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Comment by javawizard | Hacker News Reader

I gotta say, switching to an Epson EcoTank printer was one of the best decisions I've ever made.

It has ink reservoirs rather than cartridges, and small, permanently plumbed tubes that go from the reservoirs to the print head.

Not only does that mean there's no way it can tell what kind of ink I'm putting in it, it also means the tanks are fucking massive. It's so nice being able to go O(years) without refilling.

It cost about twice what a comparable, cartridge-based printer cost at the time. To this day I still consider it one of the best purchases I've ever made.

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With traditional cartridges the ink can dry out and clog the cartridge if you don't print regularly. My print work loads are very bursty, like I had to print 100 resumes to go to a career fair one time but this was after like 6 months of nothing. For this reason, I prefer laser printers. Furthermore, with permanently plumbed pipes, it sounds like it could ruin the whole printer instead of just a cartridge.

I had a really shitty customer support interaction for a $60 Brother scanner: they included the wrong calibration sheet, and proceeded to attempt gas lighting me about user error despite photos showing it didn't fit in the scanner under any orientation. Replacements were $20 shipped, but out of stock anyway. Needless to say, that changed my mind about which manufacturer to make an expensive purchase from.

It was Wikipedia that reminded me Xerox even existed. All my other research led to the usual shitlist: HP, Canon, Brother, etc. No problems on Linux and Mac (printing and scanning), which is seems par these days, but no problems on Windows either: the manufacturer app was completely optional (but was straight to the point, functional, and worth the install).

Xerox color lasers have my glowing recommendation.

When did you buy it? After a cursory search it seems that Xerox engages in the same scammy behavior with 3rd-party consumables: artificially degrading the quality (lower DPI, fake printhead jerks), region-locking, wasting ink so it drains faster, and DRMs that blank out refuse anything that didn't pad their bottom line.

Jerking print heads for laser? That's not how laser printers work. Either way, I'm using 3rd party toner in mine (6515) just fine. It looks like people who have issues purchased metered printers.

Laser heads can misalign though (not sure if Xerox does that). Your Xerox® WorkCentre 6515 printer was launched 9 years ago and is not sold anymore. It's very possible that they changed their practices since then and/or that the price point is high enough that they wouldn't do that (it's aimed at professional customers after all).

Either way after a quick Reddit search there seems to be irreplaceable parts on that printer too. For example the fuser which is allegedly not user-replaceable.

> artificially degrading the quality (lower DPI, fake printhead jerks)

Huh, won't users just blame the printer for that?

Not if it only happens on 3rd-party cartridges combined with the fact that Xerox claims that they are low-quality and compared to their high quality genuine original cartridges™

I love my Xerox! It's a VersaLink that I took from an office of a defunct company.

Came with replacement toner cartridges but I'm still on the set that was installed when I got it!!

Prints are crisp, fast, and it doesn't use very much power when idle. Love it!

If you're in a humid climate, toner will clump while ink won't dry. I've noticed that in SE Asia, inkjets are more popular, likely for this reason.

The inside of a home is rarely a humid climate.

I quit buying inkjets 20 years ago in southwest Florida.

There are places in the tropics where a lot of the houses aren't kept closed up with AC running constantly. A lot of South-East Asia, for example.

It's a good point.

My workloads are similarly bursty. I've had no problems so far; the worst I've had to deal with is splotchy printing after it's been sitting for O(months), and a quick print head clean fixes that right up.

Laser printers are great if you're doing all or mostly documents though, I can't argue with that. About half of my printing is stickers and high quality photo prints, both of which benefit from inkjet printing.

(My specific model of printer is an Epson EcoTank ET-8550)

Sounds pretty hit or miss, the 1 star reviews don't inspire confidence.

https://epson.com/For-Work/Printers/Inkjet/EcoTank-Photo-ET-...

Clogged cartridges aren't the major issue. Clogged print heads means your printer is ruined and you can dispose of it. Except for HP printers where the print head is in the cartridge itself.

I've had great successes undoing clogged head on Epson printers with just few drops of isopropyl alcohol on ink drawing port. Weirdly the clogs don't even reproduce thereafter, so it might be silently doing something horrible, but worked for me.

Where did you hear that? You can buy replacement print heads for all cartridge-less printers I've ever worked with, including my ET-8550.

The difference is that they're purchased separately from the ink, so as long as the original one works you can continue to use it no matter how much ink you go through.

My print workload is very bursty but also low volume at the best of times. When my printer died I decided not to replace it because document printing services cost on the order of 10 cents per page (non-bulk) for basic printing.

I'd have to print hundreds of pages to even match the cost of a very cheap printer. I may never reach that threshold ever.

Best of all I don't have to worry about storing a crappy printer somewhere or have it dry out or clog up or spend time and effort on it and blocking it from accessing the internet and probably end up throwing it out and having to get a new one when I pull it out once every 4 years.

Fair point, laser is great. Color laser is preferable, but not always comparable to what some inkjets can do.

Also possible to schedule/automate a test print every so often with the low cost of printing on the large tank printers to keep the print heads happy.

5 year or more year old used HP enterprise workgroup printer only or mopier with low page count are ideal for personal use. In general, the more expensive the initial purchase price of laser printers, the more repairable and durable and lower cost per page they are. (I worked in a large university department in the 00's where they had zillions of network enterprise HP printers of all sizes.)

I have an HP LaserJet Pro M402dw because I don't have a particular need for color.

Lots of great black and white options in laser printing. Even Laser LED printers (okidata, etc) are good bang for the buck.

Something to keep in mind when selecting a printer with refillable liquid ink tanks is that they all have an internal waste ink repository, which is a sponge that soaks up unused ink that apparently accrues slowly through normal use, or quicker any time you do an ink purge [1]. On very high end photo printers it's replaceable, and might be described as a maintenance cartridge in the specs. If it fills up and can't be replaced, the printer is dead. When I was shopping around, the only brand I could find that had replaceable waste ink repositories even at the low end was Canon, and being too cheap even to have a network interface also saved me the trouble of firewalling it.

It's true that ink tank printers need to be used regularly or else the print heads dry out like a felt tip pen. Since the ink costs next to nothing per page, I print a full page family photo once a week and hang it up somewhere around the house if I haven't used the printer for anything else, which still works out cheaper than any alternatives. The walls look like instagram, but being reminded of loved ones might not be such a bad thing.

[1] https://youtu.be/6HUazpXWRYo

EcoTank printers are particularly hostile with this. Despite that the waste ink pass on most models are user-servicable behind 1-2 screws, and can be purchased on Amazon for $10, the printer displays a message that you must ship the printer to Epson for a full replacement.

In order to bypass the warning, you’ve traditionally needed to use a program like WIC[0], which costs $10 per use(!) - I recommend epson_print_conf[1], which is a little more tailored to the HN crowd, but does not extract a bribe every time you use it.

[0] https://inkchip.net/wic/

[1] https://github.com/Ircama/epson_print_conf

It cost about twice what a comparable, cartridge-based printer cost at the time.

CIS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_ink_system ) were around for a long time, and a popular mod amongst high-volume printers, especially Epsons, after the cartridge chip DRM was defeated[1]. They definitely cost less than the printer. I suppose Epson eventually found it profitable to do it themselves and sell with a warranty, that third-party CIS often didn't have.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25054177

Do you have a recommendation for a particular color model? Preferably with a scanner (but it's fine if not)?

Yes - mine is an Epson EcoTank 8550. It has a flatbed scanner and can print up to 13x19.

They also make one that can only print 8.5x11 but that has a document feeder on the scanner. It's otherwise the same printer.

I'd recommend either one, depending on how useful a document feeder would be for you and whether you need the larger print size of the one I have.

Ah thank you!

While this is a good recommendation, inkjet is a poor technology for most people's needs.

You want inkjet if you print a lot, at least a few pages every two weeks.

If you only need to print once every three months, you are going to hate inkjet, even with refillable tanks. Especially with refillable tanks. Disuse clogs up the head, which takes a lot of ink to clear.

Inkjet is only worth it if you use the hell out of it. You should only get a tank printer if you expect to actually use that much ink in less than a year.

If you want a printer that does nothing other than print your resume and tax returns- and you want it to just work every time- you want laser. You can even refill the toner if you really want. You shouldn't but you can.

I’ve been pretty happy with my EcoTank, but my favorite is still the HP PageWide I have at work. (I typically have to print ~100 5-10 page exams twice a semester) I’m very sad they discontinued them.

Are you using wifi? I have the 4850 and the wifi would sporadically drop out after a few hours and I wouldn't be able to reconnect without a full factory reset. It was the most frustrating thing. I was about to return it then moved it to another location and connected it via ethernet. It's been fine since, but a $350 printer that doesn't have a reliable wifi module is terrible. After searching on reddit, it seems it's a common issue.

The one downside is that if something goes wrong with the print head, it's a bigger hassle to fix than just swapping out a cartridge

My EcoTank didn't notice the day glo and invisible fluorescent inks I put through it. Amazing device.

Is there any mechanism to ensure you use "genuine" ink, or can you just dump whatever in?

> Not only does that mean there's no way it can tell what kind of ink I'm putting in it

Nope! As long as you've got a bottle or a syringe with an opening small enough to fit in the refilling ports, you're golden.

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