Here’s five things that cost less than printer ink:
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Only 5? With the possible exception of ‘Saffron’ I’d have thought it would be the most expensive thing by unit price in the supermarket or department store …
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Although not in the average supermarket it’s surprising there was not an Aussie wine comparison.
The 98, that’s 1998 Penfolds Grange Hermitage is on sale at Nicks Wine merchants for $10,788.
Even so that will get you a case with a dozen bottles or nearly 10 litres of blood red legal ecstasy.
Given the cost of printer ink should we be sharing a thimble with a ten course degustation as the ultimate symbol?
Unfortunately the feeling having just purchased a four pack of inks for the Brother is not quiet as pleasurable. Nearly enough to go alcohol free and vegan?
Apologies and respect to all non drinkers.
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I would anticipate that printer ink would not weight a far greater amount per litre than water which weights 1kg per litre, but even if it weights 5 times as much as water, it would still be less than the value of one kg of gold.
After reading an article regarding one of the drug seizures in Australia the other day, I was schocked to discover that after I calculated the claimed street value of the herion seized, that it was around $300,000 per kg, or about 6 times the price of gold.
Whilst the printer industry is robbing us blind, (unless you purchase aftermarket products), the illegial drugs industry is bleeding the country dry.
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Look on the bright side, at least if you are using expensive ink rather than toner, you (allegedly) aren’t printing pages identified by a MIC - so whistleblow away, or so they say … and don’t get me started on Eurion constellations, I just wanted to see the spelling error on the '50 
… and you thought you were free 
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I have gotten rid of my inkjet multi function printer due to the cost of cartridges. I hardly printed anything in colour and had a mono laser printer anyway. Now I have a mono multi function laser printer, the inkjet is gone!
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It’s now been 3 years since we purchased our Ecotank printer, with multiple members of the family doing quite a lot of fairly big print jobs in all that time, and we’re STILL on our first batch of inks that came supplied with the printer. The 3 colour ink tanks are all 3/4 full and the black has about a 3rd of a tank left. Might have been an expensive printer to purchase, but the amount of money we’ve saved by not having to purchase any ink at all for 3 years pretty much made up for it, at this rate we won’t need to fill the black up for at least another 10 to 12 months, and the colour tanks will probably last another 9 years. 4 years for the black and 12 years for the colour ink? Apparently they’ve only got a shelf life of 2 years, but it all still works fine for us. Best $450 we ever spent.
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Three years from one of these?
Certainly an environmental saving in not having to throw away replacement ink cartridges. $16.99 for each refill ink bottle at one retailer.
There are Choice reviews for of a number of these model printers.
P.S.
The big question is will the print head and printer mechanism last as long as the inks? 12 month warranty, optional 24 month extended warranty.
Hopefully Epson will warrant under ACL the printer for as long as it takes to fully consume the first set of inks. Did I read 12 years?
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‘You can drop off your used or empty laser and inkjet cartridges at all Officeworks stores and participating Australia Post, Harvey Norman, The Good Guys, JB Hi-Fi, Office National and Office Products Depot outlets. Inkjet cartridges, toner cartridges and toner bottles are accepted. This includes cartridges used in printers, photocopiers and fax machines.’
Not blanket cover, especially in the regions and bush, but.
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Considering the printer’s been in quite a bit of use since we purchased it 3 years ago and the individual colour ink tanks are all only about a quarter used, then yes, we’re looking at about 12 years before we need to top any of these tanks up since they were initially filled with ink. So, another 9 years to go. We use a lot more black ink than colour ink, due to our printouts mainly being documents, but we’ve had quite a few full page full colour print jobs, which would usually drain an ink cartridge dry within a month. With the old printer we used to tell the kids to go easy on it, but with this one we just let them print what they want when they want.
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We no longer shop at Harvey Norman.
Feel sorry for their employees, but they should take that up with their Boss, Gerry, over his JobKeeper greed.
Have upgraded to a Brother HL-1210W B&W Laser series, after the HL-1110 series refused to print anything but half of the page clearly. The other half-page was very faint, though readable.
I couldn’t give the old one away - no one wanted a free printer. It ended up in the recycling bin.
The new printer, now about 1 year into service, was $78 from Office Works.
Currently selling between $107 and $129. I still use it intermittently.
Thanks for the tips on care of inkjets.
They are still quite popular I note, since they outnumber lasers about 5:1 in stores.
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NubglummerySnr,
In regards to ink tanks that can be just topped up, do any manufactures do this for LASER PRINTERS ???.
Laser toner can be very messy. Extended life toner cartridges print many, many pages, and lasers are not just about the toner, they are also about drums that eventually must be replaced.
Focusing on toner,
If you watched the video you might understand why there is no ‘auto fill’.
PhilT,
Thanks for replying, with that info, for my laser printer, l buy genetic printer cartridges $23 each, high capacity from inkStation.com.au. This is compared to $130 each for genuine cartridges.
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It’s cheaper to buy another printer than to buy cartridge replacement and or drum/platen replacements.
And that’s what I will be doing when the current laser mono begins to resist cleaning and refilling.
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That depends if you buy a printer with 'starter supplies good for a limited number of pages or one having a standard inks set or toner, and whether you buy OEM or compatible products. Cheap printers often use more ink per page than a better one.
My inkjet MFC is A3 capable with all the bells and whistles at $150.00 in 2016. Since then I have spent $60 on 2 sets of ink carts. I also have an entry laser that cost $100, came with a regular toner package, and I had to put in the first compatible toner earlier this year, $24. A drum? $26 for about 10,000 pages. Never had a problem with either, or the inks or toner.
A trap is that many companies, HP being one of the traditionally aggressive, play games in their firmware to stymie the use of compatibles. HP is not alone.
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It is worth, before buying a new printer, to see the cost of genuine consumable replacements and if there are a number of reputable sellers who offer non-genuine consumables for a particular printer. Many will confirm by email/over the phone if it isn’t clear on their websites.
This simple exercise can save a considerable sum over the life of a printer and/or reduce eWaste when it seems cheaper to buy a new printer rather than its consumables.
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Yes - good points there PhilT.
My first Brother HL1110 began its ghosting behaviour about 15 months into its life on my desk.
I bought (whether rightly or wrongly) a non-genuine toner from eBay, with the correct specifications for the printer. I had read warnings from Brother NOT to use non-genuine products, but figured that I had already gotten the $48 I paid (Woolworths 2016 from memory) out of it, and took the risk.
The printer performed flawlessly after that refill, until around March 2019 (guessing now) when it began the ghosting behaviour. I pulled the drum out and saw that only half of the drum was getting a good coating of toner. I cleaned the platen etc and reassembled - same issue. But since I rarely needed perfect copies, and on average used the printer about once every two weeks, I put up with it until I began to think time was up.I tried to give the old printer away, including driver disc, explaining the issue, and that perhaps a new drum might be required, but everyone I knew already had a printer. So it went to recycling heaven. Current printer is now “about” 14 months old, and I’m a happy camper. Cost $78 for current one and $48 fir first one. It will take a team of horses to get me back to ink-jet. I simply don’t use the printer frequently enough to task myself with the necessary maintenance to keep one in good order.
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I realised this when purchasing the Brother Mono Laser printers from Woolies and Officeworks. When searching online for the replacement bits, they were long out of production.
I imagine that’s why they were so cheap - both were run-out models.
Which raises another point - WHY so many models???
I get that different people/businesses have different needs.
But surely in 2021, someone somewhere has managed to perfect the home printer, or at least get it down to a bout 4 dependable models.
Instead, we have this continual churning of stock, meaning in many cases that eventually some become obsolete for no other reason that the parts are no longer available.
At least when we buy a car, we know that there are spare parts, and you don’t throw it away when it just needs new spark-plugs!
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