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Comment by jcranmer | Hacker News Reader

> I refuse to keep buying inkjets I only use a couple times a year.

Laser printers are the solution, and Brother laser printers seem to remain the most highly-regarded.

Yep, I've bought 3 laser printers over the past 30 years... 1 about every 10 years, and not because I needed to... because I wanted more features. I've passed the old models down to others and they're still running. Toner never dries out, heads don't need cleaning. I would never buy another inkjet. The only use I can see for inkjet is photo printing, and even then I'd rather get them done at CVS or walgreens unless it is a special size or printing material that they can't handle.

A brother laser can often be had for $100 these days.

Another printer lifehack: Goodwill (which has a 'computer' store near me, they send all the best tech stuff there) sells laser printers of all kinds for like $20-40 and that plus a $20 Amazon non-official cartridge will basically have you set for life for the occasional print job. Since they're heavy, the Goodwill route saves most of the cost compared to eBay, though I did get mine on eBay.

I actually recommend HP but Brother is great too. My current HP is at least 10 years old, and it's the second I've owned. My first was a 2000 vintage which I used from 2005-2017. (Its rubber rollers eventually got dried out and I wasn't as skilled a refurbisher as I fancied myself)

Yup, I use my brother laser printer to print probably 20 pages a year and it’s been going strong for 5 years now on the cartridge that it came with when I bought it on eBay.

You should consider thermal printers like the Brother PJ line. A bit expensive but so small you can put it in a drawer, and no cartridge or toner at all. Just thermal paper, which I run off the same pack since I bought the printer 3 years ago.

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