full color, and while 3 of my cartriges are end of life, they still print just fine. unlike many inkjets that refuse to print when out of a color.
the ink you get with the new printer is basically just a small sample cart. but I agree, unless it is for color or some weird format cart (which I wouldn't buy).
One more advantage of laser printers (and for my use case it’s a HUGE advantage) Laser printer can sit unused for days weeks months even years, and still work. Inkjets sit unused for a week? They start drying out. And then getting clogged. Which almost always means total replacement . My use case: documents, instructions, lists… usually two-three a month, maybe 20-50 pages MAX… B&W ok Photographs, or other prints that need/want COLOR… once, perhaps three a month… these get printed at WalMart, or on-line photo labs for higher-quality needs.
I've been using an epson printer L110 since 2010, it's a tank based printer as well. Working perfectly till date. Can trust epson blindly as long as you're using original ink bottles
I had a brother printer for many years and tried using generic ink in it and after a couple of refills, I would have to take the printer to the shop to get it fixed so I also have stopped using printers basically because of this
Mine was kinda broken on the printer head (?) because I didn't use it for quite some time and it got dusty. My uncle took it from me trying to repair it for his own use because he's a teacher and the I think the repair shop my uncle went tl can't fix it. Great printer though, now I have a Brother printer+scanner that also use an ink bottle instead of cartridges
I've been using epson l360, l1800 and m105 for pigment all with 3rd party ink that's way cheaper ypuke you can get almost 1200 ml of any color for about 5$ and with that amount of ink I am able to print almost 35k prints
A year later and how is it? The problem I always ran into was I printed in color so infrequently that the cartridges would dry out and be unusable so I've just stuck with a b&w laserjet for the last dozen years. Do these dry out and become unusable if you use them every couple of months?
I had this printer and ran into tons of issues with it. I had to keep recalibrating it. It needs to do special maintenance if you don’t use it enough which takes time and can use a large portion of the ink up. If you don’t know what you’re doing and you run the special maintenance twice by accident it overfills the black ink into the color reservoir and ruins the printer. For me it was too good to be true. Great in theory, but I didn’t personally have good luck with it.
I'm at three years too. The heads or the feed tubes (forgot which, maybe both) on mine clogged up after a while of not using it last year, but there are videos online walking through how to clean them. Fixed it for free.
It would have been good to weigh the cartridge before opening it, then rinse out the ink sponges completely with isoalcohol then put them back in once they were dry and re-weigh it. Then you could see exactly how much ink by weight was really in there.
We've known about this for so long, why we still don't have consumer protections against this is a mystery to me. It's like a benchmark for seeing how many years behind law makers are when it comes to the tech industry.
It's capitalism, as long as people buy it, they'll keep selling it. The problem is that people are idiots, myself included, so we buy the cheapest printer we can find (often sold at a loss) then keep wasting money on expensive ink. I bought a cheap Deskjet that wouldn't let me print in B&W or grayscale when any of the color cartridges were empty. But even worse than that, I had some documents to scan, and... it wouldn't let me scan because one of the cartridges was empty. Great, ''cause I do need ink to scan, of course.
I've had an Epson for like 6/7 years, printed tens of thousands of pages, probably been refilled like 100 times, still on the original printing heads (they give me some problems sometimes, need to be cleaned constantly, etc) nearly always used 3rd party ink and amazing honestly
For black and white text, laser printers are by far the less expensive option in the end, when you factor in the price of ink and that it tends to dry out over time. I haven't owned an inkjet printer in over 20 years.
plus most people think ‘i’m saving ink’ by only printing black and white but many printer companies actually put cyan in with the black just because. so you have to buy more ink regardless.
Same, weve just invested in Kyocera laser printers for blk&wht prints, coz its powder cartidges are cheaper.. Plus there are third party providers too, which is way more cheaper.. Then reservoir type printers for the colored ones..
Laser is great but the main issue is it’s still a huge up front cost for cartridges, and the printers with any extra features (i.e. a scanner or a document feeder) are quite big and heavy. One black toner cartridge for the stock standard Brother laser printer costs like $80 (AUD) for 1200-ish pages, whereas a full set of bottles for an ecotank for anywhere between 5000 and 7500 pages is about the same price.
I have Brother HL-L2365DW since 4 months ago and it's printing about 40k till now. The catridge are still strong. I just have to refill the toner for about every 3k pages.
@@sammcclain3778 that's not how black&white laser printers work, but okay. With laser printers, black and white LITERALLY only prints black and white since there's only black toner in it (and no color toner)
And people called me crazy when I said they were scamming with the ink! I remember in the 90’s one cartridge would print a book darn near. Late 90’s early 2000’s hit and u can’t even print your syllabus without needing a new cartridge!
@@LoLaSnya no. Capitalism is someone having the ability to do that and then 20 competitors like epson come along and make better products you can buy instead. Grow up.
Well when the ink is more expensive than the printer, then yeah, it’s a obvious scam. It’s like when companies put less food in their product. Consumers are always getting scammed somewhere!😂
Its not a scam. Thats why these companies can sell their printers for peanuts. Instead, they make their money out of the printer cartridge. its a marketing tactic.
@customer7575 I've noticed that the cans of soup started getting smaller, but with the same or higher price....a little strange don't you think....pay more for less....
You could soak it up with iso alcohol and then let the alcohol evaporate in a dish. Ink doesn't evaporate AFAIK, so I think this would be a valid method to get all the ink out of the cartridge and measure it.
No, the reason they use foam is to more easily deliver the ink to where it needs to go. Sucking up liquid ink from a reservoir into presumably a tube of some sort, just to soak it into a pad anyway, is stupid and seems 10000x harder than the solution they came up with. Ink cartridges are definitely a scam, but because there’s not enough ink in them and they’re extremely overpriced, not because they’re purposely engineered to scam you. 99% of the time, there’s a purpose for things beyond the first most surface level observation you make.
@@MrKoyama2004there is 3 types of ink - water based - solvant based - oil based All dries up. So using alcohol wouln't work. But, with a few cartridges and some experimentation you can figure it out: - Weight a full caridge - print until empty - weight it again - take one or more cartridge - squizz out the ink - measure the volume - weight it The first part is to figure out the usable quantity. There is always a portion that can not be used (in part because they garantee that the first and last page is 100% quality. Low ink level may cause the head to suck some air and misprint.) Second step is to measure the density of the ink. Once you have that, you can do some simple math to find the used volume.
Yep that Epson eco tank is the printer for any small business owner. I have a business and I print something every single day. I've been printing everyday since like 2020 and I still haven't run out of the original ink that came with the printer lol. My black is just now getting a little low after all these years. it was really expensive up front. But it was worth every penny because I haven't had to do anything to it, change any ink or nothing. It just works every time. I've never been happier with a printer in my life.
It depends on the need. Laser printers have a place too if you need to print loads of pages as suddenly time becomes a factor too. If the workers need to wait minutes for all pages to print instead of seconds that accumulate over the course of a year.
Does that mean that the ink doesn't dry up as it happens with cartridges when you don't print for a while? Or have you been using it regularily to a point where it'd be impossible to tell if they would or not dry up? Asking about your impressions because you're the only other person than the video host, that happens to own one of those 😀 Have a great week mate!
its a trash printer though, its weird that most people don't know this but you can convert just about any printer on the market into a tank system. CIS kits have been common place for like 20 years. You can even buy the ink by the gallon from chinese wholesellers (literally the same crap epson uses) for pennies on the dollar. One thing we used to do for all our printers back in the late 2000's was run around to all the goodwills grabbing up highend photo printers slapping a 20 dollar chinese kit on them and just run them non-stop. People would buy them find out how much they cost to operate and then just chuck them to donation sites / yardsales / flea markets etc so you could get them for next to nothing.
The Epson is absolutely the answer. My wife is a teacher, we print a lot, daily. We have had this printer for at least 8 months and I am STILL using the original ink the printer came with. Absolutely amazing. I also had a Canon with the cartridges, but she was going thru a cartridge a week. Even buying knockoff ink on Amazon was still 30 bucks a pop. Not one problem with the Epson.
laser printers are even better, better printing and cheaper in the long run, no clog issues unlike inkjet, invest in one, hopefully one with wifi or networking capability, you will not look back.
I’ve had one of those for at least 5 years, and it seems the original black ink is getting low, maybe it lasts a year or two. Magenta is still over half full.
HP deserves a mention of honor here for being the scammiest of them all. After the first Deskjet printer I got, I decided that it deserved no love at all. After using an Epson printer at my colllege office and seing that those bottles worked way better, I bought one for my house as well. My suffering has lightened because although some argue that there is a difference in quality, for printing some reports, you barely notice that.
We had an HP Color Printer 🖨 It had an expensive ravenous appetite, and was the ONLY brand that NEVER had a sale on ink. Replaced it with an Epson Printer 🖨, on sale, for a price similar to 2 changes of HP ink. It has been BETTER than the HP. And Epson ink price is reasonable, and occasionally on sale. We were probably NOT the only Former HP users. Since we quit them, HP Printers and Ink seem to have a lot of sales! 😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣🤣 (🤬HP)
@@slipjones2 I am talking about years ago to today 10 years to today friend. At the time the inkjet printer was the latest tech (according to HP). Deskjet**
It is no wonder HP got into the medical field that is full of corruption and scams: _"... years before the coronavirus pandemic began, work coming out of the Future Unit drove HP’s investment into adapting inkjet printer technology for medical applications such as drug development, vaccine research, and rapid diagnostic testing."_
One thing to keep in mind is that you should print at least one page per week (with all colors) if you have an ecotank. Otherwise the ink will get dry and clog the header, which will require you to pay maintenance. So, if your print very little, create a weekly task in your computer for it to print a page with a bit of every color.
I was able to clean the heads successfully myself. There are videos out there with instructions and a cheap kit to buy. I spent maybe 15 bucks, can't recall exactly, but it was not much, and it took me maybe 30 minutes max to do it.
ecotanks are great! and it actually isn't the head clogging up, they have wipers built in to keep the printer head clean, it's simply because the ink system isn't airtight, so over time pressure will decrease making the ink draw back into the tank. if this happens just run a couple of the thorough head cleaning procedures from the pc interface, and it'll get back up to pressure. by far the best style printers we get in for repair haha :P
Having one off the first ecotank (which were worst a this) I can say this allaways a fixable issue. When it happens (more than a week off no use usually). I just launch the "cleaning heads" program then print a photo of a rainbow (with black parts) one, two, maybe tree times and then it is fixed. You might say that is wastefull ! I say as a 7 year old user i bought a ink set twice maybe tree times for 13 bucks each.... yeah just buy the printer it is awsome it's a no brainer.
As a former ink refiller in a photo center at Costco, I can confirm that cartridges are a scam. They don't have that department anymore, but they used to have an official ink refilling machine you could also find at Fry's Electronics that would literally drill 3 holes in the cartridge, and use needles with the correct tone of ink to refill the sponges. After that, we would put stickers on the holes and reset or replace the digital chip so the printer could see it as a new cartridge. It was always a 50/50 chance of working though because of how cheap that design of printer is in general and the different uses each person has with their printer. About 5 years ago, I first saw Epson's Eco Tanks come on the shelf. the 2800,3800, and 4800. I thought that is the solution! I've talked to many people who still have the original black ones and now the newer white ones that they are the way to go for sure.
Bought my Epson Eco-Tank and love it! I only print once in a blue moon and the ink is still full and working fine after months not printing. Best printer ever after a laser printer. Never going back to Canon and HP again.
I read once that rare or occasional use causes the ink to dry up in the tanks and tubing, causing complete printer failure. Curious if you have seen any evidence of this? I personally went to a color laser printer, and even though the toner is expensive, my supply cost has dropped by about 80% since making the change.
@@misssparkle8317 I've got an Epson ET-2850. There are cheaper models. I got a more expensive one, because it has a double page function. There is a function for extra fine printing. It’s a bit difficult to find, because you have to go to custom settings, but it’s not complicated, once you know about it. I use mine for printing photos and they turn out well.
I loved mine until the ink dried inside the printer tubing and stopped working completely. Doing some research, I found that it’s common. Maybe this is a newer, updated model. I would print at least a page a couple times a week, for sure. Hopefully yours will work great for years to come!😊
I've worked at Best Buy and bought one of these for my mom who works from home but has to do a lot of paperwork. We've had it for over a year and we've only had to buy bottles of ink once and she does a decent amount of printing. Epson started to give a shit and it shows.
Thank you! I've been fighting with printers for 30+ years, and I finally gave up on ink printers about 10 years back and went full on laser, if you print more than a few pages a week, ink is too expensive, if you print less than a page a week the ink will dry out and kill the printhead. Only thing ink printers are better at is photos, but for that there are shops out there who can do it cheaper and better than any home office printer. The only reason for owning an ink printer is for experimenting with photo printing on a daily basis.
Same. I do miss being able to quickly fire off color prints but it's not often. Got a Brother laser printer a few years ago and still haven't had to replace the toner.
Tbh, they have the same shit show with laser printer now, with serialized cartridge. I have a brother fax printer combo that only support black and white printing, and the print quality is not as good now days. But it gets the job done and the refill cost like 8 bucks, without having to deal with bullshit serialized cartridge.
Totally agree. I only print maybe once a month. I got so sick of spending an hour or so cleaning heads, swapping out clogged cartridges just to print a couple of pages. Went laser a couple of years ago and its been great. The only problem I've had so far was a bit of toner stuck to the drum and printing a line of spots. It was a 5 min clean.
@@dragons_redOh, I didn't know they switched to "starters"... I assume those are worse (actually I wouldn't be surprised if they were better too, like to convince you that you made a good purchase), but back when I was in need of printer etc, and that was like a decade ago, I already knew that you can pretty much just buy a new one instead of new cartridges and still be in + (all the more since you can sell the old printer too) .
@@dragons_red lol we got around that in 2010.. just return or exchange the printer when you're done. Lost the receipt? Buy a new one and put the old one it its box. They dont check serials.
I have a canon multifunction printer (paid under $100 for it since the new year printer had come in). I use ink cartridges from EZink at a small percentage of the brand ink cost. The printer sees it as Cannon cartridges and they print the same.
Thank you for bringing awareness to this issue. I realized ink cartridges are a scam almost a decade ago and now try and print everything at school. I hope we can stop this issue some how .
So in order not to be scammed, you're scamming your school for the prints that have nothing to do with your studies.. Dubious strategy, but can't blame you, I do it too 😅
@@deniszhuravlev9772usually schools have really big printers that print a lot of papers in just seconds, with big cartridges witch are probably refillable, (at least at my school), so it's not really like you're scamming them🤷🏻♂️
Landfills filling up with printers for the last 20 years was solid evidence vs suspicion. Something designed to be more convenient to throw away and buy a new one.
Convenient wasn't even their goal. It's greed masquerade as convenient. Printers break all the time and replacing these cartridges ain't convenient to the customers. It's crazy how these companies can create so much waste and isn't responsible for recycling or clean after themselves
Suspected? We very well knew. Many even made a business from refilling used cartridges. Two decades ago I used to buy cheap no name ink in bottles that lasted years. I even had my student cousin coming and refilling her cartridges. Since then I had two other printers. Some printers are designed for refilling, some we refill directly through nozzles, drip by drip. And we all know from a decade ago that laser printers are more reliable and cheaper to use. So yeah this rant is legitimate, but comes two decades later. Only morons still buy ink printers. I am retired, no more printing needed and still have a laser printed. I even bought a spare cartridge. But when I need, once a year I still use the old one just out of spite even the role is damaged and smears a little the paper. So come on, grow up. Change the title from, is a scam to was a scam two decades ago, or in .. I am a moron. I still buy ink printers.
It's a relief to see this video because I thought I was going bonkers. In the last couple of years, I purchased two printers I've barely used, but I noticed that the ink wasted very quickly. To the point I'm constantly questioning myself, saying, "What have I printed?" So many stories but good good video. It's ridiculous how many times I've had to buy ink only to use at maybe maximum on three prints of a page or two and then start wondering where the ink go.
Does anyone here remember ink ribbons? That one "block" of ink ribbon lasted me upwards of 15 years. The ink also doesn't tap out right away. It just gets fainter. Those ribbons were like ink pads that would dip into a bottomless well of ink. If you're printing in black text, those things would last forever. It did take like 2 minutes to print a page but those were the days. (Adjusts onion on belt.) The best value now is to just get a laser printer. At least the toner lasts longer and you don't need to worry about dried ink heads.
Been a loyal Epson fan for nearly three decades. Had to send my previous all-in-one printer to the junkyard after Epson ditched cartridges, but my current tank-based unit is the most dependable model I've owned.
Epson still uses chips for ink cartridges that expire after a certain amount of time. I have one and I have printed maybe 1-200 pages over 2 years and it said I was out of ink. I slapped it on paper and plenty of ink came out
i have the tank epson to print my labels for my business, this is the one you NEED, and its not that expensive either, ull def save alot in the long run on refills of any ink you desire.
Don’t forget that the little chips on some cartridges are programmed to give an “out of ink” message after some amount of time, regardless of if you actually used it or not. Yeah, they make their own expiration dates in some cases. And they will brick themselves.
Bro i work with these companies, even the biggest ones just replace the label once it hits the expiry date and its on stock. The ink is more then fine though it lasts long. Its a pure scam.
Even in enterprise settings, the printer will complain "order maintenence kit" every set number of pages, it doesn't actually know if it's broken or not, it just knows that it's printed 10k pages and so tells you to buy a maintenence kit.
Sounds like what some elites are trying to do to a digital currency. If you don't spend the money, it expires. Or, the money won't work to buy certain things that they don't want you to buy.
So glad to hear this, I bought an Epson Ecotank and I just love it. Im a hobby artist so I print a lot of images and my ink from the first fill up still hasn’t run out and that would be about 3 months ago now. I finally feel I have found the printer that was made in heaven for people who live a good distance from suppliers and do a fair amount of printing. Thank you for being honest about what youre finding with cartridges. I absolutely refused to buy a printer that used cartridges and Im glad I held out. My little basic Epson is my best friend.
If you buy a laser printer, they last an extremely long time without a refill by comparison. Toner doesn't expire the way ink does and doesn't have the pre-programmed expiration either, so you are able to use it till it's actually empty or the printer dies. Have had the same printer for nearly 10 years and it's only just now starting to have occasional issues. Only one refill in that time. Costs a bit more up front, but has been well worth it. Before that, I'd buy a printer. Use it till the ink was gone, sell the printer for cheap and use the money towards a new printer. It was cheaper than buying ink.
Depends on your printing needs. As a graphic designer, I do a lot of photographic prints, laser toner will never come close to the quality of inkjet for photos. The thing with the “expiring” ink is only true with cheap printers, my higher end epson printer’s cartridge could sit in there for months and still be good as fresh when I fire it up. As with everything, invest the adequate amount of money and you’ll have a good product.
People tend to want to blame printer companies, but really it is the consumer that created this problem. As you point out, laser jet companies will happily sell you a more expensive printer with a lower cost per page, but consumers tend to want cheap up front, and companies that offered that in these loss leading ink jet printers. Put another way these ink jet companies did not get together and decide to be evil, they responded to the market, and those that tried to *gasp* sell printers for what they cost to make tended to go under, except as you point out the laser printer lines since those are targeted at a differnt group.
The marketing of printers should have been like the ecotanks. Buy this printer, save on ink cartages. In reality they want earn on ink cartages, they dont want to change until epson did with the ecotanks
True. Bought a Samsung laser printer and the black toner died after 6 or so years. It is crazy how long this thing lasted. The colour one is still nearly full as we did not use it that much.
Have had my Epson Ecotank for years now. Still running the stock ink that came with it but will likely need to buy more soon as I'm almost finally out. I freaking love that printer. It's how printers SHOULD work. Every other printer/company is planned to fail or make you buy into their ink scam. Sure the Ecotank costs more- but you'll never regret paying for it once you see how much you save, just in the first few months, alone. It pays for itself nearly immediately if you're going to be printing alot.
The problem I have with these printers is that if you do not print often, the ink in the feeder dries up and you have to just waste a significant amount of ink from the reservoirs to flush the dried ink and enable printing again. But still, the big reservoirs are cheap. Cheaper than the cartridges :)
I have one too but have a negative experience. Yes, I have never needed to replace the ink in the last 4 years, but it sucks. It automatically installed really bad bloatware on my pc that never works, when you use the ADF to scan documents, it sometimes takes in more than one pages at a time and works less than it doesnt work. It is REALLY loud and takes a long time to print. Jams really easily, and it just unreiable. Somehow, the 75$ HP printer I had before this worked better than this 400$ one.
I always think a laser printer is going to be the better option. Sure it’s expensive up front but in the long term you’re saving a lot of money from buying a ton of ink cartridges. Also even if you don’t print that much, ink dries up over time so if you have a full ink cartridge and don’t use it for months you’ve lost money cause that ink has at least partially dried up.
You can now buy a laser printer for cheap. The toner, on the other hand, is far from cheap. It used to be 5000 sheets per cartridge, now it’s 3500 if you are lucky. A chip counts prints. Also, the chip limits you to only their brand while an off brand can sell you two cartridges for the price of one brand cartridge.
Not only that but on older printers you have a head that sprays the ink and if it dries in the head ,you basically have to replace it or buy a new printer. So laser printers are the better option in my opinion
I have a Brother ink tank printer filled it up for the first time in 6 years. I also use a a HP professional Lazer prints only black. Does a few 3000 pages. Downside of your Epsom, when the pad that takes excess ink is full you can't replace it. Its has circuitry in the pad which breaks when you try to replace it.
Been using eco tank for a few months. I print thousands of copies. Absolutely brilliant. Saved an absolute ton of money. I also bought a generic company's replacement ink and that was even cheaper. Less than half price of Epson. And they are also fantastic. Happy days.
I remember when ink cartridges were refillable, then they made them non-refillable but we(some of us) would still do it and they would work just fine but then they put those chips inside and it complicated thing but we found a way around to continue refilling them(well at least I did). It's good to see that Epson is giving a shit about the consumer. I just hope the printer actually lasts at least 3 years or five would be preferable.
The eco-tank printers are very reliable. I bought one for my family after we had an expensive HP laser printer that was gifted to us die. I purchased the Epson et-3700 back in 2018 and it still prints like new to this day. And crazy enough the printer is still running on the ink refill containers that it came with back in 2018! I have never purchased ink in 5 years of moderate use of the printer.
My Epson Ink Tank printer is about 3 years old now and I have printed close to 8,000 pages. One black plus 3 color cartridges together give around 1,500 to 2,000 pages (depending on page content). Very satisfied. Canon cartridge printer was sh*t.
I have a L555. Was one of the first ecotank ever. 5 years later, it prints. If it drys up: You can put a paper towel under the head in the non parking position with some alcohole. Then move the head over that towel a few times. After that my L555 printed like brand new.
I picked up a color laser about 10 years back when it was on a super deep clearance sale, something like $150 for an all-in-one, and while I barely ever print anything, i have probably done 200 pages and the tonor that came in the box is still showing 78% full. Bonus is not needing to worry about it drying out with time; when i had an inkjet it would basically ask for new ink every 10 pages because it had been 6 months since the last 10.
I picked up a B/W laser like 6 years ago for $100, I have saved money despite having only printed about 15 pages since then. I print so little that I would have to buy new ink every time I wanted to print 1-2 pages... I got sick of that extremely fast. if I ever need to print color odds are I am going to want high quality, so I will just go to a shop with a high end commercial color printer and pay the whatever a page it costs.
I am a teacher and I purchased an Epson ecotank printer almost 2 years ago. The ink that came with the printer lasted 1.5 years. I only recently purchased more ink bottles. I print multiple pages several times a day for students. I love my Epson!!!
Same!! The worse thing that happens is that you have to clean the print heads every month or so to fix line inconsistencies. I’ll take that for something that literally took what was a substantial budgeting issue to inconsequential.
I believe those printers are programmed to fail within 3-4 years (built-in life span like light bulbs). With that said, you may still be ahead of the game price-wise (haven't done the math).
Thank you for your comment. I have wondered about these ink tank printers. I'll stick with my laser printer, but it's good to know about the ink tanks.
Who cares if they fail after 4 or even 3 years. As a private music teacher with a full schedule I’m easily printing 2000 copies a year minimum. I paid $230 for my eco tank and best case scenario with a laser would be about $50 for the printer and another $200 in ink for a year. Printer paid for itself in the first year. It’s 2 years old and recently added more black ink, which came with the printer. So far I’ve saved another $250. If used on a regular basis its print is equal to a laser printer, hands down. If you need more 300-450 dpi you should probably be looking for a different machine altogether.
My favorite thing about printers and ink is when during the pandemic there was a chip shortage and the ink wouldn't work without a chip and they literally shipped ink without a chip. Hilarity ensues.
It's not a scam. It's much worse. It's a tactic to force people to live digital then analog. If we have all on paper why use Word, Dropbox or digital storage options as much. It's forced customer selection. 😑
I've had the Epson Eco-tank 2840 for about 2 months now. We had an Epson printer that took cartridges before and got tired of spending $60 every month for more ink. But we're 2 months into the Ecotank and the black is still over halfway full and the colors are still totally full. So I'm happy with it so far.
Little tip, Print a full page colour photo every couple of weeks to keep the ink fresh at the heads, power cleaning is a pain and can take a few attempts to get back to prime condition.
The big downside is that those print slow as hell. It's only worth it for small scale home photo printing, otherwise if you're doing just documents a monochrome laser is your best bet.
@@ms_hnsa3136so u have done refills on this printer ink then? Any issue comes to refilling? Like error detected like not allowing u to print? I’m having these bad ink catridges not detected on my HP printer and i want to look for other suggestions..
My uncle gave me his old Epson ink tank printer in 2016 and after it stopped working we bought ourselves another Epson with wifi capabilities in 2019, these work good but in 2022 printer had some issue with paper feed, the Epson service is pathetic, the repair guy tried to mess with printer head so that he could replace it adding the cost for repair (not from brand) they tried to rip us off , last printer had same issue with printer head getting used. Company charges 55USD , they charge 48(they take old ones and repair it) and will work a few months. This time I told him there's no issue with print head and till today it still works with no problems. You have to service it yourself (find tutorials on youtube) because technician will charge B.S. amount, like draining the waste ink pad. Also in my country HP, Canon and many brands sell ink tank printers from around 150 USD
Pro tip: laser printers (especially mono laser printers) can usually be had for not much more than a cheap inkjet if you buy used, and the toner cartridges can usually be swapped out with generic ones and especially many of the older ones don't have any sort of chips in them.
Even my one year old Brother laser printer will take knockoff cartridges without complaining, and they work fine. Basically unless you really need color printing, a laser printer is a much better choice, because the “ink” is cheaper per page and they don’t clog up and they’re faster. And I guess there’s even color lasers, though I’ve never tried one of those.
I bought a color one about 5 years ago and it just ran out of the introduction toners. They did try to be cheap and an update that blocked use of generic toners, but I never updated it because I know firmware updates only break or ruin your working equipment.
also a lot of smaller "copy machines" are laser... my in-laws had one they got about 15+ years ago... I ended up getting it about 10 years ago and used it for 6 years... could refill the toner 2 or 3 times before I needed to replace the cartridge itself... it was USB only so I used an old netbook connected to it to share the printer on the network... I'd still have it but we moved to a color laser copy/printer/all in one thing... it's a little more problematic but works great 6 years down the road... if I went back to printing lots of black and white i'd find another old laser
The saddest part is that if you print every couple of months and only a few pages you aren't saving anything because the cartridges dry up when they are in the machine. Not only that but they contaminate the ink head with dried on ink as it evaporates. Then you get to buy a new printer as it costs more to clean or replace the head than a new machine. Where is the government when this kind of theft is institutionalized? They could actually do something for the consumer...... yeah we all know how that goes.
If you don't print every week, you should go for a laser printer. You can clean printing head or simply print a page every week, but with long downtime laser printers would obviously be better
The government actually has a stake in keeping the printer industry the way it is! All current printers print tiny, rarely visible to the human eye patterns of light yellow ink that let a page get tracked back to the printer and the date it was printed. The government is the one enforcing tracking dots to be printed. They don't want to draw unnecessary attention to the industry by shaking it up.
@@Inf1e That's the way I went after getting fed up with the cost of running a fairly big Canon Ink Jet. The toners are expensive, but they last for ages.
I bought my dad an Ecotank for his office. He's been printing dozens of documents a day for over a year and he still hasn't depleted the two black ink bottles that came with the printer. We expect it to last a couple months now before we have to buy new ones. Each bottle lasts almost a year. It made us realize how much we were being ripped off by HP.
Watch out for the waste ink reservoir, that fills up too and they track it, they don't let you print anymore when it's "full". I had to replace the one in our office and reset the counter with some software I found online
I hold tight to an old Canon I have from 2006 that I can fill with ink without too much complaining. It only shows the cardriges as empty but it works. If I'll ever need replacing I'll try something better, like the printer shown here. For now I've been avoiding updating to windows 11 because I noticed my old XP drivers for the printer stop working with W11 😅
When I worked at Walmart I ALWAYS recommended the Eco Tank, even to customers that were coming in to buy replacement ink cartridges. Slightly higher up-front purchase but significantly cheaper in the long run.
My problem with Epson is that it has a poor Linux support, only HP supports Linux reliably. Otherwise you have to buy extra software to make it work on Linux, but I think it'll be worth it.
Eco tanks are a scam! I bought one 2 years ago, and when the warranty ends, they shut down. There's a built-in ransomeware that stops the printer from working unless you pay Epson to continue using it. And no you can't sue them. I tried.
in Brazil, i worked in 2009 at a store and they considered the IT guys there SPECIALISTS in filling up the printer cartridges . At the time, we cut a piece of those dish washing sponges to change for that crappy foam inside the HP cartridges, and it holded WAY MORE ink inside the cartridge. there was even an "ink filler machine" that you put a giant galon of ink inside it and you just put the machine syringes inside the cartrige, to automate the process and fill the 3 colors at the same time, instead of manually doing it .
I don't print often but every year I have to replace my Canon cartridges each year, I probably only print 10-20 pages year. I find bit the bullet and decided I should upgrade to the eco tank, still waiting for it to arrive, but I am betting it will save me money in the long run. I think I read you want to print a test page weekly to keep it working right.
I love my Ecotank. So far 1 year of great performance. Also worth mentioning is that regular cartridges will dry up even if you weren't using them. These ink tubs stay fresh when not used
We've had ours for about 3 years, and I've filled up the black reservoir once. The only bad part is it needs to be calibrated often to keep lines from appearing in whatever you're printing, but it still beats paying a ton for cartridges.
Not really. Printer heads get punished if it hasn't been used for a week. Sometimes, if you are using tank based printers, the ink back flows to the tank. So its better to print at least once a week
This is exactly why you should be using a 4x6 thermal printer for shipping labels. both FedEx and UPS give you free label rolls, and since it's thermal, there are no inks, toners or ribbons to change. After the cost of the printer, there is absolutely no other costs involved with printing shipping labels. As for page printing -- I never use inkjet printers because of nozzle clogging. I only use color lasers -- they're so much cheaper now than they used to be.
@@Dan_Capone Yes -- unless you use an inkjet almost daily, the ink will dry in the nozzles and clog them up. You can usually clear them by gently wiping them with alcohol, but you won't have that problem with laser. It uses toner, which is a dry powder. You can leave a laser printer unused for months (or years) and it will not suffer any print quality issues.
@@MGMidget73 How? In the paper? All thermal means is heat, heat is applied to the paper and it turns black. I guess thermal paper has carcinogens or something? Is it California prop 65 (lead or something similar)?
I worked for Lexmark for a year as my first job as a salesman. The amount of incentive we got for selling a catridge was insane, but in reality what ended up happening is the consumer didn't want to pay the insane markup on the catridge, and would end up buying whatever new printer there was on promotion with the "free" catridges. Little did the consumer know that the promotional catridges are only filled up to 20% of their normal capacity. so basically a few pages worth of actual print... hence the cycle starts again... but Lexmark actually WANTED this to happen, as it looks great to investors to say sales of new printers is up by X percentage.
I wrote a comment just a while ago about how I have a Lexmark desktop laser and it has been working since the 90's. The laser cartridges (I bought these extended ones the last two) last in my use crazy long time and more than exceed the page count they promise. Maybe their inkjets have been the same kind of scam but the laser at least for me has been the best ever and the printer has been sitting turned on almost 25 years 24/7 now and no problems with fans, power supply, or the general mechanics. The only wear is with the rubber wheels that pick up the page, they sometimes don't get a grip of the paper, however I have sometimes cleaned them and made the surface more coarse which has fixed the issue. I have waited for the printer to die so I can buy a new one (laser) but it just refuses to die...
I remember in middle school (2006-ish) my parents got me this super cool photo printer which I loved. It was actually cheaper to buy an entire new printer that came with ink than it was to replace just the ink... So I had about 4 printers before my parents decided it was too wasteful, but they also didn't wanna pay so much for ink either. Didn't get much more use out of it.
The ink ink cartridges on the new printers are not as full as the standalone ink cartridges you buy. My dad weighed them out when looking at doing what you did.
This happened with me as well - I once saw a Canon MG2450 for about £20 or £25 - even when I got mine, it was £35 - the replacement inks were £50 a set... go figure!
What I started doing is buying a new printer from Walmart any time I needed to print something. I then return the printer immediately after for a full refund.
I worked with HP, and got to see the sheer depths of depravity when it comes to screwing the customer.
1. They have one of the harshest cartridge ID systems, to the point that each cartridge knows the batch it was made from. The reason for this is so the printer can reject single-cartridge replacements, forcing the customer to replace them all.
2. They have multiple layers of detection to ensure the cartridge was never unsealed. The printers immediately break the seal on cartridges as a part of entering them, and it also knows if part of it has been peeled open because a customer attempted to open a secondary entry point. They do this to screw people that misaligned the cartridge or attempted to refill it.
3. They have detectors that err on the side of caution when determining ink levels. They use this to shut down the printer until new cartridges are added, which is to intentionally waste ink and force the customer to replace them all.
4. They have been "enhancing" your black ink with cyan, and there is no option to stop it. They do this to intentionally waste one of the smaller cartridges to force the customer to replace them all.
5. They intentionally slash quality assurance for cartridges. This means the IDs and detectors can randomly fail, which they've programmed to always deny access. This is because some people don't return faulty cartridges, which means they get a double sale.
6. This system creates a lot of ink-filled trash. Not only is the plastic going to last a few centuries, but the ink is highly toxic and has been proven to poison groundwater if allowed to seep. They know this is happening, and are simply trying to keep quiet to not draw attention to it.
There's a lot of other ways they're hurting their customers, but I'll keep it to the ink side of things. If an Epson actually lets you refill the cartridges, I recommend shouting it from the mountaintops, because I was led to believe the printer industry had a gentleman's agreement amongst each other to keep ink artificially scarce by any means necessary.
I helped start the wa Vancouver site in 1991 the original Deskjet 😅
That last bit sounds like a direct breach of TFEU Article 101. (EU Cartel laws) "Article 101 prohibits anti-competitive agreements between two or more independent market operators." Thats very big lawsuit waiting for happen, consider giving them anonymous tip to it.
I have a cheap HP printer that came with the free HP Instant Ink plan.
I get 15 pages per month free, and pay $0.10 a page after that, and if the ink runs low, they send me a new cartridge for free. It's almost free since I rarely go over 15 pages per month.
@@Kuutti_original yes but "agreements" like this are never on paper and are shrouded in layers of plausible deniability
@@LargeInCharge77 From what ive understood they do not need it on paper to find companies quilty. Just a formal agreement is enough, but your last point might be why they havent got those just a few billion fines yet
it is outrageous, someone needs to sue the printer companies
(Deleting this comment because I'm sick of people replying without reading the whole message)
They are doing something wrong, they're misleading consumers about how much ink is inside the cartridge. Tesla tried this with misleading battery range, and they certainly fell foul of the law in doing so. @@leblueawoo
Lol
Yes, they need to be sued. Recently Taco Bell got sued for not supplying what they advertise. The only issue is that Canon will argue that they specify 11ml of ink per cartridge, which is soaked up by those sponges. 🤷🏽♂️
This must be the scenario that most fits this cliche of:
“THIS THING IS BAD! SOMEONE NEEDS TO DO SOMETHING”
…
*proceeds to do nothing, status quo continues and nothing changes*
The breaking point for me was going in to buy a replacement cartridge and seeing that a brand new printer was cheaper than a cartridge.
Same thing happened to me with my Canon Pixma printer/scanner. Total ripoff.
Razor and blades business model. ""Give 'em the razor; sell 'em the blades"
Printer manufacturers typically sell the printer for cheap with ink cartridges that are almost empty, just to force you into buying their super marked up "full" cartridges.
If you almost never print anything, the best option might just be to buy a new printer every time you need more ink.
I needed new ink for my printer. Went online and saw a new printer at better specs for less than the price of the ink. I went in needing new ink, came out with a new printer and had enough money left to pay my rent for the next 6 months.
@@useraccount2507 I've got a HP printer, and you can get a good deal from an off-brand manufacturer. Basically twice the ink for half of the price, but HP recently updated the firmware to block all off-brand ink cartridges "because of security and quality" and as a EU citizen, I can't phantom how the F it can be legal to do that. Printer manufacturers reminds me way too much of the Phoebus Cartel
I remember buying an Olympia daisywheel typewriter in the 80s and was astonished when I typed only 4 pages of text and the ribbon had run out, a new one cost $15. My mother had used an old "Bluebird" typewriter with an ink-soaked fabric ribbon and it lasted 20+ years with no ribbon change! Now we have phones with built-in batteries so you throw away the phone when the battery won't take a charge anymore.
Damn how old are you if you don’t mind me asking🙏🏿
The build in battery can replace, if buy a smartphone from reputable brank that have spareparts.
When you empty and recharge every time slightly damaged as every metal thing that runs electricity quality of materials and production will help with survival pf such batter but not batter can survived being charged and emptied so often
This is why I bought a FairPhone. User replaceable batteries, and a screen that can be replaced in literally a couple of minutes with just a screwdriver.
Only problem is actually buying a battery for it in Australia, with shipping companies not wanting to ship lithium batteries from Europe.
Also to mention, if you’re not using the printer often enough, the cartridge will dry out. So you still have to continuously buy new ones if you’re printing a little or a lot
I was going to comment the same. Hence why they use sponges. F-ing rip off.
My biggest problems with inkjets was that the heads would clog up. At some point you could no longer get them unclog and quality would jump off a cliff. then it's new printer time because they're basically disposable. Ended up going to a laser because of it.
That's how they fool.
That's why I don't want to commit with the inc tank design. Will the tank have dried/started drying that one time a year I use a printer?
Just get a Laserprinter.
As somebody who has worked in a Walmart photo department and told people often that cartridges were scammy, this level of scam even surprised me.
Literally same
I always wondered how i could buy new ink and it finishes almost immediately after 3 prints!! 😡😡😡
@@LisaF777 It is easier to buy a new printer. Yes, I have seen this as an associate.
@@Froggy11235Ricoh/Savin/Lancer and HP service tech here: HP has some of the harshest OEM printer restrictions but you can turn it off and buy off brand cartridges. All you need to do is downgrade the firmware and disable the consumer protection option. On our public school accounts we do this to maximize profit.
Maybe this can help you to refill cheaper...I have a laser printer, and to which I installed a hacked driver that I found on the internet.
What it does is that it allows working with original but refilled cartridges. When I need ink I just go to the local company where they refill cartridges at a fraction of the price.
The chip on the cartridge also counts the number of pages printed and tells the printer not to print any more when it estimates you're out of ink. This is why sometimes your printer says you're out but you're still getting sharp, clean printing and other times, you get faded printing before it tells you you're out. More often than not, your printer will lock out and tell you to replace the cartridge before it's even empty.
True. And H&P cartridges even expire. Who knew?
Say there was a sale, and you buy a bunch of cartridges and horde it for later. If you install the cartridge after the expiration date, it won't work.
Just don't by cartridges, just go to a shop that refills them and changing the info on the chip.
@@evil7011never heard of this
@@TheOfficialArthurMorganlol for real
@gdotmoney96 lol for real never heard of a shop that refills cartridges and resets but wld be haopy
I got a Canon printer recently with the same ink cartridges as you. I printed maybe 30 shipping labels and the printer said I was out of black and color ink. I had never used color at all yet. It was a new printer. So I bought more. Just 20 shipping labels and it said my color was out again although I never printed a single color page to date. The printer will not work at all without both cartridges being full. I went through 3 black and two color cartridges in this so far before I gave up on it after half a year.
Toner>ink. Ink dries and goes bad. Toner doesn't. Your not printing in color anyway. Get a decent toner printer. Ink blows.
@@craig9365 I just dragged out an old Win7 pc and my old HP1018 laser printer. Still works. Still can buy cheap toner for it.
I used Canon printers, there’s a setting you need to uncheck so it won’t use color ink to print black - which means it will only print black from black ink
By default I think the setting is ON so when black is about to run out, it starts to use color ink as well
@@ej6380media Thanks for the tip. I have to check. But 20 to 30 shipping labels are just a tiny bit of print on a fraction of a page. Something is still not right with that.
@@TheDoItYourselfWorld Do your shipping labels have barcodes? Those use a ton of ink...
After nearly $200 dollars of ink, over a year, I could only printed 15 pages. It's infuriating that it would dry up in less than 2 weeks. Yes, this sbould be giant lawsuit to stop these criminals.
Lies again? New Foodcourt
Why do you need a printer if u print so otten it goes dry? Go to a shop and don't waste
Buy a laser printer as their ink doesn't dry up.
That's capitalism for you.
@@zakariasnagygoing to the library every time you need to print of a sheet of paper would be so fucking obnoxious unless you lived right next to one.
You’re literally asking a person to turn a 30 second task into a 2 hour long ordeal to drive into town and back for a single sheet of paper. How is that not more wasteful?
I used to work at Staples and customers would REGULARLY ask why their cartridges get used up so quickly. We almost always had to default to "Well, it could have dried up if it was too hot or you wren't using your printer enough." since we weren't allowed to directly tell them that there's really not a lot of ink.
I wonder if I can open it up and refill it myself with the ink
@@OverRule1 itll depend on your cartridge and printer, looks like theres plenty of people who do just that and decided to post it to YT. Just watched someone who had a system set up for it. Has 2 sets of ink cartridges for his printer, when set A runs out he will fill and replace them with set B, just to make the printer think its a new cartridge.
you work at staples and dont work for canon. are you being held hostage? why are you supporting this shitty printer company. tell the customers the truth they deserve
I've been using the same ink cartridge (canon) for two years. And one previously before that for 5 years. I drilled a hole on the top and refill it with ink. Lasts multiple years. Let it rest in a dish of water or alcohol before refilling it just to keep the heads moist.
@@OverRule1 yeah I bought an Epson eco tank just for this reason. It doesn’t use cartridges it has is own built in tanks that I can just fill up with original ink or cheaper knockoff ink
I was shocked when I moved to Thailand and walked into a computer shop and found that you can buy gallons of ink for your printer for a couple dollars and you could buy conversion kits that would run tubes into your printer from huge containers that you pour the ink from the gallon into. It made me furious that I was paying $50 for a tiny HP cartridge back in America.
Commercial multi cartridge printers that do high speed envelope printing have tubing to each cartridge from an IV bag of ink, allowing them to run continuously. O have the same printer... here is the TRUTH ( I do not get affiliate money ).
The printer replaced a failed HP small business printer that HP offers no repair on..... the HP was AWESOME, with a good build quality.
The Epson has been running at my business, kicking out about 100 sheets a day of B&W and Color... but no photos.... after 8 months, the INITIAL filling of Black is right now at half level, and the colo are at 5/8 on all 2 colors......
The downside, the machine is very cheaply built.... the sheet feeder fails, forget about multipages feeding correct. But the scanner is good, and it is just ok, but nothing like the HP PAGEWIDE, which has been discontinued.... which had FAST output of even the first page.... faster than a laser.
I remember customers back in 1994(!) complaining about printer ink prices and how much money they were making off of it, but truth is if the ink had been cheap, the printers would have been dead expensive. Complain all you want but the profit margins aren't as high as you might think. Of course still high, but not crazy high. And there have always been alternatives, like refilling with cheaper ink, despite manufacturers trying to prevent that.
That's because Thailand doesn't have the same kind of intellectual property laws, you'll find this in a bunch of other countries. There will be copy products of conversion kits we don't get in the US because they are sued out of existence.
@@paulmichaelfreedman8334 customers would rather pay a little more for the printer, than get ripped off for life on ink cartridges. Gilette razor has the same business model as printers
It is not the same ink though.
I’m surprised hp hasn’t tried to strike your video down. You’re definitely the biggest force of clarity on their scam industry - they even have just in time ink they auto enroll you in for normal printers on purchase.
I sell printers in a retail electronics store. I always thought printer cartridges were a scam and guided my customers to laser printers. Glad that my suspicions were confirmed.
That was a hard sell for a lot of people before they had full color laser printing.
Hi, I am a printer technician. You are doing a good job asking customers to buy the laser printer.
Oh, man, you think ink cartridges are a scam? I bought a Canon color laser printer, thinking it would be more economical in the long run. A full set of OEM cartridges (standard capacity) is $250 USD. A high capacity black toner cartridge is $144 alone. The off brand cartridges mostly work, but every time the printer restarts, it won't do anything until you go over to it and dismiss a warning about non-Canon cartridges. I need to put that thing on a UPS so it doesn't power cycle every time there is a power event. If anyone knows how to run hacked firmware, I would pay to have it. I wish I could run the thing with a Raspberry Pi. Next time, I'm going to do more research before buying a printer. The print quality is fantastic, but I despise the printer because Canon makes it so expensive and annoying to operate.
@@Dwigt_Rortugal , I use a Canon MF220 series 3-in-1 printer/scanner and uses an ink toner, yes, its monochrome, and yes, the ink toner is a bit expensive... but its been around 2 years now and i still haven't replaced the toner that came with the printer. but yeah, i only used the printer with my kid's school work. it is way better than those ink cartridges that dries up over time, and you have to purchase a new set again even if you barely used the printer.
Hi, I know nothing about printers however Lazers......duh. always go LAZER "wuuuub wuuuuub"
These companies need to be held accountable. Why are so many companies continually ripping off their customers and trying to bleed them dry?
Epson ftw
….capitalism
Ricoh/Savin/Lander and HP service tech here. They’re not really “ripping you off”. The actual price of the printer is almost double what you pay for it. In a lot of these printers the fuser alone is the price of the entire printer. You’re basically on a pay by the month plan with a 100 starter fee. These companies don’t make money (unless it’s an MFP line) until you begin purchasing supply items.
The people who run these companies need to be held accountable, but of course the people who run these companies are filthy rich members of the ruling class. They are above the law.
@@randodejambo2921 Shut the hell up. It's a complete and total ripoff, printers do not cost that much to make, and no one is going to believe some full-of-shit service rep that this isn't a very intentional scam. Keep squeezing that turnip, though.
Nothing new here, the scam of these printer inks has been around for 30 odd years.
about time it stopped
well the bottled ink printer was new to me, and i bet to a lot of others as well
thirty, more like over a hundred years. Its the razor and blades model. Printer wise, the market didn't originally start out that way, at least not until Inkjets started rolling in. The old dot matrix systems were designed to be user refillable and serviceable.
@@Delaxin yes, I never saw one like that, that is how it should have been from the start
@@Usg1 They were talking about the business model. Work on your critical reading skills.
I have an HP that was 70$ originally but now they cut off your service if you don't pay them Every Month! Criminals.
Deciding to buy a laser-jet printer was one of the smartest thing's we've ever done. We bought an HP one at least 6 or seven years ago and had to replace the toner ONCE a few months ago. ONCE. We don't print tons, but we use it quite regularly, so it was totally worth it!
This. Yes. Same experience. Buy a laser jet and don't look back.
I find this is best for black and white prints and printing faster as well. Color prints are better on the one shown in the video with refillable ink tanks rather than cartridges.
HP has too much spyware that slows your system down these days. Brother is a higher price, but a way better product.
@@IMCODERED I personally haven't had any issues, to be honest.
@@idogonen3075 Your lucky and I hope you continue to have zero problems.
OMG! We should do a nationwide class action suit against printer companies, because that is totally unacceptable.
It's shady, but not illegal. Stop buying the cheap canon and HP printers and go for the Epsons that offer the ink refill option.
It should be illegal
@@RoeRogers Hi ! canon do "megatank" and hp "smart tank" printers too, not only epson
Why would you buy an ink printer. Makes no sense. Hasn't made sense for 15 years.
@@RoeRogershow is it not illegal to say you’re selling 11ish milliliters, but you sell 1? That’s fraudulent advertising
3:52 that’s what she said 😢
💀
I am always amazed that no-one has taken the printer manufacturers to court over such a blatant rip off. I changed to a mono laser much better suited to childrens homework printing.
Because you are aware of what you are buying. Even still, modern printers have only been around for 30-50 years, so the market is relatively new for it to actually see competition
I think it is hard to make a judge, that knows about laws but little about printers, understand the scale and gravity of this scam.
And no, not everyone "knows what they are buying". If people knew, nobody would buy 50€ printers.
@@mrcoder7327 they're much older than fking smartphones, yet smartphones have become one of the best/most efficient things one could have. Printers? They've been sitting on the same a** for that many years.. I hate the printers industry so much that I refuse to buy a fking printer, only keep electronic versions of things, and I'd rather go to printing shop if I need to, it's cheaper and less work, hence less resentful! 😂
Cartel
@@COMPUTER.SCIENCE. I have a tank printer, still using the ink in the bottles that the printer came with. I don't even remember when I bought it and the ink just does not run out.
It’s crazy how it’s basically cheaper to buy a new printer than it is to buy Ink 😂
Less than a dollar to produce a boxed cartridge.
@@Military872profit dayum
That's how they get you. It's all a fucking scam.
@@Military872 less than a dollar? No. It's the fraction of a penny. You don't understand mass manufacturing costs. An entry level $100 printer with ink would cost somewhere around a few dollars for these companies to produce in materials and shipping. Those kinds of consumer printers should cost like $20, but they rip the public off to create massive value for their shareholders.
That's the point they sell the printer at a loss but the markup on the ink is insane easily 100x
I remember printing coloring pages for my classmates when I was in elementary school over 35 years ago. I printed over three hundred pages before my dad put a stop to it.... I only used up one printer ribbon in all that time. Dad complained about me using up his printer paper, not his ink. The ink for the printer was dirt cheap in comparison to the cartridges of today. You can buy bottles of ink for just a few dollars. It would take nothing to make a formula that would work in the printers. There is no doubt that the cartridges are a rip off.
oh but-but-but it's a special ink formula! they have to use special vehicles to make the ink, it's totally not like they use the most expensive but at the same time junkiest equipment intentionally to make 'high quality ink' to upcharge 900%!!
More valuable than gold per ounce.
My old hp laserjet printer can print like 400 pages in a dollar just refill the cartiage with cartiage powder, Canon is scammer I have plotters for buisness to canon is very costly you even have to turn on ac for it to even print
@Spacecoreinspace 900%? You are being generous! 😂
@@kiraamv5507Just don't hook up your laser printer to the Internet. I made that mistake and now it refuses to print unless I buy a new cartridge. It's definitely a scam. HP is very pretty to disable printing on my old laserjets. I can continue to print on my subscription based inkjet but of course because they charge me per page. The same software blocked my laserjets.
They sell the printers relatively cheap because they can sell ink cartridges at a huge markup.
I literally work in an electronics store and I keep on trying to urge customers to go for the Epson ecotank over the cheaper canon ones for this exact reason! But seems like not many people wanna spend 400 dollars on a printer but rather spend double that a year on ink 🙃
i bought my eco tank (same one as in the video) for £80
I bought mine for 3000 Mexican pesos or 170 USD, it has been a blessing.
no. we buy new cheap shit printers on black friday every couple of years and it is the same price as an ink cart.
and by the time the epson pays for itself we wont be printing things or something better will have come to market for a lower price until then. black friday shit ass printers that come with an ink cart the same price as the printer being purchased.
Literally? Never trust an idiot that speaks like this
I've done the same thing. A Couple years back I bought 4 printers because the printer + ink carts cost less than just the ink carts. Instead of changing ink cartridges, I just installed a new printer when it's empty. I don't print much so it's lasted me awhile, but now I'm out of printers.@@kyledennis6772
I had a professor who would just buy a $20 printer when she would run out of ink. I think she would literally just throw it out. She said it was cheaper than buying new ink
Then you think of how many other consumers do the same thing, and calculate how much GARBAGE we drop into Earth so companies can make profit$. This tactic should be outlawed (the same goes to Apple with their un-fixable profit making strategy).
All that e waste
the cartridges that come with those printers don't have as much ink either...
Guess not a lot of good learning was had in that class.
@@toastedt140 Blame the manufacturer lol, they do it intentionally
I bought an Epson ecotank around five years ago. It still works great and I've saved a fortune in ink cartridges. Yes, the heads do need cleaning from time to time but this is not a problem. Thanks for telling the world about this wicked ink cartridge scam. Andy B.
as a professional print person... all printers need heads cleaning. All of them. That's why they end up 'getting replaced' because most people do not know how to either flush them or replace just the print heads. my mom's printer she has had now for 12 years even though it was a $20 pixma.
The advantage to the ecotanks are numerous starting with the tanks being able to be filled with different inks. They are also significantly easier to clean, flush and replace print heads.
I currently use an epson workforce 7610 for sublimation but the ecotanks are much better for even that purpose.
@@dragames Appreciate the knowledge!
I don’t think I’ve never seen someone sign their comment before 😂
@@roloboogI have seen it a couple of times.
How do you clean the head?
I just buy a new printer when the cartridge runs out, it's cheaper.
but the cartridge that comes in the printer holds very little ink.
I remember someone who helped my family with computer stuff, since I was a kid, he will connect ink reservoirs to the cartridge and it would be amazing, and that was yeaaaars before companies like epson finally join the "printing black market".
Rest in peace Gustavo, you insane smart ass, love ya!
Damn that's a genius idea back then, hated how Printer companies are doing this stuff to us consumers
Also HOLA SIR PELO LOVE YOUR ANIMATIONS!!!!
thank you for the story mr hair. i recently got a laser printer instead of an ink printer and i stop spending so much on ink. the only downside is that laser printers are more expensive and the cheaper ones that i bought only print in black and white
SRPELO??
i used to watch u lol
hi
Decided to sell off my canon printer and that was one of the best decisions I have ever made. I went to purchase an Epson EcoTank and it's way better! At least we don't get ripped off like a sucker! Thank you Epson for saving us!
Thank almighty for the epson l220
Mine stoped printing in color 😢
Well, before this they made a ton of money from their scamming ink also, remember? 😂 It's over $100 for each time refilling, they ain't any better than these rip-off companies, stop lying! 😂
@@COMPUTER.SCIENCE.Ecotank has been in the market for years. They were likely the only widely accessible brand using refillable ink. Also, it costs no where a $100 to refill the tank. Outside of laser printers, ecotanks are a great bargain in terms of cost of printing per page.
It's the same fucking scam. If you print more than 20 pages a month go for a laser printer. This whole video is a commercial for epson.
What Epson did was brilliant. They struggled to beat HP and Canon in their own game, so they started a new game! In a rare corporate move, they understood what we consumers need, and agreed to earn less per customer, in order to gain a ridiculous number of loyal customers. I switched to Eco-Tank this year and I'm not going back.
Retweet
Buy Epson!
Same dude!
yes!! havent refilled in TWO YEARS!!
Nice marketing and advertisement dude literally has referral links in his description
Companies that rip off customers should be dealt with severely! I had ink cartridges that were transparent where you could see the ink. Completely filled as you would expect. But such a non-transparent casing is quite unreliable.
As a small business owner I realized this years ago and switched to tank printers. Fun fact, the first tank printer was created by Epson.
its not the best, but at least epson gave us freedom to refill cartridge and Toner.
SAME HEREEEE. Tankprinter saved my ass.
Epson used to make some really good printers. Now Epson printers are crap.
I print over 150 pages a day and use Brother laser printer-black only. I get aftermarket 10 packs of drum and cartridge and fill it up with toner powder I got from ebay.
I found that it is the lowest cost to print. just a little messy when dealing with the toner powder filling.
@@JCJourney Interesting.
If any of you recall, there used to be an ink refill service at walgreens photo booth. Those cartridges that I would get refilled would work so much longer than the original fill, and I would assume, the company doesn't do it anymore because they lost a fortune.
lost a fortune in scams, you mean.
HP and Cannon printers are utter cancer.
Getting a Brother laserprinter is the best decision I've made
Walgreens & costco stopped their ink refilling services. I wonder why?!
Because it literally became cheaper to buy a new printer
In Southeast asia, some printer models are designed to be refillable. They have an ink tank placed outside
But it took for several years for Canon and HP to officially acknowledge and launch such design
Before that, ppl unofficially modify their cartridge to attach an external ink tank
Or refil their cartridge by themself using cheap knock-off ink
They tried to scam us but here in the UK we had shops selling knock offs for a full set of inks for less than a fiver saving us like 80% of the retail price. Usually it was for Epson printers. Canon/Lexmark somehow continued to have a system in place to screw their customers.
I've only bought printers over the last 20+ years in the UK where I could buy Non-OEM ink. I currently have a Brother MFC-J4610DW, and 3x full sets of 'XL' fill Non-Brother ink was less than £10. I have an Epson laser black-only I was given, empty, because 'The toner cartridges are £60!' and I easily found a Non-OEM toner cart for £14. Re-engineering the chips seems to be the key, so maybe the USA has more of a stranglehold.
You can buy up & up brand version of the cannon in this video in the U.S. at discount.
HP is the worst. HP sells printers for 20-50 pounds , then you getting small amount of inks for fortune.
I bought a printer for £30 and the cartridges are £35 lol. I bought anotger printer(it comes with cartridges) because it's £3 cheaper and it's a true story.
@@albertgeorgy6827 thats the way to scam the printer companies cos theyd actively lose money if everyone did that
Thank you !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I keep wondering why I'm not getting many full color prints of my 8x10 paintings. I have to pass on my ink and photo paper costs to my customers who buy my prints. There should be scam laws!!!!! They keep claiming lies in their ads. Can't anybody legally stop that?
My favorite was when years back they introduced the "XL" tanks under the guise that suddenly printer ink is cheaper. What they did was filled them halfway and called those the standard cartridges, which now only cost half as much.... so you think "wow, printer ink is finally affordable!" but really all they did was rename the "full" ink cartridges "XL" and then charged the same price as they did before.
EU directive that printer won't "selfdestruct" / automatically shutdown.
-replaceable ink absorber (Canon G3200 Megatank printer Ink Absorber/Error Code 5b00)
-user resettable inc cartridge counter and ink absorber counter.
-user cleanable print heads
-non overpriced and easily available spare parts
EU directive for labeling the amount of ink that comes out of the tank through the print head onto the paper.
Class action suit in the US.
Just make a 501 for that :)
Not just a printer companies that are doing that. Look at all the food that we currently get that's only half the nutrition that used to be, it's half the size, and cost 5× more! Thanks Obama, i mean Biden..
Why did I think Obama attention to Obama's interviews he tells you that if Trump gets into office and they asked Obama to run things in the shadows with a front man that he would not be opposed to doing so.. these are Obama words! Obama got the most time in office and it should be illegal. The things they are putting Biden through are Criminal acts and he don't even know any better
Which company did this?
@@mesmorrow they all collectively did it, I know HP and Epson both sell "XL" cartridges. HP was the one I remember advertising that ink shouldn't cost so much 🙄
I worked tech at staples for a long time. I tried to push ecotanks as much as I could, but due to their HP partnership, I was forced to push HP printers as an extreme priority. It got to a point where they were sending us to HP sponsored events to train us to push more HP printers.
Their tech department as a whole got to be such an ethical problem I ended up walking out.
Can't forget about the hp instant ink that they wanna hook you on. Pay monthly for the ink even when you don't use it 😂
A firmware update got pushed to my HP color laserjet a few weeks ago and bricked it... fuck HP forever
Yeah, I figured this out many years ago. I live in Brazil and the cartridges were twice the price as in the States. I bought a refill kit, but it didn't work. I went online and the problem was air entrapped between the ink sponge and the nozzles. One of the solutions offered was to put the cartridge inside a long sock and swing it around your head so centrifugal force caused the ink to flow. It worked! I redecorated the living and dining rooms with black polka dots 😂😂😂!
I’ve left jobs for ethical reasons too but every job is ran by evil people so there’s no escape. I wish I was taught this early but it’s really something you learn with experience.
@@jacksonrelaxin3425On one hand, you want to protect your kids from the world and let them enjoy their innocence as long as possible, but on the other it only hurts them in the long run. I knew the world wasn't perfect, but holy shit I had no idea it was THIS bad..😢 I was hoping for 50/50, not 90/10 to the negative.
I've been aware of the printer ink scam for multitude of years I took one of those things apart when I was a teenager and then again in my twenties
But seeing how we are in the minority of awareness there's not much we can do about this, but I'm glad somebody's finally protesting about it. So thank you for putting up Your video.
I mean..
ruclips.net/video/AHX6tHdQGiQ/видео.htmlsi=tDCXGzhTNFGQJPFg
This guy exposed more than this video, and like 5 years ago. But nothing was done about it.
I doubt this will result anything either.
China sells cheaper cartages on Amazon. $10 instead of $70.
Everyone knows they're a scam, wdym? It's always been a huge meme that you get more ink for your money buying bic pens than you do buying ink cartridges.
Order from ink owl
Wish I would of seen this before I spent 30$ on 2 ink
At college, our Business Management instructor, who's a executive in Wall Street, told us that Epson makes practically ZERO MONEY manufacturing printers. The money they get is from ink because it's easier to deceive a customer with something he can't see. Most people, including me, didn't care about what's inside an ink cartridge. Thank you for this video review, or I should say for the head up!
As someone who has worked on and sold a variety of printers. The ecotank will do fine so long as you print at least weekly, and leave it plugged in so it can run cleaning subroutines. Worked at the store selling them for like two years, never had a report of failure that didn't involve it being unused in a closet for months.
I sometimes don't use mine for up to three months. I'll just have to let the cleaning routine run twice and it's good to go.
wonder what happened to my friends ecotank then? he would use it almost every week, but then it started printing grainy photos and after clearing all the lines and resetting software etc., it still did that and has been sitting unused for months now. maybe i can get him to try and clean it up again and check if anything has changed
I've had mine for 3-4 years and there has never been an issue with the jets. They can be set to a cleaning mode, anyway
@@Lizardfiz12
If the cleaning subroutine doesnt seem to work, check that where the ink jet cleans itself isn't jammed with paper.
Ours had a small piece jammed and it never cleaned itself properly. Had to take it apart a bit to get the paper out.
@@Lizardfiz12 I have a similar problem, I think it's because I don't print regularly enough. Fortunately printing in black & white still looks good but colour printing not so much.
I knew ink was overpriced, but I didn't know it was this bad of a scam
I realised that inkjet printers are often more expensive to operate than FDM 3D printers lmao
spore pfp!
there is a video that showed that ink costs about 40 cents to make to sell at 1000x profit
Not a scam
Of cour$e it will be higher in the U$.
It's hard to wrap my head around how much plastic waste is created for fraction of ink.
I was thinking about that too its ridiculous
On the other hand, people get demotivated to print often and instead share their files online or bring USB sticks. No ink, no paper and no plastic will be wasted.
I find it surprising how the EU hasn't gotten around to do something about it.
@@Miquiya Manufacturers signed a number of voluntary agreements. Didn't work. I assume we'll have something in 20 years.
yet we drink from paper straws... EU logic seems to be allover >.
I have my Epson Ink Tank printer for 6 years now and its still going strong. I just had to reset the counter bout 2 times but that is easy to do with a little free reset software from the internet. 👌😀👍
Epson EcoTank owner over here, too. I'm also a teacher who always prints worksheets and presentations in full color for my students. It has been 7 years with my L395, and it's still printing without any problem at all. A BIG plus is that you don't need to refill the tanks with the ink that they call "official", I've got ink bottles that were Brother and Canon, used them on my printer, and it keeps on printing. You just made me appreciate my machine a lot more, thanks.
as a long term user of tank styles. Glad ya like em.
Just one note for ya could save you a print head one day.
Make sure the chimical base used in the ink's are compatible with what you have in there now.
and ofcorse that the head can use the ink to. some heads get way hotter to spray the ink than others.
And i once put in some epson ink in a cannon. both were large format printers just didnt pay atention.
when the epson ink hit the cannon ink they gelled. all - the - way - up - the - tubes. Fortunitly it didnt hit the print head. fast large format print heads are hella expinsive.
You are wrong there is no way you could have had this for 7 years when they barely been out for the last four years as it was released in 2019.
@@SHSPVR You are right, I forgot I survived my first teaching year with a Brother laser printer. Then I bought my Ecotank during 2017.
This is a video about the L395 made 6 years ago ruclips.net/video/ypz32_XPVlM/видео.html
Maybe the printers are sent to different countries in different timesets, and it arrived late to your country.
@ Well it wasn't available in the US that's for sure
@@Zagroseckt epson printer are using piezoelectric printhead not like other printer that are using heat to spray the ink but still it might not recommended to use other print ink as there might be some other chemical that might harm the epson printer
Just an hour ago I went to office depot for 3 toner cartridges. They cost about $100 more than the original printer.
although to be fair the cartridges that come with most printers are starters with less than normal print capacity, plus given how many pages a laser printer can print its still not as bad as an inkjet (inkjet will cost about $100 for oem ink for B/M/Y/C and print around 750 pages - per HP specs on the 902xl cartriges, my laser printer is about $400 for B/M/Y/C toner, which will net you about 10x the pages 7600 for black oem canon 055h cartridges' and 6800 for the C/M/Y cartridge's) so price per page at minimum for inkjet is around 13cents a page on OEM XL cartridges, for price per page on the laser at its minimum colored yield is about 5cents per page, so while a laser has a higher upfront cost for the toner, its cheaper in the long run.
Technically i have been running the same starter cartridges' for years and have a page count of around 1700, half being b/w and half being full color, and while 3 of my cartriges are end of life, they still print just fine. unlike many inkjets that refuse to print when out of a color.
Its a scam. get the refillable ones with the resetting chip you will save alot of money.
the ink you get with the new printer is basically just a small sample cart. but I agree, unless it is for color or some weird format cart (which I wouldn't buy).
One more advantage of laser printers (and for my use case it’s a HUGE advantage)
Laser printer can sit unused for days weeks months even years, and still work.
Inkjets sit unused for a week? They start drying out. And then getting clogged. Which almost always means total replacement .
My use case: documents, instructions, lists… usually two-three a month, maybe 20-50 pages MAX… B&W ok
Photographs, or other prints that need/want COLOR… once, perhaps three a month… these get printed at WalMart, or on-line photo labs for higher-quality needs.
@@MightyGimp…yes, maybe so, but still far less expensive than the liquid ink when pricing PER-PAGE.
I've been using an epson printer L110 since 2010, it's a tank based printer as well. Working perfectly till date. Can trust epson blindly as long as you're using original ink bottles
How is the print quality on that
@@Daniel-dj7fh awesome
I had a brother printer for many years and tried using generic ink in it and after a couple of refills, I would have to take the printer to the shop to get it fixed so I also have stopped using printers basically because of this
Mine was kinda broken on the printer head (?) because I didn't use it for quite some time and it got dusty. My uncle took it from me trying to repair it for his own use because he's a teacher and the I think the repair shop my uncle went tl can't fix it.
Great printer though, now I have a Brother printer+scanner that also use an ink bottle instead of cartridges
I've been using epson l360, l1800 and m105 for pigment all with 3rd party ink that's way cheaper ypuke you can get almost 1200 ml of any color for about 5$ and with that amount of ink I am able to print almost 35k prints
A year later and how is it? The problem I always ran into was I printed in color so infrequently that the cartridges would dry out and be unusable so I've just stuck with a b&w laserjet for the last dozen years. Do these dry out and become unusable if you use them every couple of months?
I had this printer and ran into tons of issues with it. I had to keep recalibrating it. It needs to do special maintenance if you don’t use it enough which takes time and can use a large portion of the ink up. If you don’t know what you’re doing and you run the special maintenance twice by accident it overfills the black ink into the color reservoir and ruins the printer. For me it was too good to be true. Great in theory, but I didn’t personally have good luck with it.
I've had the Epson eco print for about 3 years now and still haven't gone through original ink and it's working great... Love it.
I'm at three years too. The heads or the feed tubes (forgot which, maybe both) on mine clogged up after a while of not using it last year, but there are videos online walking through how to clean them. Fixed it for free.
Same. Just printed a photo after several months of not using it. Last printed december last year, i think.
I love mine its amazing
The Eco Tanks are amazing. Will never own anything else. Can print thousands of pages on a single tank.
Well they advertise that they will last for up to 3 years lol
It would have been good to weigh the cartridge before opening it, then rinse out the ink sponges completely with isoalcohol then put them back in once they were dry and re-weigh it. Then you could see exactly how much ink by weight was really in there.
Thanks for pointing this out, I was thinking about this too. Kinda flying light with the facts here!
Doesn’t matter if the ink is stuck to the sponge!
@@Wltrwllyngaeiou kinda matters more than your comment though
I think Isopropyl alcohol may partially melt the synthetic sponge and not give accurate results
@@Mindseasdoes it? How does it matter how much ink is in the sponge if it cant actually go from the sponge to the paper.
We've known about this for so long, why we still don't have consumer protections against this is a mystery to me. It's like a benchmark for seeing how many years behind law makers are when it comes to the tech industry.
In a decadent society, due diligence is spread thin.
When the law makers get paid more than there salaries by companies they ofcource will make laws that help said companies
It's capitalism, as long as people buy it, they'll keep selling it. The problem is that people are idiots, myself included, so we buy the cheapest printer we can find (often sold at a loss) then keep wasting money on expensive ink. I bought a cheap Deskjet that wouldn't let me print in B&W or grayscale when any of the color cartridges were empty. But even worse than that, I had some documents to scan, and... it wouldn't let me scan because one of the cartridges was empty. Great, ''cause I do need ink to scan, of course.
Sure. Let's get the government involved to protect us from our stupidity. People deserve this because they buy this crap.
We don’t have consumer protections cause people don’t take activism seriously.
I've had an Epson for like 6/7 years, printed tens of thousands of pages, probably been refilled like 100 times, still on the original printing heads (they give me some problems sometimes, need to be cleaned constantly, etc) nearly always used 3rd party ink and amazing honestly
For black and white text, laser printers are by far the less expensive option in the end, when you factor in the price of ink and that it tends to dry out over time. I haven't owned an inkjet printer in over 20 years.
plus most people think ‘i’m saving ink’ by only printing black and white but many printer companies actually put cyan in with the black just because. so you have to buy more ink regardless.
Same, weve just invested in Kyocera laser printers for blk&wht prints, coz its powder cartidges are cheaper.. Plus there are third party providers too, which is way more cheaper.. Then reservoir type printers for the colored ones..
Laser is great but the main issue is it’s still a huge up front cost for cartridges, and the printers with any extra features (i.e. a scanner or a document feeder) are quite big and heavy. One black toner cartridge for the stock standard Brother laser printer costs like $80 (AUD) for 1200-ish pages, whereas a full set of bottles for an ecotank for anywhere between 5000 and 7500 pages is about the same price.
I have Brother HL-L2365DW since 4 months ago and it's printing about 40k till now. The catridge are still strong. I just have to refill the toner for about every 3k pages.
@@sammcclain3778 that's not how black&white laser printers work, but okay. With laser printers, black and white LITERALLY only prints black and white since there's only black toner in it (and no color toner)
And people called me crazy when I said they were scamming with the ink! I remember in the 90’s one cartridge would print a book darn near. Late 90’s early 2000’s hit and u can’t even print your syllabus without needing a new cartridge!
Capitalism, the endless pursuit of paying the least amount of money to generate the most amount of money
@@LoLaSnya no. Capitalism is someone having the ability to do that and then 20 competitors like epson come along and make better products you can buy instead. Grow up.
@@ohno7582 And yet products like these are still around, hmm
@@ohno7582You forget collusion by businesses at customers' expense. Capitalism is evil and so is communism.
@@ohno7582chill out bro it's just a printer
Well when the ink is more expensive than the printer, then yeah, it’s a obvious scam. It’s like when companies put less food in their product. Consumers are always getting scammed somewhere!😂
Same with medical supplies. You can get a glucometer for free but the test strips are expensive. Smh...
And we just take it
Everywhere
Its not a scam. Thats why these companies can sell their printers for peanuts. Instead, they make their money out of the printer cartridge. its a marketing tactic.
@customer7575 I've noticed that the cans of soup started getting smaller, but with the same or higher price....a little strange don't you think....pay more for less....
For anyone wondering, the reason they use sponges is so you can't make a legal case because you can't get an accurate measurement on the ink
You could soak it up with iso alcohol and then let the alcohol evaporate in a dish. Ink doesn't evaporate AFAIK, so I think this would be a valid method to get all the ink out of the cartridge and measure it.
couldnt you just weigh it full then weigh it empty(or when it stopped printing) then just find the volume from the desnity of the ink?
No, the reason they use foam is to more easily deliver the ink to where it needs to go. Sucking up liquid ink from a reservoir into presumably a tube of some sort, just to soak it into a pad anyway, is stupid and seems 10000x harder than the solution they came up with.
Ink cartridges are definitely a scam, but because there’s not enough ink in them and they’re extremely overpriced, not because they’re purposely engineered to scam you. 99% of the time, there’s a purpose for things beyond the first most surface level observation you make.
@@MrKoyama2004there is 3 types of ink
- water based
- solvant based
- oil based
All dries up. So using alcohol wouln't work.
But, with a few cartridges and some experimentation you can figure it out:
- Weight a full caridge
- print until empty
- weight it again
- take one or more cartridge
- squizz out the ink
- measure the volume
- weight it
The first part is to figure out the usable quantity. There is always a portion that can not be used (in part because they garantee that the first and last page is 100% quality. Low ink level may cause the head to suck some air and misprint.)
Second step is to measure the density of the ink.
Once you have that, you can do some simple math to find the used volume.
They deserve to be put in a place worse than jail
Yep that Epson eco tank is the printer for any small business owner. I have a business and I print something every single day. I've been printing everyday since like 2020 and I still haven't run out of the original ink that came with the printer lol. My black is just now getting a little low after all these years. it was really expensive up front. But it was worth every penny because I haven't had to do anything to it, change any ink or nothing. It just works every time. I've never been happier with a printer in my life.
It depends on the need. Laser printers have a place too if you need to print loads of pages as suddenly time becomes a factor too.
If the workers need to wait minutes for all pages to print instead of seconds that accumulate over the course of a year.
Does that mean that the ink doesn't dry up as it happens with cartridges when you don't print for a while?
Or have you been using it regularily to a point where it'd be impossible to tell if they would or not dry up?
Asking about your impressions because you're the only other person than the video host, that happens to own one of those 😀 Have a great week mate!
its a trash printer though, its weird that most people don't know this but you can convert just about any printer on the market into a tank system. CIS kits have been common place for like 20 years. You can even buy the ink by the gallon from chinese wholesellers (literally the same crap epson uses) for pennies on the dollar. One thing we used to do for all our printers back in the late 2000's was run around to all the goodwills grabbing up highend photo printers slapping a 20 dollar chinese kit on them and just run them non-stop. People would buy them find out how much they cost to operate and then just chuck them to donation sites / yardsales / flea markets etc so you could get them for next to nothing.
Clearly a cheap printer can be made with big ink tanks, it is outrageous that printer companies have financially raped consumers for so many years
Same, we have that Epson printer at home too and the ink lasts forever.
The Epson is absolutely the answer. My wife is a teacher, we print a lot, daily. We have had this printer for at least 8 months and I am STILL using the original ink the printer came with. Absolutely amazing. I also had a Canon with the cartridges, but she was going thru a cartridge a week. Even buying knockoff ink on Amazon was still 30 bucks a pop. Not one problem with the Epson.
laser printers are even better, better printing and cheaper in the long run, no clog issues unlike inkjet, invest in one, hopefully one with wifi or networking capability, you will not look back.
Yeah same I have an Epson ecotank and it works great.
all of printer that i own and used epson still stay strong
in college we print a lot on epson l250 and L310 series till this day those think still run
I’ve had one of those for at least 5 years, and it seems the original black ink is getting low, maybe it lasts a year or two. Magenta is still over half full.
i 2nd that - i have an epson - and no complaints = i go months whithout printing a thing, and then print without issues.
Need an update on this Epson printer how did it last it's been a year since you posted this video
HP deserves a mention of honor here for being the scammiest of them all. After the first Deskjet printer I got, I decided that it deserved no love at all. After using an Epson printer at my colllege office and seing that those bottles worked way better, I bought one for my house as well. My suffering has lightened because although some argue that there is a difference in quality, for printing some reports, you barely notice that.
Why would you buy inkjet printers in the first place?
Damn wish I knew this before getting an HP printer. It works half the time.
We had an HP Color Printer 🖨
It had an expensive ravenous appetite, and was the ONLY brand that NEVER had a sale on ink.
Replaced it with an Epson Printer 🖨, on sale, for a price similar to 2 changes of HP ink. It has been BETTER than the HP. And Epson ink price is reasonable, and occasionally on sale.
We were probably NOT the only Former HP users. Since we quit them, HP Printers and Ink seem to have a lot of sales!
😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣🤣 (🤬HP)
@@slipjones2 I am talking about years ago to today 10 years to today friend. At the time the inkjet printer was the latest tech (according to HP).
Deskjet**
It is no wonder HP got into the medical field that is full of corruption and scams:
_"... years before the coronavirus pandemic began, work coming out of the Future Unit drove HP’s investment into adapting inkjet printer technology for medical applications such as drug development, vaccine research, and rapid diagnostic testing."_
One thing to keep in mind is that you should print at least one page per week (with all colors) if you have an ecotank. Otherwise the ink will get dry and clog the header, which will require you to pay maintenance. So, if your print very little, create a weekly task in your computer for it to print a page with a bit of every color.
Every week orint a photo of the rainbow. Got it
I was able to clean the heads successfully myself. There are videos out there with instructions and a cheap kit to buy. I spent maybe 15 bucks, can't recall exactly, but it was not much, and it took me maybe 30 minutes max to do it.
ecotanks are great!
and it actually isn't the head clogging up, they have wipers built in to keep the printer head clean, it's simply because the ink system isn't airtight, so over time pressure will decrease making the ink draw back into the tank.
if this happens just run a couple of the thorough head cleaning procedures from the pc interface, and it'll get back up to pressure.
by far the best style printers we get in for repair haha :P
Having one off the first ecotank (which were worst a this) I can say this allaways a fixable issue. When it happens (more than a week off no use usually). I just launch the "cleaning heads" program then print a photo of a rainbow (with black parts) one, two, maybe tree times and then it is fixed. You might say that is wastefull ! I say as a 7 year old user i bought a ink set twice maybe tree times for 13 bucks each.... yeah just buy the printer it is awsome it's a no brainer.
yes, he mentioned this in the video
As a former ink refiller in a photo center at Costco, I can confirm that cartridges are a scam. They don't have that department anymore, but they used to have an official ink refilling machine you could also find at Fry's Electronics that would literally drill 3 holes in the cartridge, and use needles with the correct tone of ink to refill the sponges. After that, we would put stickers on the holes and reset or replace the digital chip so the printer could see it as a new cartridge. It was always a 50/50 chance of working though because of how cheap that design of printer is in general and the different uses each person has with their printer. About 5 years ago, I first saw Epson's Eco Tanks come on the shelf. the 2800,3800, and 4800. I thought that is the solution! I've talked to many people who still have the original black ones and now the newer white ones that they are the way to go for sure.
I have the Epson L120 printer, instead of using their ink. I just but a knockoff that prints the same for 2$ 20ml all 4 colors.
Machine? We used to do it manually 😅
@@caliFRAGitubeDid you not need a machine to reset the digital chip?
@@yanmarle2864 nope. I used button combination or resetter software.
I had an epson printer I threw it away. After like 6 months hardly any use started printing awful copies
Bought my Epson Eco-Tank and love it! I only print once in a blue moon and the ink is still full and working fine after months not printing. Best printer ever after a laser printer. Never going back to Canon and HP again.
Which model please?
And how is the precision and sharpness for very small text? I just need to make little cards, gift message and earring cards.
@@misssparkle8317 Go for ink tank if you are buying a printer......It really doesnt dry out and the original ink also lasts very long.
I read once that rare or occasional use causes the ink to dry up in the tanks and tubing, causing complete printer failure. Curious if you have seen any evidence of this? I personally went to a color laser printer, and even though the toner is expensive, my supply cost has dropped by about 80% since making the change.
@@misssparkle8317 I've got an Epson ET-2850. There are cheaper models. I got a more expensive one, because it has a double page function. There is a function for extra fine printing. It’s a bit difficult to find, because you have to go to custom settings, but it’s not complicated, once you know about it. I use mine for printing photos and they turn out well.
I loved mine until the ink dried inside the printer tubing and stopped working completely. Doing some research, I found that it’s common. Maybe this is a newer, updated model. I would print at least a page a couple times a week, for sure. Hopefully yours will work great for years to come!😊
Yes baby! I know you're gonna fall in love with the Epson ET! Give it time to grow on you 😂 saving up for the a3 one with scanbed myself 🤩
I've worked at Best Buy and bought one of these for my mom who works from home but has to do a lot of paperwork. We've had it for over a year and we've only had to buy bottles of ink once and she does a decent amount of printing. Epson started to give a shit and it shows.
They have been doing this design for years. We bought one back in 2013.
@@baraki808 🤌
Thank you!
I've been fighting with printers for 30+ years, and I finally gave up on ink printers about 10 years back and went full on laser, if you print more than a few pages a week, ink is too expensive, if you print less than a page a week the ink will dry out and kill the printhead. Only thing ink printers are better at is photos, but for that there are shops out there who can do it cheaper and better than any home office printer. The only reason for owning an ink printer is for experimenting with photo printing on a daily basis.
Same. I do miss being able to quickly fire off color prints but it's not often. Got a Brother laser printer a few years ago and still haven't had to replace the toner.
Tbh, they have the same shit show with laser printer now, with serialized cartridge.
I have a brother fax printer combo that only support black and white printing, and the print quality is not as good now days.
But it gets the job done and the refill cost like 8 bucks, without having to deal with bullshit serialized cartridge.
Totally agree. I only print maybe once a month. I got so sick of spending an hour or so cleaning heads, swapping out clogged cartridges just to print a couple of pages. Went laser a couple of years ago and its been great. The only problem I've had so far was a bit of toner stuck to the drum and printing a line of spots. It was a 5 min clean.
I bought a used Brother HL-5440D for 20€ 4 years ago and because I rarely print anything it still haven't ran out of toner.
Exactly and same here.
I always loved that Walmart sold printers that came with color and black for usually 15 bucks cheaper than cartridges themselves.
That was forever ago, all printers only come with "starter" cartridges that last only a handful of ptints
@@dragons_redOh, I didn't know they switched to "starters"... I assume those are worse (actually I wouldn't be surprised if they were better too, like to convince you that you made a good purchase), but back when I was in need of printer etc, and that was like a decade ago, I already knew that you can pretty much just buy a new one instead of new cartridges and still be in + (all the more since you can sell the old printer too) .
@@dragons_red lol we got around that in 2010.. just return or exchange the printer when you're done. Lost the receipt? Buy a new one and put the old one it its box. They dont check serials.
I just buy the ink and inject them into the cartridges.
They're starter cartridges
I have a canon multifunction printer (paid under $100 for it since the new year printer had come in). I use ink cartridges from EZink at a small percentage of the brand ink cost. The printer sees it as Cannon cartridges and they print the same.
Thank you for bringing awareness to this issue. I realized ink cartridges are a scam almost a decade ago and now try and print everything at school. I hope we can stop this issue some how .
So in order not to be scammed, you're scamming your school for the prints that have nothing to do with your studies..
Dubious strategy, but can't blame you, I do it too 😅
you should buy inktank printers although they're a bit expensive, the cost/page is better and they last longer
@@deniszhuravlev9772usually schools have really big printers that print a lot of papers in just seconds, with big cartridges witch are probably refillable, (at least at my school), so it's not really like you're scamming them🤷🏻♂️
You just gave us solid evidence of what we suspected all along 👍🏼
They sell us printers at a loss, just to rip us off on ink cartridges.
Landfills filling up with printers for the last 20 years was solid evidence vs suspicion. Something designed to be more convenient to throw away and buy a new one.
Convenient wasn't even their goal. It's greed masquerade as convenient. Printers break all the time and replacing these cartridges ain't convenient to the customers. It's crazy how these companies can create so much waste and isn't responsible for recycling or clean after themselves
Suspected?
We very well knew.
Many even made a business from refilling used cartridges.
Two decades ago I used to buy cheap no name ink in bottles that lasted years.
I even had my student cousin coming and refilling her cartridges.
Since then I had two other printers.
Some printers are designed for refilling, some we refill directly through nozzles, drip by drip.
And we all know from a decade ago that laser printers are more reliable and cheaper to use.
So yeah this rant is legitimate, but comes two decades later.
Only morons still buy ink printers.
I am retired, no more printing needed and still have a laser printed. I even bought a spare cartridge. But when I need, once a year I still use the old one just out of spite even the role is damaged and smears a little the paper.
So come on, grow up. Change the title from, is a scam to was a scam two decades ago, or in .. I am a moron. I still buy ink printers.
Gronk it up! #notacult
In my city, I can get empty ink cartridges refilled at a print shop for $5 - $10!!! I don't have to keep buying new ink, it's awesome!!!
It's a relief to see this video because I thought I was going bonkers. In the last couple of years, I purchased two printers I've barely used, but I noticed that the ink wasted very quickly. To the point I'm constantly questioning myself, saying, "What have I printed?" So many stories but good good video. It's ridiculous how many times I've had to buy ink only to use at maybe maximum on three prints of a page or two and then start wondering where the ink go.
Does anyone here remember ink ribbons? That one "block" of ink ribbon lasted me upwards of 15 years. The ink also doesn't tap out right away. It just gets fainter. Those ribbons were like ink pads that would dip into a bottomless well of ink. If you're printing in black text, those things would last forever. It did take like 2 minutes to print a page but those were the days.
(Adjusts onion on belt.)
The best value now is to just get a laser printer. At least the toner lasts longer and you don't need to worry about dried ink heads.
Been a loyal Epson fan for nearly three decades. Had to send my previous all-in-one printer to the junkyard after Epson ditched cartridges, but my current tank-based unit is the most dependable model I've owned.
Epson still uses chips for ink cartridges that expire after a certain amount of time. I have one and I have printed maybe 1-200 pages over 2 years and it said I was out of ink. I slapped it on paper and plenty of ink came out
@@Ryan-wx1bi In my neck of the woods, all brands except HP stopped selling cartridges.
i have the tank epson to print my labels for my business, this is the one you NEED, and its not that expensive either, ull def save alot in the long run on refills of any ink you desire.
Don’t forget that the little chips on some cartridges are programmed to give an “out of ink” message after some amount of time, regardless of if you actually used it or not.
Yeah, they make their own expiration dates in some cases. And they will brick themselves.
Yes and there's a good documentary on planned obsolescence where a guy even shows you how to un brick old printers, real good doco too
Bro i work with these companies, even the biggest ones just replace the label once it hits the expiry date and its on stock. The ink is more then fine though it lasts long. Its a pure scam.
My comment wouldn't post with the link but the documentary is called the light bulb conspiracy and it's free on RUclips 👍
Even in enterprise settings, the printer will complain "order maintenence kit" every set number of pages, it doesn't actually know if it's broken or not, it just knows that it's printed 10k pages and so tells you to buy a maintenence kit.
Sounds like what some elites are trying to do to a digital currency. If you don't spend the money, it expires. Or, the money won't work to buy certain things that they don't want you to buy.
So glad to hear this, I bought an Epson Ecotank and I just love it. Im a hobby artist so I print a lot of images and my ink from the first fill up still hasn’t run out and that would be about 3 months ago now. I finally feel I have found the printer that was made in heaven for people who live a good distance from suppliers and do a fair amount of printing. Thank you for being honest about what youre finding with cartridges. I absolutely refused to buy a printer that used cartridges and Im glad I held out. My little basic Epson is my best friend.
same here!!
Also Epson has the best software, not the hp disney game bs. A fking printer doesn’t need a disney game on there right hp?
Get a Laser Printer
Well, we print less than once a week. Our HP cartridges are always dry! I'm so frustrated. Thanks for your info!
If you buy a laser printer, they last an extremely long time without a refill by comparison. Toner doesn't expire the way ink does and doesn't have the pre-programmed expiration either, so you are able to use it till it's actually empty or the printer dies. Have had the same printer for nearly 10 years and it's only just now starting to have occasional issues. Only one refill in that time. Costs a bit more up front, but has been well worth it. Before that, I'd buy a printer. Use it till the ink was gone, sell the printer for cheap and use the money towards a new printer. It was cheaper than buying ink.
Depends on your printing needs. As a graphic designer, I do a lot of photographic prints, laser toner will never come close to the quality of inkjet for photos. The thing with the “expiring” ink is only true with cheap printers, my higher end epson printer’s cartridge could sit in there for months and still be good as fresh when I fire it up. As with everything, invest the adequate amount of money and you’ll have a good product.
@@nanatsuyo3864 mate he is printing labels he wasn't speaking for everyone...
People tend to want to blame printer companies, but really it is the consumer that created this problem. As you point out, laser jet companies will happily sell you a more expensive printer with a lower cost per page, but consumers tend to want cheap up front, and companies that offered that in these loss leading ink jet printers.
Put another way these ink jet companies did not get together and decide to be evil, they responded to the market, and those that tried to *gasp* sell printers for what they cost to make tended to go under, except as you point out the laser printer lines since those are targeted at a differnt group.
The marketing of printers should have been like the ecotanks. Buy this printer, save on ink cartages. In reality they want earn on ink cartages, they dont want to change until epson did with the ecotanks
True. Bought a Samsung laser printer and the black toner died after 6 or so years. It is crazy how long this thing lasted. The colour one is still nearly full as we did not use it that much.
Have had my Epson Ecotank for years now. Still running the stock ink that came with it but will likely need to buy more soon as I'm almost finally out. I freaking love that printer. It's how printers SHOULD work. Every other printer/company is planned to fail or make you buy into their ink scam. Sure the Ecotank costs more- but you'll never regret paying for it once you see how much you save, just in the first few months, alone. It pays for itself nearly immediately if you're going to be printing alot.
Make a video review about the printer and upload it to youtube. I am sure you will get alot of views and maybe earn a few bucks.
The problem I have with these printers is that if you do not print often, the ink in the feeder dries up and you have to just waste a significant amount of ink from the reservoirs to flush the dried ink and enable printing again.
But still, the big reservoirs are cheap. Cheaper than the cartridges :)
Epson and Brother are both good.
I have L360 epson for 5 years, I have 2 canon that always broke
I have one too but have a negative experience. Yes, I have never needed to replace the ink in the last 4 years, but it sucks. It automatically installed really bad bloatware on my pc that never works, when you use the ADF to scan documents, it sometimes takes in more than one pages at a time and works less than it doesnt work. It is REALLY loud and takes a long time to print. Jams really easily, and it just unreiable. Somehow, the 75$ HP printer I had before this worked better than this 400$ one.
I always think a laser printer is going to be the better option. Sure it’s expensive up front but in the long term you’re saving a lot of money from buying a ton of ink cartridges. Also even if you don’t print that much, ink dries up over time so if you have a full ink cartridge and don’t use it for months you’ve lost money cause that ink has at least partially dried up.
The ink drying up problem can be remedied by storing it in a cool airtight container.
I would never have another laser printer.
@@v6pulsar Why, what's wrong with laser printers apart from the upfront price?
You can now buy a laser printer for cheap. The toner, on the other hand, is far from cheap. It used to be 5000 sheets per cartridge, now it’s 3500 if you are lucky. A chip counts prints. Also, the chip limits you to only their brand while an off brand can sell you two cartridges for the price of one brand cartridge.
Not only that but on older printers you have a head that sprays the ink and if it dries in the head ,you basically have to replace it or buy a new printer. So laser printers are the better option in my opinion
I have a Brother ink tank printer filled it up for the first time in 6 years. I also use a a HP professional Lazer prints only black. Does a few 3000 pages.
Downside of your Epsom, when the pad that takes excess ink is full you can't replace it. Its has circuitry in the pad which breaks when you try to replace it.
Been using eco tank for a few months. I print thousands of copies. Absolutely brilliant. Saved an absolute ton of money. I also bought a generic company's replacement ink and that was even cheaper. Less than half price of Epson. And they are also fantastic. Happy days.
You can buy big bottles on the net of ink for pennies. Just refill those eco bottles with them.
Love my Epson for all the reasons you give.
Have the eco tank as well. The Only negative is that the prints are blurry compared to cartridges.
how @@q-_-p.d-_-b old is ur printer ?
Did the exact same thing for the exact same reason. Happy days😂😎🇦🇺👌
I remember when ink cartridges were refillable, then they made them non-refillable but we(some of us) would still do it and they would work just fine but then they put those chips inside and it complicated thing but we found a way around to continue refilling them(well at least I did). It's good to see that Epson is giving a shit about the consumer. I just hope the printer actually lasts at least 3 years or five would be preferable.
The eco-tank printers are very reliable. I bought one for my family after we had an expensive HP laser printer that was gifted to us die. I purchased the Epson et-3700 back in 2018 and it still prints like new to this day. And crazy enough the printer is still running on the ink refill containers that it came with back in 2018! I have never purchased ink in 5 years of moderate use of the printer.
i have one for 2 years. It works just fine
My Epson Ink Tank printer is about 3 years old now and I have printed close to 8,000 pages. One black plus 3 color cartridges together give around 1,500 to 2,000 pages (depending on page content). Very satisfied. Canon cartridge printer was sh*t.
I've had my epson eco printer for a couple years at least and it's showing no signs of slowing down after printing thousands of pages.
I have a L555. Was one of the first ecotank ever. 5 years later, it prints. If it drys up: You can put a paper towel under the head in the non parking position with some alcohole. Then move the head over that towel a few times. After that my L555 printed like brand new.
I picked up a color laser about 10 years back when it was on a super deep clearance sale, something like $150 for an all-in-one, and while I barely ever print anything, i have probably done 200 pages and the tonor that came in the box is still showing 78% full. Bonus is not needing to worry about it drying out with time; when i had an inkjet it would basically ask for new ink every 10 pages because it had been 6 months since the last 10.
You printed just 200 pages in 10 years?
Exactly why I've switched to laser, and now I never have to deal with these stupid inkjet problems ever again
I picked up a B/W laser like 6 years ago for $100, I have saved money despite having only printed about 15 pages since then.
I print so little that I would have to buy new ink every time I wanted to print 1-2 pages... I got sick of that extremely fast.
if I ever need to print color odds are I am going to want high quality, so I will just go to a shop with a high end commercial color printer and pay the whatever a page it costs.
Did u buy a magic printer Mr Wizard?
@@lewizzrockslaser printer does have liquid ink. It cannot dry.
Lovr the story telling, got me hooked throughout the whole video
I am a teacher and I purchased an Epson ecotank printer almost 2 years ago. The ink that came with the printer lasted 1.5 years. I only recently purchased more ink bottles. I print multiple pages several times a day for students. I love my Epson!!!
Same!! The worse thing that happens is that you have to clean the print heads every month or so to fix line inconsistencies. I’ll take that for something that literally took what was a substantial budgeting issue to inconsequential.
I believe those printers are programmed to fail within 3-4 years (built-in life span like light bulbs). With that said, you may still be ahead of the game price-wise (haven't done the math).
Thank you for your comment. I have wondered about these ink tank printers. I'll stick with my laser printer, but it's good to know about the ink tanks.
all teachers are pedo-bears.
Who cares if they fail after 4 or even 3 years. As a private music teacher with a full schedule I’m easily printing 2000 copies a year minimum. I paid $230 for my eco tank and best case scenario with a laser would be about $50 for the printer and another $200 in ink for a year. Printer paid for itself in the first year. It’s 2 years old and recently added more black ink, which came with the printer. So far I’ve saved another $250.
If used on a regular basis its print is equal to a laser printer, hands down. If you need more 300-450 dpi you should probably be looking for a different machine altogether.
My favorite thing about printers and ink is when during the pandemic there was a chip shortage and the ink wouldn't work without a chip and they literally shipped ink without a chip. Hilarity ensues.
Right, they had to modify firmware in some cases to turn off the DRM that would read the chip. It's so ridiculous.
It's not a scam. It's much worse. It's a tactic to force people to live digital then analog. If we have all on paper why use Word, Dropbox or digital storage options as much. It's forced customer selection. 😑
nah, the printer companies won't benefice from what you say @@somerandomchannel382
I don't know if the "chip shortage" included nfc tags
@@somerandomchannel382 Brother what about a printer is analog? If you want analog you need to print via woodblock
I've had the Epson Eco-tank 2840 for about 2 months now. We had an Epson printer that took cartridges before and got tired of spending $60 every month for more ink. But we're 2 months into the Ecotank and the black is still over halfway full and the colors are still totally full. So I'm happy with it so far.
Little tip, Print a full page colour photo every couple of weeks to keep the ink fresh at the heads, power cleaning is a pain and can take a few attempts to get back to prime condition.
The big downside is that those print slow as hell. It's only worth it for small scale home photo printing, otherwise if you're doing just documents a monochrome laser is your best bet.
@@ms_hnsa3136so u have done refills on this printer ink then? Any issue comes to refilling? Like error detected like not allowing u to print? I’m having these bad ink catridges not detected on my HP printer and i want to look for other suggestions..
Just wait, the problems are coming.
Epson ecotank for photos/color, laser printer for speed or high volume b&w works for me.
My uncle gave me his old Epson ink tank printer in 2016 and after it stopped working we bought ourselves another Epson with wifi capabilities in 2019, these work good but in 2022 printer had some issue with paper feed, the Epson service is pathetic, the repair guy tried to mess with printer head so that he could replace it adding the cost for repair (not from brand) they tried to rip us off , last printer had same issue with printer head getting used. Company charges 55USD , they charge 48(they take old ones and repair it) and will work a few months.
This time I told him there's no issue with print head and till today it still works with no problems.
You have to service it yourself (find tutorials on youtube) because technician will charge B.S. amount, like draining the waste ink pad.
Also in my country HP, Canon and many brands sell ink tank printers from around 150 USD
Pro tip: laser printers (especially mono laser printers) can usually be had for not much more than a cheap inkjet if you buy used, and the toner cartridges can usually be swapped out with generic ones and especially many of the older ones don't have any sort of chips in them.
Even my one year old Brother laser printer will take knockoff cartridges without complaining, and they work fine.
Basically unless you really need color printing, a laser printer is a much better choice, because the “ink” is cheaper per page and they don’t clog up and they’re faster.
And I guess there’s even color lasers, though I’ve never tried one of those.
I bought a color one about 5 years ago and it just ran out of the introduction toners. They did try to be cheap and an update that blocked use of generic toners, but I never updated it because I know firmware updates only break or ruin your working equipment.
also a lot of smaller "copy machines" are laser... my in-laws had one they got about 15+ years ago... I ended up getting it about 10 years ago and used it for 6 years... could refill the toner 2 or 3 times before I needed to replace the cartridge itself... it was USB only so I used an old netbook connected to it to share the printer on the network... I'd still have it but we moved to a color laser copy/printer/all in one thing... it's a little more problematic but works great 6 years down the road... if I went back to printing lots of black and white i'd find another old laser
And they’re so much faster too…
Laser for me was the way to go, I've had mine for about 9 years and replaced the toners once. Paid 70$ on Newegg for color and has been a trooper
The saddest part is that if you print every couple of months and only a few pages you aren't saving anything because the cartridges dry up when they are in the machine. Not only that but they contaminate the ink head with dried on ink as it evaporates. Then you get to buy a new printer as it costs more to clean or replace the head than a new machine. Where is the government when this kind of theft is institutionalized? They could actually do something for the consumer...... yeah we all know how that goes.
If you don't print every week, you should go for a laser printer. You can clean printing head or simply print a page every week, but with long downtime laser printers would obviously be better
The government actually has a stake in keeping the printer industry the way it is! All current printers print tiny, rarely visible to the human eye patterns of light yellow ink that let a page get tracked back to the printer and the date it was printed. The government is the one enforcing tracking dots to be printed. They don't want to draw unnecessary attention to the industry by shaking it up.
@@Inf1e That's the way I went after getting fed up with the cost of running a fairly big Canon Ink Jet. The toners are expensive, but they last for ages.
They don't care. In fact, they make more money because of it.
@@TrevorDennis100 only for color printing tho. Monochrome printers is fine for home use.
I bought my dad an Ecotank for his office. He's been printing dozens of documents a day for over a year and he still hasn't depleted the two black ink bottles that came with the printer. We expect it to last a couple months now before we have to buy new ones.
Each bottle lasts almost a year. It made us realize how much we were being ripped off by HP.
HP was the worst I've ever had
Should I get it ? ,and which model
Watch out for the waste ink reservoir, that fills up too and they track it, they don't let you print anymore when it's "full". I had to replace the one in our office and reset the counter with some software I found online
@@Luckbonus whats the website for resetting?
that means your dad has to print more in order to deplete that black ink
I hold tight to an old Canon I have from 2006 that I can fill with ink without too much complaining. It only shows the cardriges as empty but it works. If I'll ever need replacing I'll try something better, like the printer shown here. For now I've been avoiding updating to windows 11 because I noticed my old XP drivers for the printer stop working with W11 😅
When I worked at Walmart I ALWAYS recommended the Eco Tank, even to customers that were coming in to buy replacement ink cartridges. Slightly higher up-front purchase but significantly cheaper in the long run.
My problem with Epson is that it has a poor Linux support, only HP supports Linux reliably. Otherwise you have to buy extra software to make it work on Linux, but I think it'll be worth it.
@@qq84 As long as it isn't subscription based software, I'd say it's probably worth it. You'd still save on ink
@@qq84no one uses linux lmao
@@simisoner It fortunately isn't subscription based. It's about 40 bucks, so I think it'll be worth it.
Eco tanks are a scam! I bought one 2 years ago, and when the warranty ends, they shut down. There's a built-in ransomeware that stops the printer from working unless you pay Epson to continue using it. And no you can't sue them. I tried.
in Brazil, i worked in 2009 at a store and they considered the IT guys there SPECIALISTS in filling up the printer cartridges . At the time, we cut a piece of those dish washing sponges to change for that crappy foam inside the HP cartridges, and it holded WAY MORE ink inside the cartridge. there was even an "ink filler machine" that you put a giant galon of ink inside it and you just put the machine syringes inside the cartrige, to automate the process and fill the 3 colors at the same time, instead of manually doing it .
0:12 Printers... Yeah. But Windows hasn't gotten better at talking to them. The Spooler service is still horrible
I've known for years
@@holiewoodthank you for your service
I don't print often but every year I have to replace my Canon cartridges each year, I probably only print 10-20 pages year. I find bit the bullet and decided I should upgrade to the eco tank, still waiting for it to arrive, but I am betting it will save me money in the long run. I think I read you want to print a test page weekly to keep it working right.
I love my Ecotank. So far 1 year of great performance. Also worth mentioning is that regular cartridges will dry up even if you weren't using them. These ink tubs stay fresh when not used
We've had ours for about 3 years, and I've filled up the black reservoir once. The only bad part is it needs to be calibrated often to keep lines from appearing in whatever you're printing, but it still beats paying a ton for cartridges.
@@schapman1886 I agree. I like the photo quality too. I haven't had to recalibrate mine yet, but that is good to know!
Not really. Printer heads get punished if it hasn't been used for a week. Sometimes, if you are using tank based printers, the ink back flows to the tank. So its better to print at least once a week
I have an epson M1120 and got a 005 black ink, still using after 3 years and printed over 6 load of Double A A4papers without buying a new ink.
Or just buy a laser printer and not worry about ink drying
This is exactly why you should be using a 4x6 thermal printer for shipping labels. both FedEx and UPS give you free label rolls, and since it's thermal, there are no inks, toners or ribbons to change. After the cost of the printer, there is absolutely no other costs involved with printing shipping labels. As for page printing -- I never use inkjet printers because of nozzle clogging. I only use color lasers -- they're so much cheaper now than they used to be.
I have an inkjet printer that I rarely use and it's always clogged. Does that get remedied by using laser printers?
@@Dan_Capone Yes -- unless you use an inkjet almost daily, the ink will dry in the nozzles and clog them up. You can usually clear them by gently wiping them with alcohol, but you won't have that problem with laser. It uses toner, which is a dry powder. You can leave a laser printer unused for months (or years) and it will not suffer any print quality issues.
@@Dan_Caponelaser jets use dry toner and last so much longer. Do yourself a favor and get one.
I think there are cancer concerns tied to thermal. Like the receipts printed out at gas pumps.
@@MGMidget73 How? In the paper? All thermal means is heat, heat is applied to the paper and it turns black. I guess thermal paper has carcinogens or something? Is it California prop 65 (lead or something similar)?
I worked for Lexmark for a year as my first job as a salesman. The amount of incentive we got for selling a catridge was insane, but in reality what ended up happening is the consumer didn't want to pay the insane markup on the catridge, and would end up buying whatever new printer there was on promotion with the "free" catridges. Little did the consumer know that the promotional catridges are only filled up to 20% of their normal capacity. so basically a few pages worth of actual print... hence the cycle starts again... but Lexmark actually WANTED this to happen, as it looks great to investors to say sales of new printers is up by X percentage.
Most Inkjet setup cartridges has about a "Standard" fill while Toner setup carts usually fill up to 50% of "standard" cartridges.
This is also why capitalism is extremely wasteful and has polluted the planet
I wrote a comment just a while ago about how I have a Lexmark desktop laser and it has been working since the 90's. The laser cartridges (I bought these extended ones the last two) last in my use crazy long time and more than exceed the page count they promise. Maybe their inkjets have been the same kind of scam but the laser at least for me has been the best ever and the printer has been sitting turned on almost 25 years 24/7 now and no problems with fans, power supply, or the general mechanics. The only wear is with the rubber wheels that pick up the page, they sometimes don't get a grip of the paper, however I have sometimes cleaned them and made the surface more coarse which has fixed the issue. I have waited for the printer to die so I can buy a new one (laser) but it just refuses to die...
@@miscme7116 Your best bet for most SOHO offices are Brother Laser Printers. Most other brands, especially HP, suck. Even Lexmark sucks now.
I worked in the test lab in Building 1 for about a year. I remember the crap they'd pull. I am so glad I left when I did.
Got the Eco Tank style. Just fill it up with liquid ink. Cheap, last forever. Can print thousands of pages on one tank full.
I remember in middle school (2006-ish) my parents got me this super cool photo printer which I loved. It was actually cheaper to buy an entire new printer that came with ink than it was to replace just the ink...
So I had about 4 printers before my parents decided it was too wasteful, but they also didn't wanna pay so much for ink either. Didn't get much more use out of it.
The ink ink cartridges on the new printers are not as full as the standalone ink cartridges you buy. My dad weighed them out when looking at doing what you did.
This happened with me as well - I once saw a Canon MG2450 for about £20 or £25 - even when I got mine, it was £35 - the replacement inks were £50 a set... go figure!
@@TheSpotify95🤣
@@lefroy4374 Regardless, still cheaper to just buy a new printer when it's 1/3 the price of new ink.
What I started doing is buying a new printer from Walmart any time I needed to print something. I then return the printer immediately after for a full refund.