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I’ve resigned myself to just getting a new cheap printer every now & then - cheaper than getting ink refills (and hoping they work).

My wife and I print a lot, so frequent ink refills are a fact of life for us. Costco had a good looking HP All-In-One, for $89, but a set of extra cartridges was almost as much as the printer. Even the non-OEM cartridges on Amazon were prohibitively expensive. I checked on my phone while looking it over. They also had a nicer model Epson Workforce on sale for $99, but it too used very expensive cartridges. The printer that I go cost me just $30 for ten extra non-OEM cartridges from Amazon. A few months ago I got a bunch of cartridges for my little backup printer for just $1 a piece. I would have bought more, but they tend to go bad in about a year.

I have been refilling cartridges and switching inexpensive printers to continuous ink flow systems for decades now. If you buy bad ink it can be a nightmare. But if you don't feel like messing around with that the non-OEM cartridges which have good ratings on Amazon are generally a fraction of the price. Currently with this new printer I currently don't have time to mess around much with it which is why I spent the $30 for a couple extra sets of cartridges. These have chips designed to work with the latest firmware on the printer I purchased.

I recently purchased a new all in one printer--an HP Officejet 6978. It lasted up till the warranty was due to expire in 10 days. Then it had a big malfunction. The HP rep on the phone told me they'd send me a new one. The "new" one was actually a refurbished one, which is the standard replacement on a warranty exchange. That one lasted exactly 10 days. It died while I was on the phone with an HP tech guy. Finally, they just sent me a brand new one which seems to be working.

One big selling point for me not buying my usual Epson but going with the HP was their Instant Ink plan. Since I retired, I don't print nearly as much as I used to. I was buying an Epson ink cartridge pack for about $65, only to have it cake in its plastic containers because I wasn't printing for long periods of time. So you'd use about half the Epson ink cartridges performing head cleaning to unclog the ink jets. A very expensive proposition.

The HP Instant Ink plan has me paying $2.99/month for printing up to 50 pages. This covers my needs as a retired teacher. I think the next level is $4.99 for printing 100 pages/month, which I don't need. And I think there's a third level for printing a lot of pages. The printer senses when the ink's almost empty and then I automatically get a new batch of ink shipped. It's a good plan.

Three years ago, I pushed for our churh to switch from a laser printer where the toner cartridges cost us about $100 each and we used 3 o4 four per year.

I got them to buy a Epson ET-4500 because it used liquid ink which only cost about $9 per bottle ($36 for complete refill of b/w and all colors). Bottom line we recovered the cost of the printer in just over a year in savings on ink and we bot beutiful full color.

I was so impressed I bought the same model for use at home. I waited and got mine for a bit over $200 but grabbed a $60 rebate from Epsom. Wonderful and I no longer have problems of the cartridge ink drying if you go too long without printing.

Check out this series. The upfront cost is about double or a bit more over the basic printer but if you print any amount you will recover your extra outlay quickly and then be off to the races.