I was reluctant to give it up because I purchased refillable cartridges when it was still new and have gone through literally gallons of ink for very little expense compared to buying OEM cartridges. So I have spent some time, effort and money maintaining this printer over the years.
Most newer printers have been designed to make not using OEM cartridges difficult if not impossible to use. So one of my primary concerns was whether my new printer could be modified to accept refillable cartridges. There is a commercial program called WicReset that for a fee will allow you to reset the Waste Ink counter that will shut your printer down after a certain amount of ink has been calculated to have filled the waste ink container.
You can clean this out yourself and replace sponges and components or reroute the waste ink into an external or replaceable container. This applies to people like me he go through a lot of ink. And even the newer printers with ink tanks instead of cartridges have this limitation. But even though you can do this work the printer will still stop working when the WIC counter after a certain amount of ink has been used. The manufacturers require prohibitively expensive work by authorized service centers to reset this for you. It is called planned obsolescence and getting around this is one of the reasons I have been able to keep my old printer going for as long as I did.
The program will also allow you to roll back the printers firmware to a version that works with refillable cartridges or purchase modified firmware that will allow you to refill any cartridge even those without any security chips at all. But the program only works on specific printers... so one of my personal specs was to get a printer that WicReset could modify.
I was very tempted by the Epson EcoTank printers which allow you to refill the tanks when you see they are getting low. But the cheapest All-in-One they had at Costco was $279 on sale for $110 off. It came with three bottles of black ink and two bottles each of the three color cartridges. But I would have had to pay another $60 to get the next higher model that has FAX which believe it or not is actually still something that I use. I really did not want to spend that much even for a printer with very reasonable operating expenses and years worth of ink included.
So I looked around at articles like this one and at other retailer including Amazon. I finally ended up purchasing another inexpensive Epson Workforce 2750 printer at Walmart for $59 along with a $5 extended warranty. It is the exact same printer as recommended in this article minus the color touch screen. I find buttons easier to use than a tiny 2.5" touch screen and the price is half as much. The printer has somewhat sketchy user reviews, but this will be my 3rd Epson Workforce so I have some experience with their eccentricities. Also every optional feature of the WicReset program was available for this printer.
I’ve resigned myself to just getting a new cheap printer every now & then - cheaper than getting ink refills (and hoping they work).
I have used many different brands of printers over the years. The most reliable and ink thrifty have been Brother brand all-in-one printers.
Print small art on shrinky dink paper at low color saturation. Cut them out and bake in the oven. Apply clear sealant. When dry glue pins on the back and then sell them on Etsy.
Rather than worry about all the straws and foam cups in the ocean I wish the eco-nuts would worry about all the printers and cartridges that are deliberately designed to become worthless junk just to coerce you to buy new ones frequently.
we like our HP’s but will never buy them again
because
their cartridges are super expensive!!!! sky high
and
the machines are designed to reject, not print at all..
if it senses you put in a generic or refilled cartridge
the machine will just give an error message
AND IT DOES THIS FOR SOME GENUINE EXPENSIVE HP cartridges too
1. it is random on refusing to print from HP cartridges
and we got ours at major national office store
2. due to a lawsuit against them you CAN stumble your way through some obscure commands to tell the damned machines to accept generics
3. it will then SOMETIMES but not always accept generics
4. it will keep giving you warning messages that the generics are not guaranteed to work and could void your HP printer warranty
etc.
forget HP.
we get equal or even better print quality from our Canon copiers. but its slow as hell, so watch out for that!
and it has trouble connecting to computers wirelessly
I had the epiphany that I never print in color. Only B&W.
So I bought a monochrome laser printer. Less than a hundred bucks and I’m still going on the original ink cartridge after three years.
Oh yeah, and it’s tiny.
btrl
bfl
I’ll never go back to inkjet. Laser doesn’t cost that much more. The toner doesn’t dry out or clog. I think it’s much better for someone who doesn’t print that often. It’s cheaper and much less frustrating in the long run.
Epson ET2650. No cartridges. You buy ink by the bottles and fill the reservoirs yourself as needed.
I have the Epson ET-3750 that is on sale at Costco, like it alot and it has tons of ink (replaced a HP that was a low volume ink ripoff). Does copying, scanning, and printing fast and setting it up was easy.
The print quality is not photographic, but good enough to flyers, presentations, etc...
Works well for me.
Thanks for the post and research. Will save for future use
I spend an hour in an OfficeMax with a friend who wanted to buy the same printer he had 4 years ago. I was trying to explain to him that technology evolves over time. But he wanted all of his printers to use the same toner and I finally convinced him that just doesn’t happen.
One black-and-white laser toner cartridge will last for years and won’t dry out like an ink jet cartridge. If I want to print a photo, I send it to Walgreens or Walmart and pick it up. My cost per page is almost nothing. Do you really need a photo printer? If not, Get the laser.
I have a Epson also. Have been using bogus $!.00 each inks. Has been fine for years.
Thanks for the heads up.
I’m just a casual user and I just buy the cheapest Ink Jet printer Walmart has. Buy a new one when ink runs out. I’m a Walmart kinda guy.
back up for later
I had 2 ink jets — home use. One quit after the first cartridge stopped. I didn’t print much, so the jets clogged. It would not work after I installed an OEM replacement cartridge. The 2nd one — the feeder jammed at about 20 pages, just after the warranty expired.
I next went with a small Minolta b/w laser. Great little machine — until I was forced out of WinXP into Win7 — no drivers for Win7-64 bit.
About 12 years ago, I bought a Xerox Phaser 6125 color laser. It cost $150 with free shipping on a Cyber Monday. I still use it. Last summer I finally had to replace the black cartridge. I used a cheap print-for-less replacement. I was apprehensive, but it works flawlessly and has great print.
Occasionally, I check color laser prices. I would like a one with auto-duplex. I occasionally see one on sale for around $150, but I can’t really justify the cost, since the Xerox is still working great.