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Technically, they're not doing anything wrong. It's the same reason companies like Apple can get away with charging $200 for a $50 part. Edit: I really need to stop commenting on these videos since people can't be bothered READING PAST THE FIRST COMMENT. As I and plenty others have said, printer companies likely are filling cartridges with the advertised amount of ink, but the foam retains a majority of it and if it's taken out and exposed to air, it retains even more because the ink starts drying, as it's designed to.
They are doing something wrong, they're misleading consumers about how much ink is inside the cartridge. Tesla tried this with misleading battery range, and they certainly fell foul of the law in doing so. @@leblueawoo
Yes, they need to be sued. Recently Taco Bell got sued for not supplying what they advertise. The only issue is that Canon will argue that they specify 11ml of ink per cartridge, which is soaked up by those sponges. 🤷🏽♂️
This must be the scenario that most fits this cliche of: “THIS THING IS BAD! SOMEONE NEEDS TO DO SOMETHING” … *proceeds to do nothing, status quo continues and nothing changes*
Printer manufacturers typically sell the printer for cheap with ink cartridges that are almost empty, just to force you into buying their super marked up "full" cartridges. If you almost never print anything, the best option might just be to buy a new printer every time you need more ink.
I needed new ink for my printer. Went online and saw a new printer at better specs for less than the price of the ink. I went in needing new ink, came out with a new printer and had enough money left to pay my rent for the next 6 months.
@@useraccount2507 I've got a HP printer, and you can get a good deal from an off-brand manufacturer. Basically twice the ink for half of the price, but HP recently updated the firmware to block all off-brand ink cartridges "because of security and quality" and as a EU citizen, I can't phantom how the F it can be legal to do that. Printer manufacturers reminds me way too much of the Phoebus Cartel
I remember someone who helped my family with computer stuff, since I was a kid, he will connect ink reservoirs to the cartridge and it would be amazing, and that was yeaaaars before companies like epson finally join the "printing black market". Rest in peace Gustavo, you insane smart ass, love ya!
thank you for the story mr hair. i recently got a laser printer instead of an ink printer and i stop spending so much on ink. the only downside is that laser printers are more expensive and the cheaper ones that i bought only print in black and white
Decided to sell off my canon printer and that was one of the best decisions I have ever made. I went to purchase an Epson EcoTank and it's way better! At least we don't get ripped off like a sucker! Thank you Epson for saving us!
Well, before this they made a ton of money from their scamming ink also, remember? 😂 It's over $100 for each time refilling, they ain't any better than these rip-off companies, stop lying! 😂
@@COMPUTER.SCIENCE.Ecotank has been in the market for years. They were likely the only widely accessible brand using refillable ink. Also, it costs no where a $100 to refill the tank. Outside of laser printers, ecotanks are a great bargain in terms of cost of printing per page.
I worked with HP, and got to see the sheer depths of depravity when it comes to screwing the customer. 1. They have one of the harshest cartridge ID systems, to the point that each cartridge knows the batch it was made from. The reason for this is so the printer can reject single-cartridge replacements, forcing the customer to replace them all. 2. They have multiple layers of detection to ensure the cartridge was never unsealed. The printers immediately break the seal on cartridges as a part of entering them, and it also knows if part of it has been peeled open because a customer attempted to open a secondary entry point. They do this to screw people that misaligned the cartridge or attempted to refill it. 3. They have detectors that err on the side of caution when determining ink levels. They use this to shut down the printer until new cartridges are added, which is to intentionally waste ink and force the customer to replace them all. 4. They have been "enhancing" your black ink with cyan, and there is no option to stop it. They do this to intentionally waste one of the smaller cartridges to force the customer to replace them all. 5. They intentionally slash quality assurance for cartridges. This means the IDs and detectors can randomly fail, which they've programmed to always deny access. This is because some people don't return faulty cartridges, which means they get a double sale. 6. This system creates a lot of ink-filled trash. Not only is the plastic going to last a few centuries, but the ink is highly toxic and has been proven to poison groundwater if allowed to seep. They know this is happening, and are simply trying to keep quiet to not draw attention to it. There's a lot of other ways they're hurting their customers, but I'll keep it to the ink side of things. If an Epson actually lets you refill the cartridges, I recommend shouting it from the mountaintops, because I was led to believe the printer industry had a gentleman's agreement amongst each other to keep ink artificially scarce by any means necessary.
That last bit sounds like a direct breach of TFEU Article 101. (EU Cartel laws) "Article 101 prohibits anti-competitive agreements between two or more independent market operators." Thats very big lawsuit waiting for happen, consider giving them anonymous tip to it.
I have a cheap HP printer that came with the free HP Instant Ink plan. I get 15 pages per month free, and pay $0.10 a page after that, and if the ink runs low, they send me a new cartridge for free. It's almost free since I rarely go over 15 pages per month.
@@LargeInCharge77 From what ive understood they do not need it on paper to find companies quilty. Just a formal agreement is enough, but your last point might be why they havent got those just a few billion fines yet
@@Froggy11235Ricoh/Savin/Lancer and HP service tech here: HP has some of the harshest OEM printer restrictions but you can turn it off and buy off brand cartridges. All you need to do is downgrade the firmware and disable the consumer protection option. On our public school accounts we do this to maximize profit.
Maybe this can help you to refill cheaper...I have a laser printer, and to which I installed a hacked driver that I found on the internet. What it does is that it allows working with original but refilled cartridges. When I need ink I just go to the local company where they refill cartridges at a fraction of the price.
The saddest part is that if you print every couple of months and only a few pages you aren't saving anything because the cartridges dry up when they are in the machine. Not only that but they contaminate the ink head with dried on ink as it evaporates. Then you get to buy a new printer as it costs more to clean or replace the head than a new machine. Where is the government when this kind of theft is institutionalized? They could actually do something for the consumer...... yeah we all know how that goes.
If you don't print every week, you should go for a laser printer. You can clean printing head or simply print a page every week, but with long downtime laser printers would obviously be better
I am always amazed that no-one has taken the printer manufacturers to court over such a blatant rip off. I changed to a mono laser much better suited to childrens homework printing.
Because you are aware of what you are buying. Even still, modern printers have only been around for 30-50 years, so the market is relatively new for it to actually see competition
I think it is hard to make a judge, that knows about laws but little about printers, understand the scale and gravity of this scam. And no, not everyone "knows what they are buying". If people knew, nobody would buy 50€ printers.
@@mrcoder7327 they're much older than fking smartphones, yet smartphones have become one of the best/most efficient things one could have. Printers? They've been sitting on the same a** for that many years.. I hate the printers industry so much that I refuse to buy a fking printer, only keep electronic versions of things, and I'd rather go to printing shop if I need to, it's cheaper and less work, hence less resentful! 😂
After nearly $200 dollars of ink, over a year, I could only printed 15 pages. It's infuriating that it would dry up in less than 2 weeks. Yes, this sbould be giant lawsuit to stop these criminals.
@@zakariasnagygoing to the library every time you need to print of a sheet of paper would be so fucking obnoxious unless you lived right next to one. You’re literally asking a person to turn a 30 second task into a 2 hour long ordeal to drive into town and back for a single sheet of paper. How is that not more wasteful?
Also to mention, if you’re not using the printer often enough, the cartridge will dry out. So you still have to continuously buy new ones if you’re printing a little or a lot
My biggest problems with inkjets was that the heads would clog up. At some point you could no longer get them unclog and quality would jump off a cliff. then it's new printer time because they're basically disposable. Ended up going to a laser because of it.
I just recently bought the Epsom printer and was thrilled with how easy it was to fill up the ink. Just turn it upside down above the color you need. You can see the actual amount of ink in the front.
In India, there are these refill kits that most people use. You basically fill ink into a syringe and moist the depleted foam in the cartridge by putting the needle through a hole in the cartridge. Using the kit, you can refill the cartridges in about 5-10 minutes. Here, the kits cost about 4-5 usd(converted) and you get about 100+100 ml of ink... Plus the tools. About the reliability: I have printed over 2000 sheets using this method and my printer(that I bought for ~$40) still works fine. I calculated the cost per print and it came out to Rs. 0.8 for b/w print and Rs.3 for colour prints. That's about 0.25 cents and 3 cents respectively. Of course it will be higher in the US. There are also conversion kits that can be used to convert inkjet printers to ink tank printer. I haven't tried it but it's pretty popular too.
@@oksowhatIt's injected directly (physically) into the cartridge. Which means you need to buy the "legitimate" cartridge once and you keep filling it with third party ink that way.
@@nathanlamaire i know thats how i used to use them, though in my country it works but i dont think it works like this in US, seen some vids of louie rossman. also a balack cartridge here costs less thn 8 dollors, pretty much does not matters for us
The chip on the cartridge also counts the number of pages printed and tells the printer not to print any more when it estimates you're out of ink. This is why sometimes your printer says you're out but you're still getting sharp, clean printing and other times, you get faded printing before it tells you you're out. More often than not, your printer will lock out and tell you to replace the cartridge before it's even empty.
True. And H&P cartridges even expire. Who knew? Say there was a sale, and you buy a bunch of cartridges and horde it for later. If you install the cartridge after the expiration date, it won't work.
I used to work at Staples and customers would REGULARLY ask why their cartridges get used up so quickly. We almost always had to default to "Well, it could have dried up if it was too hot or you wren't using your printer enough." since we weren't allowed to directly tell them that there's really not a lot of ink.
@@OverRule1 itll depend on your cartridge and printer, looks like theres plenty of people who do just that and decided to post it to YT. Just watched someone who had a system set up for it. Has 2 sets of ink cartridges for his printer, when set A runs out he will fill and replace them with set B, just to make the printer think its a new cartridge.
you work at staples and dont work for canon. are you being held hostage? why are you supporting this shitty printer company. tell the customers the truth they deserve
I've been using the same ink cartridge (canon) for two years. And one previously before that for 5 years. I drilled a hole on the top and refill it with ink. Lasts multiple years. Let it rest in a dish of water or alcohol before refilling it just to keep the heads moist.
@@OverRule1 yeah I bought an Epson eco tank just for this reason. It doesn’t use cartridges it has is own built in tanks that I can just fill up with original ink or cheaper knockoff ink
I used to work at a school and we'd need to print out exam questions. We really had syringes popped into those prime heads to fill them with ink. The ink were locally made ones you could get in shops. Watching this just made me realize we escaped that rip off.
@@masterjedidudahguttier3109 Of course, you knew it was a typo but you couldn't resist scoring a cheap point. You might need to resist the brain diarrhea though. Skrep.
I sell printers in a retail electronics store. I always thought printer cartridges were a scam and guided my customers to laser printers. Glad that my suspicions were confirmed.
Oh, man, you think ink cartridges are a scam? I bought a Canon color laser printer, thinking it would be more economical in the long run. A full set of OEM cartridges (standard capacity) is $250 USD. A high capacity black toner cartridge is $144 alone. The off brand cartridges mostly work, but every time the printer restarts, it won't do anything until you go over to it and dismiss a warning about non-Canon cartridges. I need to put that thing on a UPS so it doesn't power cycle every time there is a power event. If anyone knows how to run hacked firmware, I would pay to have it. I wish I could run the thing with a Raspberry Pi. Next time, I'm going to do more research before buying a printer. The print quality is fantastic, but I despise the printer because Canon makes it so expensive and annoying to operate.
@@Dwigt_Rortugal , I use a Canon MF220 series 3-in-1 printer/scanner and uses an ink toner, yes, its monochrome, and yes, the ink toner is a bit expensive... but its been around 2 years now and i still haven't replaced the toner that came with the printer. but yeah, i only used the printer with my kid's school work. it is way better than those ink cartridges that dries up over time, and you have to purchase a new set again even if you barely used the printer.
thirty, more like over a hundred years. Its the razor and blades model. Printer wise, the market didn't originally start out that way, at least not until Inkjets started rolling in. The old dot matrix systems were designed to be user refillable and serviceable.
I had HPs for years. I went through ink so fast. I thought something must be wrong. Than I purchased the EPSON eco tank. I fell in love. I have one for regular printing and sublimation.
glad you discovered ink tank printers, and I hope they've been serving you well! I've owned a lower-end Epson EcoTank printer for over two years now, printing photos, documents, CD covers, stickers, etc., and it's been serving me very well. I only used 50% of the black ink and 20% of the colour inks so far. I seriously can't imagine a reason to ever buy an ink cartridge printer again. I never even had issues with ink drying up, even when I didn't use the printer for several weeks.
Ricoh/Savin/Lander and HP service tech here. They’re not really “ripping you off”. The actual price of the printer is almost double what you pay for it. In a lot of these printers the fuser alone is the price of the entire printer. You’re basically on a pay by the month plan with a 100 starter fee. These companies don’t make money (unless it’s an MFP line) until you begin purchasing supply items.
The people who run these companies need to be held accountable, but of course the people who run these companies are filthy rich members of the ruling class. They are above the law.
@@randodejambo2921 Shut the hell up. It's a complete and total ripoff, printers do not cost that much to make, and no one is going to believe some full-of-shit service rep that this isn't a very intentional scam. Keep squeezing that turnip, though.
I have been using an HP printer for the last 2 years, in the beginning I always bought original cartridges from HP, but recently I discovered that the cartridges from my printer can be refilled with third party ink, and it works well. Usually I buy cartridges for 15 dollars and they usually run out in two or three months because I rarely use them, now I only need to spend 3 dollars for refill ink and so far the ink hasn't run out, maybe it's been about 6 months since i buy the ink.
@@Military872 less than a dollar? No. It's the fraction of a penny. You don't understand mass manufacturing costs. An entry level $100 printer with ink would cost somewhere around a few dollars for these companies to produce in materials and shipping. Those kinds of consumer printers should cost like $20, but they rip the public off to create massive value for their shareholders.
I had a professor who would just buy a $20 printer when she would run out of ink. I think she would literally just throw it out. She said it was cheaper than buying new ink
Then you think of how many other consumers do the same thing, and calculate how much GARBAGE we drop into Earth so companies can make profit$. This tactic should be outlawed (the same goes to Apple with their un-fixable profit making strategy).
I've been wondering about my job's HP All-in-One inkjet. It likes to make us replace multiple cartridges sometimes, but never simultaneously. It goes through the priming cycle, using ink, to only make us change another color and start the cycle again until there is enough ink to continue printing ...something that was black and white to begin with!
I was shocked when I moved to Thailand and walked into a computer shop and found that you can buy gallons of ink for your printer for a couple dollars and you could buy conversion kits that would run tubes into your printer from huge containers that you pour the ink from the gallon into. It made me furious that I was paying $50 for a tiny HP cartridge back in America.
Commercial multi cartridge printers that do high speed envelope printing have tubing to each cartridge from an IV bag of ink, allowing them to run continuously. O have the same printer... here is the TRUTH ( I do not get affiliate money ). The printer replaced a failed HP small business printer that HP offers no repair on..... the HP was AWESOME, with a good build quality. The Epson has been running at my business, kicking out about 100 sheets a day of B&W and Color... but no photos.... after 8 months, the INITIAL filling of Black is right now at half level, and the colo are at 5/8 on all 2 colors...... The downside, the machine is very cheaply built.... the sheet feeder fails, forget about multipages feeding correct. But the scanner is good, and it is just ok, but nothing like the HP PAGEWIDE, which has been discontinued.... which had FAST output of even the first page.... faster than a laser.
I remember customers back in 1994(!) complaining about printer ink prices and how much money they were making off of it, but truth is if the ink had been cheap, the printers would have been dead expensive. Complain all you want but the profit margins aren't as high as you might think. Of course still high, but not crazy high. And there have always been alternatives, like refilling with cheaper ink, despite manufacturers trying to prevent that.
That's because Thailand doesn't have the same kind of intellectual property laws, you'll find this in a bunch of other countries. There will be copy products of conversion kits we don't get in the US because they are sued out of existence.
@@paulmichaelfreedman8334 customers would rather pay a little more for the printer, than get ripped off for life on ink cartridges. Gilette razor has the same business model as printers
I'm a computer repair technician that goes onsite to houses and fixes issues with their tech, printers for the longest time were a nightmare until I learned ALL OF THE STUFF YOU SAID IS SO TRUE. About the Epson Eco Tank, as long as you are constantly printing and pretty much never give it a week or 2 break it will function flawlessly, but the second you stop printing for a week it dries on the print heads and they are a nightmare to clean, I just last week had a customer who had two of the same model you showed in the video. One she kept printing from and one she stopped printing to and it dried up, took me an hour and a special kit with an eye dropper that had a similar nozzle to the printhead and I was able to get ONE of the four print heads working again. Laser printers are expensive up front but will save you the most money I have found and they don't care if it's been 4 months or 4 years toner will just work.
Absolutely my experience with ecotank! I left it for a month...managed to clean it...second time I left it and this time I cannot get it clean...well perhaps if I give it an extra hour or two of work but certainly isn't as simple as clearing the tubes as last time.
That's the exact reason i switched to laserprinting 20 years ago. In the long run you get a way cheaper print. And it doesn't matter if the printer stands there for 2 months or 6 months, it simply works. That is until the laser or in my case the led (brother 3040 cn) decides to to throw the towel after 15 years of service. 😓
I agree that the cost of inks for inkjet printers were exorbitant. I bought a Brother black and white laser printer (DCP-L2540DW) 6 years ago for this very reason. I can also confirm that even unused for weeks on end it has not clogged yet and still on its original toner. This has been a most dependable PC accessory for my home use, copying documents, printing and scanning. I haven't checked yet, but if the cost of color laser printers has gone down today, I may invest on it as well.
You could soak it up with iso alcohol and then let the alcohol evaporate in a dish. Ink doesn't evaporate AFAIK, so I think this would be a valid method to get all the ink out of the cartridge and measure it.
No, the reason they use foam is to more easily deliver the ink to where it needs to go. Sucking up liquid ink from a reservoir into presumably a tube of some sort, just to soak it into a pad anyway, is stupid and seems 10000x harder than the solution they came up with. Ink cartridges are definitely a scam, but because there’s not enough ink in them and they’re extremely overpriced, not because they’re purposely engineered to scam you. 99% of the time, there’s a purpose for things beyond the first most surface level observation you make.
@@MrKoyama2004there is 3 types of ink - water based - solvant based - oil based All dries up. So using alcohol wouln't work. But, with a few cartridges and some experimentation you can figure it out: - Weight a full caridge - print until empty - weight it again - take one or more cartridge - squizz out the ink - measure the volume - weight it The first part is to figure out the usable quantity. There is always a portion that can not be used (in part because they garantee that the first and last page is 100% quality. Low ink level may cause the head to suck some air and misprint.) Second step is to measure the density of the ink. Once you have that, you can do some simple math to find the used volume.
What Epson did was brilliant. They struggled to beat HP and Canon in their own game, so they started a new game! In a rare corporate move, they understood what we consumers need, and agreed to earn less per customer, in order to gain a ridiculous number of loyal customers. I switched to Eco-Tank this year and I'm not going back.
I have that same printer, its amazingly efficient for the ink cost. The 2 problems are the print heads do clog up over time and so you do waste some ink cleaning them. Also apparently the cleaning process has a tank that stores the used ink (its pretty large but eventually does fill up). I think theres videos on how to replace it when full but just something to watch out for in the future
I bought a refurbished printer online that promised 1 year of free ink, only for the setup cartridges to arrive damaged because of the packaging. I bought cartridges to use it in the meantime to wait for replacement setup ones, but since I had already started the printer I was no longer eligible for the year of free ink.
Deciding to buy a laser-jet printer was one of the smartest thing's we've ever done. We bought an HP one at least 6 or seven years ago and had to replace the toner ONCE a few months ago. ONCE. We don't print tons, but we use it quite regularly, so it was totally worth it!
I find this is best for black and white prints and printing faster as well. Color prints are better on the one shown in the video with refillable ink tanks rather than cartridges.
HP deserves a mention of honor here for being the scammiest of them all. After the first Deskjet printer I got, I decided that it deserved no love at all. After using an Epson printer at my colllege office and seing that those bottles worked way better, I bought one for my house as well. My suffering has lightened because although some argue that there is a difference in quality, for printing some reports, you barely notice that.
We had an HP Color Printer 🖨 It had an expensive ravenous appetite, and was the ONLY brand that NEVER had a sale on ink. Replaced it with an Epson Printer 🖨, on sale, for a price similar to 2 changes of HP ink. It has been BETTER than the HP. And Epson ink price is reasonable, and occasionally on sale. We were probably NOT the only Former HP users. Since we quit them, HP Printers and Ink seem to have a lot of sales! 😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣🤣 (🤬HP)
@@slipjones2 I am talking about years ago to today 10 years to today friend. At the time the inkjet printer was the latest tech (according to HP). Deskjet**
It is no wonder HP got into the medical field that is full of corruption and scams: _"... years before the coronavirus pandemic began, work coming out of the Future Unit drove HP’s investment into adapting inkjet printer technology for medical applications such as drug development, vaccine research, and rapid diagnostic testing."_
Fell for that years ago. Never refilled the ink since the version had to be online mail ordered which at the time I got it was harder to get done. Got so frustrated with it I stopped using it.
I have had the epson and the original ink lasted well over a year. I have replaced the black 2 times colors only once! As for clogs in over 2 years now It has skipped/lines/etc only twice and clean option has worked both times no problem. I would buy another in a heart beat!
On the other hand, people get demotivated to print often and instead share their files online or bring USB sticks. No ink, no paper and no plastic will be wasted.
I remember printing coloring pages for my classmates when I was in elementary school over 35 years ago. I printed over three hundred pages before my dad put a stop to it.... I only used up one printer ribbon in all that time. Dad complained about me using up his printer paper, not his ink. The ink for the printer was dirt cheap in comparison to the cartridges of today. You can buy bottles of ink for just a few dollars. It would take nothing to make a formula that would work in the printers. There is no doubt that the cartridges are a rip off.
oh but-but-but it's a special ink formula! they have to use special vehicles to make the ink, it's totally not like they use the most expensive but at the same time junkiest equipment intentionally to make 'high quality ink' to upcharge 900%!!
My old hp laserjet printer can print like 400 pages in a dollar just refill the cartiage with cartiage powder, Canon is scammer I have plotters for buisness to canon is very costly you even have to turn on ac for it to even print
@@kiraamv5507Just don't hook up your laser printer to the Internet. I made that mistake and now it refuses to print unless I buy a new cartridge. It's definitely a scam. HP is very pretty to disable printing on my old laserjets. I can continue to print on my subscription based inkjet but of course because they charge me per page. The same software blocked my laserjets.
Certain companies also adopt other shady tactics with their Ink - Tank printers as well. I had mine "conk out" within six months. Turns out that that particular model has a kind of failsafe that makes the printer show an error, forcing you to replace the printer/take it for servicing (it's understandable to an extent: since printers are rated for a certain number of cycles. But to have perfectly working printers which are practically new bricked automatically without any fault, seems dubious.) I was able to overcome this by following steps on a CZcams tutorial that actually sent a kind of "counter reset" to the printer and it worked absolutely fine after that. It seems that particular model is known for prematurely and erroneously activating the failsafe in a number of units.
I print over 150 pages a day and use Brother laser printer-black only. I get aftermarket 10 packs of drum and cartridge and fill it up with toner powder I got from ebay. I found that it is the lowest cost to print. just a little messy when dealing with the toner powder filling.
I literally work in an electronics store and I keep on trying to urge customers to go for the Epson ecotank over the cheaper canon ones for this exact reason! But seems like not many people wanna spend 400 dollars on a printer but rather spend double that a year on ink 🙃
no. we buy new cheap shit printers on black friday every couple of years and it is the same price as an ink cart. and by the time the epson pays for itself we wont be printing things or something better will have come to market for a lower price until then. black friday shit ass printers that come with an ink cart the same price as the printer being purchased.
I've done the same thing. A Couple years back I bought 4 printers because the printer + ink carts cost less than just the ink carts. Instead of changing ink cartridges, I just installed a new printer when it's empty. I don't print much so it's lasted me awhile, but now I'm out of printers.@@kyledennis6772
Just changed the ink on my Ecotank ET-3850 yesterday for the first time. First use was Feb 4,2022 -2,142 pages of black printing on the usage report. Color ink is just at 2/3 capacity. Still have another black bottle - that's at least 5 years worth of ink that came with the printer. I have had all kinfs of cartridge based printers and while the printer costs $50 the ink is expensive and replaced every few months. Yes the Eco Tank costs 10x more than a cheap all in one from Canon or HP - but it is $60 of ink every 2 or so months. I find there is value in the EcoTank and have had zero technical issues except for occasional disconnecting from the wifi - which is most likley a modem issue on our end.
3 months later and I still remembered this video. I have just moved into my own home and now I've ordered an eco-printer. Down with cartridges! Thanks a lot for this video, you are a hero!
well if we hack the cartridges on inkjet the inkheads are replaced when you replace the cart. alot of positives to consider with inkjet. just someone tell me how to refill 3rd party carts in my HP envy 5660. 3ml in a 12ml advertised cart should be illegal. please help. i want to refill but i hear these printers can detect a cart has been refilled at home. my HP envy has a firmware back from Sept 2020 so it never got the firmware blocking update HP unexpectedly sent out.
If any of you recall, there used to be an ink refill service at walgreens photo booth. Those cartridges that I would get refilled would work so much longer than the original fill, and I would assume, the company doesn't do it anymore because they lost a fortune.
In Southeast asia, some printer models are designed to be refillable. They have an ink tank placed outside But it took for several years for Canon and HP to officially acknowledge and launch such design Before that, ppl unofficially modify their cartridge to attach an external ink tank Or refil their cartridge by themself using cheap knock-off ink
I bought an Epson ecotank around five years ago. It still works great and I've saved a fortune in ink cartridges. Yes, the heads do need cleaning from time to time but this is not a problem. Thanks for telling the world about this wicked ink cartridge scam. Andy B.
as a professional print person... all printers need heads cleaning. All of them. That's why they end up 'getting replaced' because most people do not know how to either flush them or replace just the print heads. my mom's printer she has had now for 12 years even though it was a $20 pixma. The advantage to the ecotanks are numerous starting with the tanks being able to be filled with different inks. They are also significantly easier to clean, flush and replace print heads. I currently use an epson workforce 7610 for sublimation but the ecotanks are much better for even that purpose.
great review! Can't believe how little ink is actually in those cartridges. I have been doing some online research and was excited about purchasing a new tank printer and have found that the tank printers have to purge the ink constantly in order to keep the ink from drying out in the feeder lines, it does this by squirting the ink on top of an internal sponge... and its alot of ink. Once the sponge is full a sensor shuts the printer down and renders the printer useless, usually within a year. the sponge nor the sensor are replaceable, meaning you just paid way more for a printer with no more technical capabilities than the cartridge type only to have it be nonfunctional sooner. It is for these reasons I will not be purchasing a tank printer. "I wonder if SHACK knows this?!"
I actually bought one of those from Costco recently as well. I originally bought a cheap HP and later on replace the ink catridges, but not long after it stopped working saying there was no ink in the catridges... Had to get rid of it.
My favorite was when years back they introduced the "XL" tanks under the guise that suddenly printer ink is cheaper. What they did was filled them halfway and called those the standard cartridges, which now only cost half as much.... so you think "wow, printer ink is finally affordable!" but really all they did was rename the "full" ink cartridges "XL" and then charged the same price as they did before.
EU directive that printer won't "selfdestruct" / automatically shutdown. -replaceable ink absorber (Canon G3200 Megatank printer Ink Absorber/Error Code 5b00) -user resettable inc cartridge counter and ink absorber counter. -user cleanable print heads -non overpriced and easily available spare parts EU directive for labeling the amount of ink that comes out of the tank through the print head onto the paper. Class action suit in the US. Just make a 501 for that :)
Not just a printer companies that are doing that. Look at all the food that we currently get that's only half the nutrition that used to be, it's half the size, and cost 5× more! Thanks Obama, i mean Biden.. Why did I think Obama attention to Obama's interviews he tells you that if Trump gets into office and they asked Obama to run things in the shadows with a front man that he would not be opposed to doing so.. these are Obama words! Obama got the most time in office and it should be illegal. The things they are putting Biden through are Criminal acts and he don't even know any better
@@mesmorrow they all collectively did it, I know HP and Epson both sell "XL" cartridges. HP was the one I remember advertising that ink shouldn't cost so much 🙄
I worked tech at staples for a long time. I tried to push ecotanks as much as I could, but due to their HP partnership, I was forced to push HP printers as an extreme priority. It got to a point where they were sending us to HP sponsored events to train us to push more HP printers. Their tech department as a whole got to be such an ethical problem I ended up walking out.
Yeah, I figured this out many years ago. I live in Brazil and the cartridges were twice the price as in the States. I bought a refill kit, but it didn't work. I went online and the problem was air entrapped between the ink sponge and the nozzles. One of the solutions offered was to put the cartridge inside a long sock and swing it around your head so centrifugal force caused the ink to flow. It worked! I redecorated the living and dining rooms with black polka dots 😂😂😂!
I’ve left jobs for ethical reasons too but every job is ran by evil people so there’s no escape. I wish I was taught this early but it’s really something you learn with experience.
@@jacksonrelaxin3425On one hand, you want to protect your kids from the world and let them enjoy their innocence as long as possible, but on the other it only hurts them in the long run. I knew the world wasn't perfect, but holy shit I had no idea it was THIS bad..😢 I was hoping for 50/50, not 90/10 to the negative.
With the cartridges, even if you don't print often they seem to dry up. Watching this video has shown me why! I finally got my eco tank a year ago and I still haven't needed new ink yet. I love it. ✌️
I gave up on ink printers and went with a laser printer. And after 16 years I have opened toner cartridge number 4. It is a black only printer and I use it for printing about 300 to 350 pages of varying types per year and some envelopes too. The thing has not let me down yet. It is an HP 1102w if you are curious.
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Epson EcoTank owner over here, too. I'm also a teacher who always prints worksheets and presentations in full color for my students. It has been 7 years with my L395, and it's still printing without any problem at all. A BIG plus is that you don't need to refill the tanks with the ink that they call "official", I've got ink bottles that where Brother and Canon, used them on my printer, and it keeps on printing. You just made me appreciate my machine a lot more, thanks.
as a long term user of tank styles. Glad ya like em. Just one note for ya could save you a print head one day. Make sure the chimical base used in the ink's are compatible with what you have in there now. and ofcorse that the head can use the ink to. some heads get way hotter to spray the ink than others. And i once put in some epson ink in a cannon. both were large format printers just didnt pay atention. when the epson ink hit the cannon ink they gelled. all - the - way - up - the - tubes. Fortunitly it didnt hit the print head. fast large format print heads are hella expinsive.
You are wrong there is no way you could have had this for 7 years when they barely been out for the last four years as it was released in 2019.
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@@SHSPVR You are right, I forgot I survived my first teaching year with a Brother laser printer. Then I bought my Ecotank during 2017. This is a video about the L395 made 6 years ago czcams.com/video/ypz32_XPVlM/video.html Maybe the printers are sent to different countries in different timesets, and it arrived late to your country.
They tried to scam us but here in the UK we had shops selling knock offs for a full set of inks for less than a fiver saving us like 80% of the retail price. Usually it was for Epson printers. Canon/Lexmark somehow continued to have a system in place to screw their customers.
I've only bought printers over the last 20+ years in the UK where I could buy Non-OEM ink. I currently have a Brother MFC-J4610DW, and 3x full sets of 'XL' fill Non-Brother ink was less than £10. I have an Epson laser black-only I was given, empty, because 'The toner cartridges are £60!' and I easily found a Non-OEM toner cart for £14. Re-engineering the chips seems to be the key, so maybe the USA has more of a stranglehold.
I bought a printer for £30 and the cartridges are £35 lol. I bought anotger printer(it comes with cartridges) because it's £3 cheaper and it's a true story.
I have a Canon colour laser all-in-one that I bought in September. Since a few weeks, it already says I should replace the black toner, and that quality can no longer be guaranteed. I don't see this in the results though, black is still true black. I'll wait to replace it when black starts to appear as dark gray. I had an inkjet before, and I started to hate inkjets. If you print a lot with them, then of course cartridges will run empty. If you rarely print with them, then the ink dries up, and the print nozzles might clog up. That is why I chose laser this time, I know that with laser it doesn't really matter how much you print, because toner is a dry type of product, so it will not dry up.
Thanks for the heads up. Recently I've bought 3800mA Nimh batteries from Aliexpress at a good price. When I tried to charge them they only took 90mA. I thought they might be already charged, then discharged them and they gave even less. I weighted them and they just weighted half of a regular battery.
I've been aware of the printer ink scam for multitude of years I took one of those things apart when I was a teenager and then again in my twenties But seeing how we are in the minority of awareness there's not much we can do about this, but I'm glad somebody's finally protesting about it. So thank you for putting up Your video.
I mean.. czcams.com/video/AHX6tHdQGiQ/video.htmlsi=tDCXGzhTNFGQJPFg This guy exposed more than this video, and like 5 years ago. But nothing was done about it. I doubt this will result anything either.
Everyone knows they're a scam, wdym? It's always been a huge meme that you get more ink for your money buying bic pens than you do buying ink cartridges.
As someone who has worked on and sold a variety of printers. The ecotank will do fine so long as you print at least weekly, and leave it plugged in so it can run cleaning subroutines. Worked at the store selling them for like two years, never had a report of failure that didn't involve it being unused in a closet for months.
wonder what happened to my friends ecotank then? he would use it almost every week, but then it started printing grainy photos and after clearing all the lines and resetting software etc., it still did that and has been sitting unused for months now. maybe i can get him to try and clean it up again and check if anything has changed
@@Lizardfiz12 If the cleaning subroutine doesnt seem to work, check that where the ink jet cleans itself isn't jammed with paper. Ours had a small piece jammed and it never cleaned itself properly. Had to take it apart a bit to get the paper out.
@@Lizardfiz12 I have a similar problem, I think it's because I don't print regularly enough. Fortunately printing in black & white still looks good but colour printing not so much.
et-27-50 lasts 2 years plus as long as you put printer on a surge protector and also don't lose drivers. i did a nozzle clean and it works if the ink gets clogged. system clean; making sure theres ink and its not leaking. im glad mine still works
I have the Ecotank, and its been over 4 years or more. It is still running with the ink it came with. The ink in the tanks still intact even if im not using it for months. If you dont use it very often it clogs but the printer itself has a feature to clean itself. The best printer out there honestly.
Landfills filling up with printers for the last 20 years was solid evidence vs suspicion. Something designed to be more convenient to throw away and buy a new one.
Convenient wasn't even their goal. It's greed masquerade as convenient. Printers break all the time and replacing these cartridges ain't convenient to the customers. It's crazy how these companies can create so much waste and isn't responsible for recycling or clean after themselves
Suspected? We very well knew. Many even made a business from refilling used cartridges. Two decades ago I used to buy cheap no name ink in bottles that lasted years. I even had my student cousin coming and refilling her cartridges. Since then I had two other printers. Some printers are designed for refilling, some we refill directly through nozzles, drip by drip. And we all know from a decade ago that laser printers are more reliable and cheaper to use. So yeah this rant is legitimate, but comes two decades later. Only morons still buy ink printers. I am retired, no more printing needed and still have a laser printed. I even bought a spare cartridge. But when I need, once a year I still use the old one just out of spite even the role is damaged and smears a little the paper. So come on, grow up. Change the title from, is a scam to was a scam two decades ago, or in .. I am a moron. I still buy ink printers.
We've known about this for so long, why we still don't have consumer protections against this is a mystery to me. It's like a benchmark for seeing how many years behind law makers are when it comes to the tech industry.
It's capitalism, as long as people buy it, they'll keep selling it. The problem is that people are idiots, myself included, so we buy the cheapest printer we can find (often sold at a loss) then keep wasting money on expensive ink. I bought a cheap Deskjet that wouldn't let me print in B&W or grayscale when any of the color cartridges were empty. But even worse than that, I had some documents to scan, and... it wouldn't let me scan because one of the cartridges was empty. Great, ''cause I do need ink to scan, of course.
I am using an Epson ET_2750 for my business since what, 5 years ?, and am still only on my 2nd bottle of black and still on the first bottles of any color. And the printer still works absolutely flawless! I even bought a second hand one for my wife's business same story there.
And people called me crazy when I said they were scamming with the ink! I remember in the 90’s one cartridge would print a book darn near. Late 90’s early 2000’s hit and u can’t even print your syllabus without needing a new cartridge!
@@LoLaSnya no. Capitalism is someone having the ability to do that and then 20 competitors like epson come along and make better products you can buy instead. Grow up.
Well when the ink is more expensive than the printer, then yeah, it’s a obvious scam. It’s like when companies put less food in their product. Consumers are always getting scammed somewhere!😂
Its not a scam. Thats why these companies can sell their printers for peanuts. Instead, they make their money out of the printer cartridge. its a marketing tactic.
@customer7575 I've noticed that the cans of soup started getting smaller, but with the same or higher price....a little strange don't you think....pay more for less....
5:10 regarding longevity, I’ve had my absent ego tank for about five years and only recently had to order replacement ink (it claims to come with two years worth of ink) It has a built-in clean print head function and yes. It can get dirty. But if you run the cleaning process enough times it can and will fix that issue. It’s happened 2 times now where you get streaking lines and running the clean function 2 to 5 times has solved that problem.
2:12 I had that ecotank. I must say it printed photos like it was an actual photo and I was very pleased. Until half a year later the printer lost one of its colors. A deep clean resolved this, but the spilt ink container was full and needed costly replacement. This started to happen ever so often. The problem was I didn't print that much. Only a few sheets a week and often with weeks between where no print was made. You apparently need to print every day to keep the print nozzles from drying out.
The Epson is absolutely the answer. My wife is a teacher, we print a lot, daily. We have had this printer for at least 8 months and I am STILL using the original ink the printer came with. Absolutely amazing. I also had a Canon with the cartridges, but she was going thru a cartridge a week. Even buying knockoff ink on Amazon was still 30 bucks a pop. Not one problem with the Epson.
laser printers are even better, better printing and cheaper in the long run, no clog issues unlike inkjet, invest in one, hopefully one with wifi or networking capability, you will not look back.
I’ve had one of those for at least 5 years, and it seems the original black ink is getting low, maybe it lasts a year or two. Magenta is still over half full.
I've been using an epson printer L110 since 2010, it's a tank based printer as well. Working perfectly till date. Can trust epson blindly as long as you're using original ink bottles
I had a brother printer for many years and tried using generic ink in it and after a couple of refills, I would have to take the printer to the shop to get it fixed so I also have stopped using printers basically because of this
Mine was kinda broken on the printer head (?) because I didn't use it for quite some time and it got dusty. My uncle took it from me trying to repair it for his own use because he's a teacher and the I think the repair shop my uncle went tl can't fix it. Great printer though, now I have a Brother printer+scanner that also use an ink bottle instead of cartridges
I've been using epson l360, l1800 and m105 for pigment all with 3rd party ink that's way cheaper ypuke you can get almost 1200 ml of any color for about 5$ and with that amount of ink I am able to print almost 35k prints
I have an Epson ET-2720 that you refill the tank with. The only problem is that if you don't use it every day, you get clock heads and you have to run the cleaning several times.
You can put a paper towel under the head in the non parking position with some alcohole. Then move the head over that towel a few times. After that my L555 printed like brand new.
The way companies like HP make money is by giving you printers worth $300 for just $50, but obliging you to buy their ink. It is no scam, it is a strategie.
although to be fair the cartridges that come with most printers are starters with less than normal print capacity, plus given how many pages a laser printer can print its still not as bad as an inkjet (inkjet will cost about $100 for oem ink for B/M/Y/C and print around 750 pages - per HP specs on the 902xl cartriges, my laser printer is about $400 for B/M/Y/C toner, which will net you about 10x the pages 7600 for black oem canon 055h cartridges' and 6800 for the C/M/Y cartridge's) so price per page at minimum for inkjet is around 13cents a page on OEM XL cartridges, for price per page on the laser at its minimum colored yield is about 5cents per page, so while a laser has a higher upfront cost for the toner, its cheaper in the long run. Technically i have been running the same starter cartridges' for years and have a page count of around 1700, half being b/w and half being full color, and while 3 of my cartriges are end of life, they still print just fine. unlike many inkjets that refuse to print when out of a color.
the ink you get with the new printer is basically just a small sample cart. but I agree, unless it is for color or some weird format cart (which I wouldn't buy).
One more advantage of laser printers (and for my use case it’s a HUGE advantage) Laser printer can sit unused for days weeks months even years, and still work. Inkjets sit unused for a week? They start drying out. And then getting clogged. Which almost always means total replacement . My use case: documents, instructions, lists… usually two-three a month, maybe 20-50 pages MAX… B&W ok Photographs, or other prints that need/want COLOR… once, perhaps three a month… these get printed at WalMart, or on-line photo labs for higher-quality needs.
@@dragons_redOh, I didn't know they switched to "starters"... I assume those are worse (actually I wouldn't be surprised if they were better too, like to convince you that you made a good purchase), but back when I was in need of printer etc, and that was like a decade ago, I already knew that you can pretty much just buy a new one instead of new cartridges and still be in + (all the more since you can sell the old printer too) .
@@dragons_red lol we got around that in 2010.. just return or exchange the printer when you're done. Lost the receipt? Buy a new one and put the old one it its box. They dont check serials.
I gave up on ink jet printers years ago. I have a Brother HL2270DW laser printer for B&W everyday use and an HP M25DW for color. That one paid for itself after my first use when I printed 21 copies of a 25-page family history booklet with photos (many in color) to send as Christmas presents. I even bought a used spiral binding punch off of eBay and still came out money ahead instead of having it done at an office supply store.
I agree on the Epson Ecotanks. We have two of the lowest end et-2400 printers and use one for Sublimination ink and one for regular ink. They work a charm!
Yep that Epson eco tank is the printer for any small business owner. I have a business and I print something every single day. I've been printing everyday since like 2020 and I still haven't run out of the original ink that came with the printer lol. My black is just now getting a little low after all these years. it was really expensive up front. But it was worth every penny because I haven't had to do anything to it, change any ink or nothing. It just works every time. I've never been happier with a printer in my life.
It depends on the need. Laser printers have a place too if you need to print loads of pages as suddenly time becomes a factor too. If the workers need to wait minutes for all pages to print instead of seconds that accumulate over the course of a year.
Does that mean that the ink doesn't dry up as it happens with cartridges when you don't print for a while? Or have you been using it regularily to a point where it'd be impossible to tell if they would or not dry up? Asking about your impressions because you're the only other person than the video host, that happens to own one of those 😀 Have a great week mate!
its a trash printer though, its weird that most people don't know this but you can convert just about any printer on the market into a tank system. CIS kits have been common place for like 20 years. You can even buy the ink by the gallon from chinese wholesellers (literally the same crap epson uses) for pennies on the dollar. One thing we used to do for all our printers back in the late 2000's was run around to all the goodwills grabbing up highend photo printers slapping a 20 dollar chinese kit on them and just run them non-stop. People would buy them find out how much they cost to operate and then just chuck them to donation sites / yardsales / flea markets etc so you could get them for next to nothing.
It would have been good to weigh the cartridge before opening it, then rinse out the ink sponges completely with isoalcohol then put them back in once they were dry and re-weigh it. Then you could see exactly how much ink by weight was really in there.
What really annoys me is that cannon sells different size cartridges for your printer, the thing is the cartridges are all the exact same dimensions, but they don’t fill the ‘standard’ size with much ink.
I have an EPSON Inkjet L360, it's great. It takes months before I need to refill the ink, I never had any issues with the heads clogging up and I have the printer for at least 5 years now. I can even connect with it flawlessly on Linux (I use Arch btw)
One thing to keep in mind is that you should print at least one page per week (with all colors) if you have an ecotank. Otherwise the ink will get dry and clog the header, which will require you to pay maintenance. So, if your print very little, create a weekly task in your computer for it to print a page with a bit of every color.
I was able to clean the heads successfully myself. There are videos out there with instructions and a cheap kit to buy. I spent maybe 15 bucks, can't recall exactly, but it was not much, and it took me maybe 30 minutes max to do it.
ecotanks are great! and it actually isn't the head clogging up, they have wipers built in to keep the printer head clean, it's simply because the ink system isn't airtight, so over time pressure will decrease making the ink draw back into the tank. if this happens just run a couple of the thorough head cleaning procedures from the pc interface, and it'll get back up to pressure. by far the best style printers we get in for repair haha :P
Having one off the first ecotank (which were worst a this) I can say this allaways a fixable issue. When it happens (more than a week off no use usually). I just launch the "cleaning heads" program then print a photo of a rainbow (with black parts) one, two, maybe tree times and then it is fixed. You might say that is wastefull ! I say as a 7 year old user i bought a ink set twice maybe tree times for 13 bucks each.... yeah just buy the printer it is awsome it's a no brainer.
As a former ink refiller in a photo center at Costco, I can confirm that cartridges are a scam. They don't have that department anymore, but they used to have an official ink refilling machine you could also find at Fry's Electronics that would literally drill 3 holes in the cartridge, and use needles with the correct tone of ink to refill the sponges. After that, we would put stickers on the holes and reset or replace the digital chip so the printer could see it as a new cartridge. It was always a 50/50 chance of working though because of how cheap that design of printer is in general and the different uses each person has with their printer. About 5 years ago, I first saw Epson's Eco Tanks come on the shelf. the 2800,3800, and 4800. I thought that is the solution! I've talked to many people who still have the original black ones and now the newer white ones that they are the way to go for sure.
I bought the HP smart tank 450 wireless in August 2022. I threw it yesterday October 2023 (the reason I'm looking at printer reviews today). My Smart tank didn't get used often so it was stored between printing. WARNING! don't tip it at all. Mine tiped over to a 45 degree angle in a cupboard (left side down). Black ink flowed out over everything. Setting it straight didn't stop the flow. It made it worse and flowing ink poured out onto everything below.
I have 3 Epson eco tank printers. One, the ET-4750, is about 5 years old. According to its counter it has printed over 10,500 pages. Have only bought a set of ink bottles for it ONCE. Works perfectly and is quiet. Epson has been so successful with these eco tank printers, that HP has been forced to now sell one. Because of them forcing the consumer to buy their ink guzzling printers for so many years now, I will NEVER buy another HP printer!
For black and white text, laser printers are by far the less expensive option in the end, when you factor in the price of ink and that it tends to dry out over time. I haven't owned an inkjet printer in over 20 years.
plus most people think ‘i’m saving ink’ by only printing black and white but many printer companies actually put cyan in with the black just because. so you have to buy more ink regardless.
Same, weve just invested in Kyocera laser printers for blk&wht prints, coz its powder cartidges are cheaper.. Plus there are third party providers too, which is way more cheaper.. Then reservoir type printers for the colored ones..
Laser is great but the main issue is it’s still a huge up front cost for cartridges, and the printers with any extra features (i.e. a scanner or a document feeder) are quite big and heavy. One black toner cartridge for the stock standard Brother laser printer costs like $80 (AUD) for 1200-ish pages, whereas a full set of bottles for an ecotank for anywhere between 5000 and 7500 pages is about the same price.
I have Brother HL-L2365DW since 4 months ago and it's printing about 40k till now. The catridge are still strong. I just have to refill the toner for about every 3k pages.
@@sammcclain3778 that's not how black&white laser printers work, but okay. With laser printers, black and white LITERALLY only prints black and white since there's only black toner in it (and no color toner)
I remember when ink cartridges were refillable, then they made them non-refillable but we(some of us) would still do it and they would work just fine but then they put those chips inside and it complicated thing but we found a way around to continue refilling them(well at least I did). It's good to see that Epson is giving a shit about the consumer. I just hope the printer actually lasts at least 3 years or five would be preferable.
The eco-tank printers are very reliable. I bought one for my family after we had an expensive HP laser printer that was gifted to us die. I purchased the Epson et-3700 back in 2018 and it still prints like new to this day. And crazy enough the printer is still running on the ink refill containers that it came with back in 2018! I have never purchased ink in 5 years of moderate use of the printer.
My Epson Ink Tank printer is about 3 years old now and I have printed close to 8,000 pages. One black plus 3 color cartridges together give around 1,500 to 2,000 pages (depending on page content). Very satisfied. Canon cartridge printer was sh*t.
I have a L555. Was one of the first ecotank ever. 5 years later, it prints. If it drys up: You can put a paper towel under the head in the non parking position with some alcohole. Then move the head over that towel a few times. After that my L555 printed like brand new.
Thanks for the video. I have been eyeing off the tank printer for the last month, searching online for pro's and cons. I would be very interested to see how it's going 6 months or so later. Did the print heads jam up/clog like you thought may happen, or any other problems arise ? Thanks. 👍
I've worked at Best Buy and bought one of these for my mom who works from home but has to do a lot of paperwork. We've had it for over a year and we've only had to buy bottles of ink once and she does a decent amount of printing. Epson started to give a shit and it shows.
I always think a laser printer is going to be the better option. Sure it’s expensive up front but in the long term you’re saving a lot of money from buying a ton of ink cartridges. Also even if you don’t print that much, ink dries up over time so if you have a full ink cartridge and don’t use it for months you’ve lost money cause that ink has at least partially dried up.
You can now buy a laser printer for cheap. The toner, on the other hand, is far from cheap. It used to be 5000 sheets per cartridge, now it’s 3500 if you are lucky. A chip counts prints. Also, the chip limits you to only their brand while an off brand can sell you two cartridges for the price of one brand cartridge.
Not only that but on older printers you have a head that sprays the ink and if it dries in the head ,you basically have to replace it or buy a new printer. So laser printers are the better option in my opinion
I like toner printers. Companies often use years-old printers of this type. I had an inkjet printer at home, it is quite good if you print a lot, but this was not the case for us, so I refilled the ink almost every time I wanted to print, because it dries out over time, I still had to clean the print head several times. Once the printer wrote that they would not let me continue until some service was performed. So I got around it. Well, finally the print head stopped working. In fact, inkjet companies often sell HW cheaply and are fueled by ink cartridges.
Don’t forget that the little chips on some cartridges are programmed to give an “out of ink” message after some amount of time, regardless of if you actually used it or not. Yeah, they make their own expiration dates in some cases. And they will brick themselves.
Bro i work with these companies, even the biggest ones just replace the label once it hits the expiry date and its on stock. The ink is more then fine though it lasts long. Its a pure scam.
Even in enterprise settings, the printer will complain "order maintenence kit" every set number of pages, it doesn't actually know if it's broken or not, it just knows that it's printed 10k pages and so tells you to buy a maintenence kit.
Sounds like what some elites are trying to do to a digital currency. If you don't spend the money, it expires. Or, the money won't work to buy certain things that they don't want you to buy.
My favorite thing about printers and ink is when during the pandemic there was a chip shortage and the ink wouldn't work without a chip and they literally shipped ink without a chip. Hilarity ensues.
It's not a scam. It's much worse. It's a tactic to force people to live digital then analog. If we have all on paper why use Word, Dropbox or digital storage options as much. It's forced customer selection. 😑
My family got a new HP printer last year. I was surprised when it ran out of ink 2 weeks later, so I went to a nerby tech store. The man who is working there explained the connection thingies which require you to buy new cartridges. Thankfully though he has a lot of experience so he is able to refill it every time the ink runs out so that the printer doesn't notice.
I bought a Brother monochrome laser printer for $99 at over 10 years ago. The initial toner, at least for me, lasted a couple years, and I bought generic toner cartridges super cheap that the printer accepts (no DRM). I've never had any issues with the printer other than having to restart it because it doesn't show up on the network (USB was never an issue). Individual results may vary; I mostly used it for college, and then shipping labels over the years, so it's possible excessive use cases may experience more issues. Though, i have Heard mostly good things about these printers on social media.
Been a loyal Epson fan for nearly three decades. Had to send my previous all-in-one printer to the junkyard after Epson ditched cartridges, but my current tank-based unit is the most dependable model I've owned.
Epson still uses chips for ink cartridges that expire after a certain amount of time. I have one and I have printed maybe 1-200 pages over 2 years and it said I was out of ink. I slapped it on paper and plenty of ink came out
i have the tank epson to print my labels for my business, this is the one you NEED, and its not that expensive either, ull def save alot in the long run on refills of any ink you desire.
it is outrageous, someone needs to sue the printer companies
Technically, they're not doing anything wrong.
It's the same reason companies like Apple can get away with charging $200 for a $50 part.
Edit: I really need to stop commenting on these videos since people can't be bothered READING PAST THE FIRST COMMENT.
As I and plenty others have said, printer companies likely are filling cartridges with the advertised amount of ink, but the foam retains a majority of it and if it's taken out and exposed to air, it retains even more because the ink starts drying, as it's designed to.
They are doing something wrong, they're misleading consumers about how much ink is inside the cartridge. Tesla tried this with misleading battery range, and they certainly fell foul of the law in doing so. @@leblueawoo
Lol
Yes, they need to be sued. Recently Taco Bell got sued for not supplying what they advertise. The only issue is that Canon will argue that they specify 11ml of ink per cartridge, which is soaked up by those sponges. 🤷🏽♂️
This must be the scenario that most fits this cliche of:
“THIS THING IS BAD! SOMEONE NEEDS TO DO SOMETHING”
…
*proceeds to do nothing, status quo continues and nothing changes*
The breaking point for me was going in to buy a replacement cartridge and seeing that a brand new printer was cheaper than a cartridge.
Same thing happened to me with my Canon Pixma printer/scanner. Total ripoff.
Razor and blades business model. ""Give 'em the razor; sell 'em the blades"
Printer manufacturers typically sell the printer for cheap with ink cartridges that are almost empty, just to force you into buying their super marked up "full" cartridges.
If you almost never print anything, the best option might just be to buy a new printer every time you need more ink.
I needed new ink for my printer. Went online and saw a new printer at better specs for less than the price of the ink. I went in needing new ink, came out with a new printer and had enough money left to pay my rent for the next 6 months.
@@useraccount2507 I've got a HP printer, and you can get a good deal from an off-brand manufacturer. Basically twice the ink for half of the price, but HP recently updated the firmware to block all off-brand ink cartridges "because of security and quality" and as a EU citizen, I can't phantom how the F it can be legal to do that. Printer manufacturers reminds me way too much of the Phoebus Cartel
I remember someone who helped my family with computer stuff, since I was a kid, he will connect ink reservoirs to the cartridge and it would be amazing, and that was yeaaaars before companies like epson finally join the "printing black market".
Rest in peace Gustavo, you insane smart ass, love ya!
Damn that's a genius idea back then, hated how Printer companies are doing this stuff to us consumers
Also HOLA SIR PELO LOVE YOUR ANIMATIONS!!!!
thank you for the story mr hair. i recently got a laser printer instead of an ink printer and i stop spending so much on ink. the only downside is that laser printers are more expensive and the cheaper ones that i bought only print in black and white
SRPELO??
i used to watch u lol
hi
Decided to sell off my canon printer and that was one of the best decisions I have ever made. I went to purchase an Epson EcoTank and it's way better! At least we don't get ripped off like a sucker! Thank you Epson for saving us!
Thank almighty for the epson l220
Mine stoped printing in color 😢
Well, before this they made a ton of money from their scamming ink also, remember? 😂 It's over $100 for each time refilling, they ain't any better than these rip-off companies, stop lying! 😂
@@COMPUTER.SCIENCE.Ecotank has been in the market for years. They were likely the only widely accessible brand using refillable ink. Also, it costs no where a $100 to refill the tank. Outside of laser printers, ecotanks are a great bargain in terms of cost of printing per page.
It's the same fucking scam. If you print more than 20 pages a month go for a laser printer. This whole video is a commercial for epson.
I worked with HP, and got to see the sheer depths of depravity when it comes to screwing the customer.
1. They have one of the harshest cartridge ID systems, to the point that each cartridge knows the batch it was made from. The reason for this is so the printer can reject single-cartridge replacements, forcing the customer to replace them all.
2. They have multiple layers of detection to ensure the cartridge was never unsealed. The printers immediately break the seal on cartridges as a part of entering them, and it also knows if part of it has been peeled open because a customer attempted to open a secondary entry point. They do this to screw people that misaligned the cartridge or attempted to refill it.
3. They have detectors that err on the side of caution when determining ink levels. They use this to shut down the printer until new cartridges are added, which is to intentionally waste ink and force the customer to replace them all.
4. They have been "enhancing" your black ink with cyan, and there is no option to stop it. They do this to intentionally waste one of the smaller cartridges to force the customer to replace them all.
5. They intentionally slash quality assurance for cartridges. This means the IDs and detectors can randomly fail, which they've programmed to always deny access. This is because some people don't return faulty cartridges, which means they get a double sale.
6. This system creates a lot of ink-filled trash. Not only is the plastic going to last a few centuries, but the ink is highly toxic and has been proven to poison groundwater if allowed to seep. They know this is happening, and are simply trying to keep quiet to not draw attention to it.
There's a lot of other ways they're hurting their customers, but I'll keep it to the ink side of things. If an Epson actually lets you refill the cartridges, I recommend shouting it from the mountaintops, because I was led to believe the printer industry had a gentleman's agreement amongst each other to keep ink artificially scarce by any means necessary.
I helped start the wa Vancouver site in 1991 the original Deskjet 😅
That last bit sounds like a direct breach of TFEU Article 101. (EU Cartel laws) "Article 101 prohibits anti-competitive agreements between two or more independent market operators." Thats very big lawsuit waiting for happen, consider giving them anonymous tip to it.
I have a cheap HP printer that came with the free HP Instant Ink plan.
I get 15 pages per month free, and pay $0.10 a page after that, and if the ink runs low, they send me a new cartridge for free. It's almost free since I rarely go over 15 pages per month.
@@Kuutti_original yes but "agreements" like this are never on paper and are shrouded in layers of plausible deniability
@@LargeInCharge77 From what ive understood they do not need it on paper to find companies quilty. Just a formal agreement is enough, but your last point might be why they havent got those just a few billion fines yet
As somebody who has worked in a Walmart photo department and told people often that cartridges were scammy, this level of scam even surprised me.
Literally same
I always wondered how i could buy new ink and it finishes almost immediately after 3 prints!! 😡😡😡
@@LisaF777 It is easier to buy a new printer. Yes, I have seen this as an associate.
@@Froggy11235Ricoh/Savin/Lancer and HP service tech here: HP has some of the harshest OEM printer restrictions but you can turn it off and buy off brand cartridges. All you need to do is downgrade the firmware and disable the consumer protection option. On our public school accounts we do this to maximize profit.
Maybe this can help you to refill cheaper...I have a laser printer, and to which I installed a hacked driver that I found on the internet.
What it does is that it allows working with original but refilled cartridges. When I need ink I just go to the local company where they refill cartridges at a fraction of the price.
The saddest part is that if you print every couple of months and only a few pages you aren't saving anything because the cartridges dry up when they are in the machine. Not only that but they contaminate the ink head with dried on ink as it evaporates. Then you get to buy a new printer as it costs more to clean or replace the head than a new machine. Where is the government when this kind of theft is institutionalized? They could actually do something for the consumer...... yeah we all know how that goes.
If you don't print every week, you should go for a laser printer. You can clean printing head or simply print a page every week, but with long downtime laser printers would obviously be better
I am always amazed that no-one has taken the printer manufacturers to court over such a blatant rip off. I changed to a mono laser much better suited to childrens homework printing.
Because you are aware of what you are buying. Even still, modern printers have only been around for 30-50 years, so the market is relatively new for it to actually see competition
I think it is hard to make a judge, that knows about laws but little about printers, understand the scale and gravity of this scam.
And no, not everyone "knows what they are buying". If people knew, nobody would buy 50€ printers.
@@mrcoder7327 they're much older than fking smartphones, yet smartphones have become one of the best/most efficient things one could have. Printers? They've been sitting on the same a** for that many years.. I hate the printers industry so much that I refuse to buy a fking printer, only keep electronic versions of things, and I'd rather go to printing shop if I need to, it's cheaper and less work, hence less resentful! 😂
After nearly $200 dollars of ink, over a year, I could only printed 15 pages. It's infuriating that it would dry up in less than 2 weeks. Yes, this sbould be giant lawsuit to stop these criminals.
Lies again? New Foodcourt
Why do you need a printer if u print so otten it goes dry? Go to a shop and don't waste
Buy a laser printer as their ink doesn't dry up.
That's capitalism for you.
@@zakariasnagygoing to the library every time you need to print of a sheet of paper would be so fucking obnoxious unless you lived right next to one.
You’re literally asking a person to turn a 30 second task into a 2 hour long ordeal to drive into town and back for a single sheet of paper. How is that not more wasteful?
Also to mention, if you’re not using the printer often enough, the cartridge will dry out. So you still have to continuously buy new ones if you’re printing a little or a lot
I was going to comment the same. Hence why they use sponges. F-ing rip off.
My biggest problems with inkjets was that the heads would clog up. At some point you could no longer get them unclog and quality would jump off a cliff. then it's new printer time because they're basically disposable. Ended up going to a laser because of it.
That's how they fool.
That's why I don't want to commit with the inc tank design. Will the tank have dried/started drying that one time a year I use a printer?
Just get a Laserprinter.
I just recently bought the Epsom printer and was thrilled with how easy it was to fill up the ink. Just turn it upside down above the color you need. You can see the actual amount of ink in the front.
In India, there are these refill kits that most people use. You basically fill ink into a syringe and moist the depleted foam in the cartridge by putting the needle through a hole in the cartridge.
Using the kit, you can refill the cartridges in about 5-10 minutes. Here, the kits cost about 4-5 usd(converted) and you get about 100+100 ml of ink... Plus the tools.
About the reliability: I have printed over 2000 sheets using this method and my printer(that I bought for ~$40) still works fine. I calculated the cost per print and it came out to Rs. 0.8 for b/w print and Rs.3 for colour prints. That's about 0.25 cents and 3 cents respectively. Of course it will be higher in the US.
There are also conversion kits that can be used to convert inkjet printers to ink tank printer. I haven't tried it but it's pretty popular too.
in usa the cartridges a coded to not accept external ink.
@@oksowhatIt's injected directly (physically) into the cartridge. Which means you need to buy the "legitimate" cartridge once and you keep filling it with third party ink that way.
Only works if the fkin drm on the cartridge doesn't tell the printer its too old
@@nathanlamaire i know thats how i used to use them, though in my country it works but i dont think it works like this in US, seen some vids of louie rossman. also a balack cartridge here costs less thn 8 dollors, pretty much does not matters for us
This used to be a thing in the US too, but the printer companies figured out a way to stop us from doing it.
The chip on the cartridge also counts the number of pages printed and tells the printer not to print any more when it estimates you're out of ink. This is why sometimes your printer says you're out but you're still getting sharp, clean printing and other times, you get faded printing before it tells you you're out. More often than not, your printer will lock out and tell you to replace the cartridge before it's even empty.
True. And H&P cartridges even expire. Who knew?
Say there was a sale, and you buy a bunch of cartridges and horde it for later. If you install the cartridge after the expiration date, it won't work.
Just don't by cartridges, just go to a shop that refills them and changing the info on the chip.
@@evil7011never heard of this
@@MochaZillalol for real
@gdotmoney96 lol for real never heard of a shop that refills cartridges and resets but wld be haopy
I used to work at Staples and customers would REGULARLY ask why their cartridges get used up so quickly. We almost always had to default to "Well, it could have dried up if it was too hot or you wren't using your printer enough." since we weren't allowed to directly tell them that there's really not a lot of ink.
I wonder if I can open it up and refill it myself with the ink
@@OverRule1 itll depend on your cartridge and printer, looks like theres plenty of people who do just that and decided to post it to YT. Just watched someone who had a system set up for it. Has 2 sets of ink cartridges for his printer, when set A runs out he will fill and replace them with set B, just to make the printer think its a new cartridge.
you work at staples and dont work for canon. are you being held hostage? why are you supporting this shitty printer company. tell the customers the truth they deserve
I've been using the same ink cartridge (canon) for two years. And one previously before that for 5 years. I drilled a hole on the top and refill it with ink. Lasts multiple years. Let it rest in a dish of water or alcohol before refilling it just to keep the heads moist.
@@OverRule1 yeah I bought an Epson eco tank just for this reason. It doesn’t use cartridges it has is own built in tanks that I can just fill up with original ink or cheaper knockoff ink
I used to work at a school and we'd need to print out exam questions. We really had syringes popped into those prime heads to fill them with ink. The ink were locally made ones you could get in shops. Watching this just made me realize we escaped that rip off.
I hate the “weed” instead of the “we would” and the fact you work in a school.
@@masterjedidudahguttier3109 Of course, you knew it was a typo but you couldn't resist scoring a cheap point. You might need to resist the brain diarrhea though. Skrep.
Something needs to be done about this. Thank you for raising awareness.
I sell printers in a retail electronics store. I always thought printer cartridges were a scam and guided my customers to laser printers. Glad that my suspicions were confirmed.
That was a hard sell for a lot of people before they had full color laser printing.
Hi, I am a printer technician. You are doing a good job asking customers to buy the laser printer.
Oh, man, you think ink cartridges are a scam? I bought a Canon color laser printer, thinking it would be more economical in the long run. A full set of OEM cartridges (standard capacity) is $250 USD. A high capacity black toner cartridge is $144 alone. The off brand cartridges mostly work, but every time the printer restarts, it won't do anything until you go over to it and dismiss a warning about non-Canon cartridges. I need to put that thing on a UPS so it doesn't power cycle every time there is a power event. If anyone knows how to run hacked firmware, I would pay to have it. I wish I could run the thing with a Raspberry Pi. Next time, I'm going to do more research before buying a printer. The print quality is fantastic, but I despise the printer because Canon makes it so expensive and annoying to operate.
@@Dwigt_Rortugal , I use a Canon MF220 series 3-in-1 printer/scanner and uses an ink toner, yes, its monochrome, and yes, the ink toner is a bit expensive... but its been around 2 years now and i still haven't replaced the toner that came with the printer. but yeah, i only used the printer with my kid's school work. it is way better than those ink cartridges that dries up over time, and you have to purchase a new set again even if you barely used the printer.
Hi, I know nothing about printers however Lazers......duh. always go LAZER "wuuuub wuuuuub"
Nothing new here, the scam of these printer inks has been around for 30 odd years.
about time it stopped
well the bottled ink printer was new to me, and i bet to a lot of others as well
thirty, more like over a hundred years. Its the razor and blades model. Printer wise, the market didn't originally start out that way, at least not until Inkjets started rolling in. The old dot matrix systems were designed to be user refillable and serviceable.
@@Delaxin yes, I never saw one like that, that is how it should have been from the start
@@Usg1 They were talking about the business model. Work on your critical reading skills.
I had HPs for years. I went through ink so fast. I thought something must be wrong. Than I purchased the EPSON eco tank. I fell in love. I have one for regular printing and sublimation.
glad you discovered ink tank printers, and I hope they've been serving you well! I've owned a lower-end Epson EcoTank printer for over two years now, printing photos, documents, CD covers, stickers, etc., and it's been serving me very well. I only used 50% of the black ink and 20% of the colour inks so far. I seriously can't imagine a reason to ever buy an ink cartridge printer again. I never even had issues with ink drying up, even when I didn't use the printer for several weeks.
These companies need to be held accountable. Why are so many companies continually ripping off their customers and trying to bleed them dry?
Epson ftw
….capitalism
Ricoh/Savin/Lander and HP service tech here. They’re not really “ripping you off”. The actual price of the printer is almost double what you pay for it. In a lot of these printers the fuser alone is the price of the entire printer. You’re basically on a pay by the month plan with a 100 starter fee. These companies don’t make money (unless it’s an MFP line) until you begin purchasing supply items.
The people who run these companies need to be held accountable, but of course the people who run these companies are filthy rich members of the ruling class. They are above the law.
@@randodejambo2921 Shut the hell up. It's a complete and total ripoff, printers do not cost that much to make, and no one is going to believe some full-of-shit service rep that this isn't a very intentional scam. Keep squeezing that turnip, though.
OMG! We should do a nationwide class action suit against printer companies, because that is totally unacceptable.
It's shady, but not illegal. Stop buying the cheap canon and HP printers and go for the Epsons that offer the ink refill option.
It should be illegal
@@RoeRogers Hi ! canon do "megatank" and hp "smart tank" printers too, not only epson
Why would you buy an ink printer. Makes no sense. Hasn't made sense for 15 years.
@@RoeRogershow is it not illegal to say you’re selling 11ish milliliters, but you sell 1? That’s fraudulent advertising
I got the Epson on the advice of my brother in the industry- finally did right!!!! Had it almost a year & do a lot of color printing - photo quality 🤗
I have been using an HP printer for the last 2 years, in the beginning I always bought original cartridges from HP, but recently I discovered that the cartridges from my printer can be refilled with third party ink, and it works well. Usually I buy cartridges for 15 dollars and they usually run out in two or three months because I rarely use them, now I only need to spend 3 dollars for refill ink and so far the ink hasn't run out, maybe it's been about 6 months since i buy the ink.
It’s crazy how it’s basically cheaper to buy a new printer than it is to buy Ink 😂
Less than a dollar to produce a boxed cartridge.
@@Military872profit dayum
That's how they get you. It's all a fucking scam.
@@Military872 less than a dollar? No. It's the fraction of a penny. You don't understand mass manufacturing costs. An entry level $100 printer with ink would cost somewhere around a few dollars for these companies to produce in materials and shipping. Those kinds of consumer printers should cost like $20, but they rip the public off to create massive value for their shareholders.
That's the point they sell the printer at a loss but the markup on the ink is insane easily 100x
I had a professor who would just buy a $20 printer when she would run out of ink. I think she would literally just throw it out. She said it was cheaper than buying new ink
Then you think of how many other consumers do the same thing, and calculate how much GARBAGE we drop into Earth so companies can make profit$. This tactic should be outlawed (the same goes to Apple with their un-fixable profit making strategy).
All that e waste
the cartridges that come with those printers don't have as much ink either...
Guess not a lot of good learning was had in that class.
@@toastedt140 Blame the manufacturer lol, they do it intentionally
I've been wondering about my job's HP All-in-One inkjet. It likes to make us replace multiple cartridges sometimes, but never simultaneously. It goes through the priming cycle, using ink, to only make us change another color and start the cycle again until there is enough ink to continue printing ...something that was black and white to begin with!
I knew ink was overpriced, but I didn't know it was this bad of a scam
I realised that inkjet printers are often more expensive to operate than FDM 3D printers lmao
spore pfp!
there is a video that showed that ink costs about 40 cents to make to sell at 1000x profit
Not a scam
Of cour$e it will be higher in the U$.
I was shocked when I moved to Thailand and walked into a computer shop and found that you can buy gallons of ink for your printer for a couple dollars and you could buy conversion kits that would run tubes into your printer from huge containers that you pour the ink from the gallon into. It made me furious that I was paying $50 for a tiny HP cartridge back in America.
Commercial multi cartridge printers that do high speed envelope printing have tubing to each cartridge from an IV bag of ink, allowing them to run continuously. O have the same printer... here is the TRUTH ( I do not get affiliate money ).
The printer replaced a failed HP small business printer that HP offers no repair on..... the HP was AWESOME, with a good build quality.
The Epson has been running at my business, kicking out about 100 sheets a day of B&W and Color... but no photos.... after 8 months, the INITIAL filling of Black is right now at half level, and the colo are at 5/8 on all 2 colors......
The downside, the machine is very cheaply built.... the sheet feeder fails, forget about multipages feeding correct. But the scanner is good, and it is just ok, but nothing like the HP PAGEWIDE, which has been discontinued.... which had FAST output of even the first page.... faster than a laser.
I remember customers back in 1994(!) complaining about printer ink prices and how much money they were making off of it, but truth is if the ink had been cheap, the printers would have been dead expensive. Complain all you want but the profit margins aren't as high as you might think. Of course still high, but not crazy high. And there have always been alternatives, like refilling with cheaper ink, despite manufacturers trying to prevent that.
That's because Thailand doesn't have the same kind of intellectual property laws, you'll find this in a bunch of other countries. There will be copy products of conversion kits we don't get in the US because they are sued out of existence.
@@paulmichaelfreedman8334 customers would rather pay a little more for the printer, than get ripped off for life on ink cartridges. Gilette razor has the same business model as printers
It is not the same ink though.
I'm a computer repair technician that goes onsite to houses and fixes issues with their tech, printers for the longest time were a nightmare until I learned ALL OF THE STUFF YOU SAID IS SO TRUE.
About the Epson Eco Tank, as long as you are constantly printing and pretty much never give it a week or 2 break it will function flawlessly, but the second you stop printing for a week it dries on the print heads and they are a nightmare to clean, I just last week had a customer who had two of the same model you showed in the video. One she kept printing from and one she stopped printing to and it dried up, took me an hour and a special kit with an eye dropper that had a similar nozzle to the printhead and I was able to get ONE of the four print heads working again.
Laser printers are expensive up front but will save you the most money I have found and they don't care if it's been 4 months or 4 years toner will just work.
Absolutely my experience with ecotank! I left it for a month...managed to clean it...second time I left it and this time I cannot get it clean...well perhaps if I give it an extra hour or two of work but certainly isn't as simple as clearing the tubes as last time.
That's the exact reason i switched to laserprinting 20 years ago. In the long run you get a way cheaper print. And it doesn't matter if the printer stands there for 2 months or 6 months, it simply works. That is until the laser or in my case the led (brother 3040 cn) decides to to throw the towel after 15 years of service. 😓
I agree that the cost of inks for inkjet printers were exorbitant. I bought a Brother black and white laser printer (DCP-L2540DW) 6 years ago for this very reason. I can also confirm that even unused for weeks on end it has not clogged yet and still on its original toner. This has been a most dependable PC accessory for my home use, copying documents, printing and scanning. I haven't checked yet, but if the cost of color laser printers has gone down today, I may invest on it as well.
In laser there isn’t anything to clog though 👀 you can run out of toner or have other problems, but there is no ink
For anyone wondering, the reason they use sponges is so you can't make a legal case because you can't get an accurate measurement on the ink
You could soak it up with iso alcohol and then let the alcohol evaporate in a dish. Ink doesn't evaporate AFAIK, so I think this would be a valid method to get all the ink out of the cartridge and measure it.
couldnt you just weigh it full then weigh it empty(or when it stopped printing) then just find the volume from the desnity of the ink?
No, the reason they use foam is to more easily deliver the ink to where it needs to go. Sucking up liquid ink from a reservoir into presumably a tube of some sort, just to soak it into a pad anyway, is stupid and seems 10000x harder than the solution they came up with.
Ink cartridges are definitely a scam, but because there’s not enough ink in them and they’re extremely overpriced, not because they’re purposely engineered to scam you. 99% of the time, there’s a purpose for things beyond the first most surface level observation you make.
@@MrKoyama2004there is 3 types of ink
- water based
- solvant based
- oil based
All dries up. So using alcohol wouln't work.
But, with a few cartridges and some experimentation you can figure it out:
- Weight a full caridge
- print until empty
- weight it again
- take one or more cartridge
- squizz out the ink
- measure the volume
- weight it
The first part is to figure out the usable quantity. There is always a portion that can not be used (in part because they garantee that the first and last page is 100% quality. Low ink level may cause the head to suck some air and misprint.)
Second step is to measure the density of the ink.
Once you have that, you can do some simple math to find the used volume.
They deserve to be put in a place worse than jail
What Epson did was brilliant. They struggled to beat HP and Canon in their own game, so they started a new game! In a rare corporate move, they understood what we consumers need, and agreed to earn less per customer, in order to gain a ridiculous number of loyal customers. I switched to Eco-Tank this year and I'm not going back.
Retweet
Buy Epson!
Same dude!
yes!! havent refilled in TWO YEARS!!
Nice marketing and advertisement dude literally has referral links in his description
I have that same printer, its amazingly efficient for the ink cost. The 2 problems are the print heads do clog up over time and so you do waste some ink cleaning them. Also apparently the cleaning process has a tank that stores the used ink (its pretty large but eventually does fill up). I think theres videos on how to replace it when full but just something to watch out for in the future
I bought a refurbished printer online that promised 1 year of free ink, only for the setup cartridges to arrive damaged because of the packaging. I bought cartridges to use it in the meantime to wait for replacement setup ones, but since I had already started the printer I was no longer eligible for the year of free ink.
Deciding to buy a laser-jet printer was one of the smartest thing's we've ever done. We bought an HP one at least 6 or seven years ago and had to replace the toner ONCE a few months ago. ONCE. We don't print tons, but we use it quite regularly, so it was totally worth it!
This. Yes. Same experience. Buy a laser jet and don't look back.
I find this is best for black and white prints and printing faster as well. Color prints are better on the one shown in the video with refillable ink tanks rather than cartridges.
HP has too much spyware that slows your system down these days. Brother is a higher price, but a way better product.
@@IMCODERED I personally haven't had any issues, to be honest.
@@idogonen3075 Your lucky and I hope you continue to have zero problems.
HP deserves a mention of honor here for being the scammiest of them all. After the first Deskjet printer I got, I decided that it deserved no love at all. After using an Epson printer at my colllege office and seing that those bottles worked way better, I bought one for my house as well. My suffering has lightened because although some argue that there is a difference in quality, for printing some reports, you barely notice that.
Why would you buy inkjet printers in the first place?
Damn wish I knew this before getting an HP printer. It works half the time.
We had an HP Color Printer 🖨
It had an expensive ravenous appetite, and was the ONLY brand that NEVER had a sale on ink.
Replaced it with an Epson Printer 🖨, on sale, for a price similar to 2 changes of HP ink. It has been BETTER than the HP. And Epson ink price is reasonable, and occasionally on sale.
We were probably NOT the only Former HP users. Since we quit them, HP Printers and Ink seem to have a lot of sales!
😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣🤣 (🤬HP)
@@slipjones2 I am talking about years ago to today 10 years to today friend. At the time the inkjet printer was the latest tech (according to HP).
Deskjet**
It is no wonder HP got into the medical field that is full of corruption and scams:
_"... years before the coronavirus pandemic began, work coming out of the Future Unit drove HP’s investment into adapting inkjet printer technology for medical applications such as drug development, vaccine research, and rapid diagnostic testing."_
Fell for that years ago. Never refilled the ink since the version had to be online mail ordered which at the time I got it was harder to get done. Got so frustrated with it I stopped using it.
I have had the epson and the original ink lasted well over a year. I have replaced the black 2 times colors only once! As for clogs in over 2 years now It has skipped/lines/etc only twice and clean option has worked both times no problem. I would buy another in a heart beat!
It's hard to wrap my head around how much plastic waste is created for fraction of ink.
I was thinking about that too its ridiculous
On the other hand, people get demotivated to print often and instead share their files online or bring USB sticks. No ink, no paper and no plastic will be wasted.
I find it surprising how the EU hasn't gotten around to do something about it.
@@Miquiya Manufacturers signed a number of voluntary agreements. Didn't work. I assume we'll have something in 20 years.
I remember printing coloring pages for my classmates when I was in elementary school over 35 years ago. I printed over three hundred pages before my dad put a stop to it.... I only used up one printer ribbon in all that time. Dad complained about me using up his printer paper, not his ink. The ink for the printer was dirt cheap in comparison to the cartridges of today. You can buy bottles of ink for just a few dollars. It would take nothing to make a formula that would work in the printers. There is no doubt that the cartridges are a rip off.
oh but-but-but it's a special ink formula! they have to use special vehicles to make the ink, it's totally not like they use the most expensive but at the same time junkiest equipment intentionally to make 'high quality ink' to upcharge 900%!!
More valuable than gold per ounce.
My old hp laserjet printer can print like 400 pages in a dollar just refill the cartiage with cartiage powder, Canon is scammer I have plotters for buisness to canon is very costly you even have to turn on ac for it to even print
@Spacecoreinspace 900%? You are being generous! 😂
@@kiraamv5507Just don't hook up your laser printer to the Internet. I made that mistake and now it refuses to print unless I buy a new cartridge. It's definitely a scam. HP is very pretty to disable printing on my old laserjets. I can continue to print on my subscription based inkjet but of course because they charge me per page. The same software blocked my laserjets.
Love your video. I went tankless last year. Makes a BIG difference. Even ordering the bottoms it is cheaper than the cartridges.
Certain companies also adopt other shady tactics with their Ink - Tank printers as well. I had mine "conk out" within six months.
Turns out that that particular model has a kind of failsafe that makes the printer show an error, forcing you to replace the printer/take it for servicing (it's understandable to an extent: since printers are rated for a certain number of cycles. But to have perfectly working printers which are practically new bricked automatically without any fault, seems dubious.)
I was able to overcome this by following steps on a CZcams tutorial that actually sent a kind of "counter reset" to the printer and it worked absolutely fine after that.
It seems that particular model is known for prematurely and erroneously activating the failsafe in a number of units.
What brand was it?
As a small business owner I realized this years ago and switched to tank printers. Fun fact, the first tank printer was created by Epson.
its not the best, but at least epson gave us freedom to refill cartridge and Toner.
SAME HEREEEE. Tankprinter saved my ass.
Epson used to make some really good printers. Now Epson printers are crap.
I print over 150 pages a day and use Brother laser printer-black only. I get aftermarket 10 packs of drum and cartridge and fill it up with toner powder I got from ebay.
I found that it is the lowest cost to print. just a little messy when dealing with the toner powder filling.
@@JCJourney Interesting.
I literally work in an electronics store and I keep on trying to urge customers to go for the Epson ecotank over the cheaper canon ones for this exact reason! But seems like not many people wanna spend 400 dollars on a printer but rather spend double that a year on ink 🙃
i bought my eco tank (same one as in the video) for £80
I bought mine for 3000 Mexican pesos or 170 USD, it has been a blessing.
no. we buy new cheap shit printers on black friday every couple of years and it is the same price as an ink cart.
and by the time the epson pays for itself we wont be printing things or something better will have come to market for a lower price until then. black friday shit ass printers that come with an ink cart the same price as the printer being purchased.
Literally? Never trust an idiot that speaks like this
I've done the same thing. A Couple years back I bought 4 printers because the printer + ink carts cost less than just the ink carts. Instead of changing ink cartridges, I just installed a new printer when it's empty. I don't print much so it's lasted me awhile, but now I'm out of printers.@@kyledennis6772
Just changed the ink on my Ecotank ET-3850 yesterday for the first time. First use was Feb 4,2022 -2,142 pages of black printing on the usage report. Color ink is just at 2/3 capacity. Still have another black bottle - that's at least 5 years worth of ink that came with the printer. I have had all kinfs of cartridge based printers and while the printer costs $50 the ink is expensive and replaced every few months. Yes the Eco Tank costs 10x more than a cheap all in one from Canon or HP - but it is $60 of ink every 2 or so months. I find there is value in the EcoTank and have had zero technical issues except for occasional disconnecting from the wifi - which is most likley a modem issue on our end.
3 months later and I still remembered this video. I have just moved into my own home and now I've ordered an eco-printer. Down with cartridges!
Thanks a lot for this video, you are a hero!
well if we hack the cartridges on inkjet the inkheads are replaced when you replace the cart. alot of positives to consider with inkjet. just someone tell me how to refill 3rd party carts in my HP envy 5660. 3ml in a 12ml advertised cart should be illegal. please help. i want to refill but i hear these printers can detect a cart has been refilled at home.
my HP envy has a firmware back from Sept 2020 so it never got the firmware blocking update HP unexpectedly sent out.
If any of you recall, there used to be an ink refill service at walgreens photo booth. Those cartridges that I would get refilled would work so much longer than the original fill, and I would assume, the company doesn't do it anymore because they lost a fortune.
lost a fortune in scams, you mean.
HP and Cannon printers are utter cancer.
Getting a Brother laserprinter is the best decision I've made
Walgreens & costco stopped their ink refilling services. I wonder why?!
Because it literally became cheaper to buy a new printer
In Southeast asia, some printer models are designed to be refillable. They have an ink tank placed outside
But it took for several years for Canon and HP to officially acknowledge and launch such design
Before that, ppl unofficially modify their cartridge to attach an external ink tank
Or refil their cartridge by themself using cheap knock-off ink
I bought an Epson ecotank around five years ago. It still works great and I've saved a fortune in ink cartridges. Yes, the heads do need cleaning from time to time but this is not a problem. Thanks for telling the world about this wicked ink cartridge scam. Andy B.
as a professional print person... all printers need heads cleaning. All of them. That's why they end up 'getting replaced' because most people do not know how to either flush them or replace just the print heads. my mom's printer she has had now for 12 years even though it was a $20 pixma.
The advantage to the ecotanks are numerous starting with the tanks being able to be filled with different inks. They are also significantly easier to clean, flush and replace print heads.
I currently use an epson workforce 7610 for sublimation but the ecotanks are much better for even that purpose.
@@dragames Appreciate the knowledge!
I don’t think I’ve never seen someone sign their comment before 😂
@@cyatramI have seen it a couple of times.
How do you clean the head?
great review! Can't believe how little ink is actually in those cartridges. I have been doing some online research and was excited about purchasing a new tank printer and have found that the tank printers have to purge the ink constantly in order to keep the ink from drying out in the feeder lines, it does this by squirting the ink on top of an internal sponge... and its alot of ink. Once the sponge is full a sensor shuts the printer down and renders the printer useless, usually within a year. the sponge nor the sensor are replaceable, meaning you just paid way more for a printer with no more technical capabilities than the cartridge type only to have it be nonfunctional sooner. It is for these reasons I will not be purchasing a tank printer. "I wonder if SHACK knows this?!"
I actually bought one of those from Costco recently as well. I originally bought a cheap HP and later on replace the ink catridges, but not long after it stopped working saying there was no ink in the catridges... Had to get rid of it.
My favorite was when years back they introduced the "XL" tanks under the guise that suddenly printer ink is cheaper. What they did was filled them halfway and called those the standard cartridges, which now only cost half as much.... so you think "wow, printer ink is finally affordable!" but really all they did was rename the "full" ink cartridges "XL" and then charged the same price as they did before.
EU directive that printer won't "selfdestruct" / automatically shutdown.
-replaceable ink absorber (Canon G3200 Megatank printer Ink Absorber/Error Code 5b00)
-user resettable inc cartridge counter and ink absorber counter.
-user cleanable print heads
-non overpriced and easily available spare parts
EU directive for labeling the amount of ink that comes out of the tank through the print head onto the paper.
Class action suit in the US.
Just make a 501 for that :)
Not just a printer companies that are doing that. Look at all the food that we currently get that's only half the nutrition that used to be, it's half the size, and cost 5× more! Thanks Obama, i mean Biden..
Why did I think Obama attention to Obama's interviews he tells you that if Trump gets into office and they asked Obama to run things in the shadows with a front man that he would not be opposed to doing so.. these are Obama words! Obama got the most time in office and it should be illegal. The things they are putting Biden through are Criminal acts and he don't even know any better
Which company did this?
@@mesmorrow they all collectively did it, I know HP and Epson both sell "XL" cartridges. HP was the one I remember advertising that ink shouldn't cost so much 🙄
I worked tech at staples for a long time. I tried to push ecotanks as much as I could, but due to their HP partnership, I was forced to push HP printers as an extreme priority. It got to a point where they were sending us to HP sponsored events to train us to push more HP printers.
Their tech department as a whole got to be such an ethical problem I ended up walking out.
Can't forget about the hp instant ink that they wanna hook you on. Pay monthly for the ink even when you don't use it 😂
A firmware update got pushed to my HP color laserjet a few weeks ago and bricked it... fuck HP forever
Yeah, I figured this out many years ago. I live in Brazil and the cartridges were twice the price as in the States. I bought a refill kit, but it didn't work. I went online and the problem was air entrapped between the ink sponge and the nozzles. One of the solutions offered was to put the cartridge inside a long sock and swing it around your head so centrifugal force caused the ink to flow. It worked! I redecorated the living and dining rooms with black polka dots 😂😂😂!
I’ve left jobs for ethical reasons too but every job is ran by evil people so there’s no escape. I wish I was taught this early but it’s really something you learn with experience.
@@jacksonrelaxin3425On one hand, you want to protect your kids from the world and let them enjoy their innocence as long as possible, but on the other it only hurts them in the long run. I knew the world wasn't perfect, but holy shit I had no idea it was THIS bad..😢 I was hoping for 50/50, not 90/10 to the negative.
I went conversion kits with fill-up cartridges and bottled ink a while ago and haven't looked back.
With the cartridges, even if you don't print often they seem to dry up. Watching this video has shown me why! I finally got my eco tank a year ago and I still haven't needed new ink yet. I love it. ✌️
I gave up on ink printers and went with a laser printer. And after 16 years I have opened toner cartridge number 4. It is a black only printer and I use it for printing about 300 to 350 pages of varying types per year and some envelopes too. The thing has not let me down yet. It is an HP 1102w if you are curious.
Epson EcoTank owner over here, too. I'm also a teacher who always prints worksheets and presentations in full color for my students. It has been 7 years with my L395, and it's still printing without any problem at all. A BIG plus is that you don't need to refill the tanks with the ink that they call "official", I've got ink bottles that where Brother and Canon, used them on my printer, and it keeps on printing. You just made me appreciate my machine a lot more, thanks.
as a long term user of tank styles. Glad ya like em.
Just one note for ya could save you a print head one day.
Make sure the chimical base used in the ink's are compatible with what you have in there now.
and ofcorse that the head can use the ink to. some heads get way hotter to spray the ink than others.
And i once put in some epson ink in a cannon. both were large format printers just didnt pay atention.
when the epson ink hit the cannon ink they gelled. all - the - way - up - the - tubes. Fortunitly it didnt hit the print head. fast large format print heads are hella expinsive.
You are wrong there is no way you could have had this for 7 years when they barely been out for the last four years as it was released in 2019.
@@SHSPVR You are right, I forgot I survived my first teaching year with a Brother laser printer. Then I bought my Ecotank during 2017.
This is a video about the L395 made 6 years ago czcams.com/video/ypz32_XPVlM/video.html
Maybe the printers are sent to different countries in different timesets, and it arrived late to your country.
@ Well it wasn't available in the US that's for sure
@@SHSPVRah yes, the US, the only country that matters.
They tried to scam us but here in the UK we had shops selling knock offs for a full set of inks for less than a fiver saving us like 80% of the retail price. Usually it was for Epson printers. Canon/Lexmark somehow continued to have a system in place to screw their customers.
I've only bought printers over the last 20+ years in the UK where I could buy Non-OEM ink. I currently have a Brother MFC-J4610DW, and 3x full sets of 'XL' fill Non-Brother ink was less than £10. I have an Epson laser black-only I was given, empty, because 'The toner cartridges are £60!' and I easily found a Non-OEM toner cart for £14. Re-engineering the chips seems to be the key, so maybe the USA has more of a stranglehold.
You can buy up & up brand version of the cannon in this video in the U.S. at discount.
HP is the worst. HP sells printers for 20-50 pounds , then you getting small amount of inks for fortune.
I bought a printer for £30 and the cartridges are £35 lol. I bought anotger printer(it comes with cartridges) because it's £3 cheaper and it's a true story.
@@albertgeorgy6827 thats the way to scam the printer companies cos theyd actively lose money if everyone did that
I have a Canon colour laser all-in-one that I bought in September. Since a few weeks, it already says I should replace the black toner, and that quality can no longer be guaranteed. I don't see this in the results though, black is still true black.
I'll wait to replace it when black starts to appear as dark gray.
I had an inkjet before, and I started to hate inkjets.
If you print a lot with them, then of course cartridges will run empty.
If you rarely print with them, then the ink dries up, and the print nozzles might clog up.
That is why I chose laser this time, I know that with laser it doesn't really matter how much you print, because toner is a dry type of product, so it will not dry up.
Thanks for the heads up. Recently I've bought 3800mA Nimh batteries from Aliexpress at a good price. When I tried to charge them they only took 90mA. I thought they might be already charged, then discharged them and they gave even less. I weighted them and they just weighted half of a regular battery.
I've been aware of the printer ink scam for multitude of years I took one of those things apart when I was a teenager and then again in my twenties
But seeing how we are in the minority of awareness there's not much we can do about this, but I'm glad somebody's finally protesting about it. So thank you for putting up Your video.
I mean..
czcams.com/video/AHX6tHdQGiQ/video.htmlsi=tDCXGzhTNFGQJPFg
This guy exposed more than this video, and like 5 years ago. But nothing was done about it.
I doubt this will result anything either.
China sells cheaper cartages on Amazon. $10 instead of $70.
Everyone knows they're a scam, wdym? It's always been a huge meme that you get more ink for your money buying bic pens than you do buying ink cartridges.
Order from ink owl
Wish I would of seen this before I spent 30$ on 2 ink
As someone who has worked on and sold a variety of printers. The ecotank will do fine so long as you print at least weekly, and leave it plugged in so it can run cleaning subroutines. Worked at the store selling them for like two years, never had a report of failure that didn't involve it being unused in a closet for months.
I sometimes don't use mine for up to three months. I'll just have to let the cleaning routine run twice and it's good to go.
wonder what happened to my friends ecotank then? he would use it almost every week, but then it started printing grainy photos and after clearing all the lines and resetting software etc., it still did that and has been sitting unused for months now. maybe i can get him to try and clean it up again and check if anything has changed
I've had mine for 3-4 years and there has never been an issue with the jets. They can be set to a cleaning mode, anyway
@@Lizardfiz12
If the cleaning subroutine doesnt seem to work, check that where the ink jet cleans itself isn't jammed with paper.
Ours had a small piece jammed and it never cleaned itself properly. Had to take it apart a bit to get the paper out.
@@Lizardfiz12 I have a similar problem, I think it's because I don't print regularly enough. Fortunately printing in black & white still looks good but colour printing not so much.
et-27-50 lasts 2 years plus as long as you put printer on a surge protector and also don't lose drivers. i did a nozzle clean and it works if the ink gets clogged. system clean; making sure theres ink and its not leaking. im glad mine still works
I have the Ecotank, and its been over 4 years or more. It is still running with the ink it came with. The ink in the tanks still intact even if im not using it for months. If you dont use it very often it clogs but the printer itself has a feature to clean itself. The best printer out there honestly.
You just gave us solid evidence of what we suspected all along 👍🏼
They sell us printers at a loss, just to rip us off on ink cartridges.
Landfills filling up with printers for the last 20 years was solid evidence vs suspicion. Something designed to be more convenient to throw away and buy a new one.
Convenient wasn't even their goal. It's greed masquerade as convenient. Printers break all the time and replacing these cartridges ain't convenient to the customers. It's crazy how these companies can create so much waste and isn't responsible for recycling or clean after themselves
Suspected?
We very well knew.
Many even made a business from refilling used cartridges.
Two decades ago I used to buy cheap no name ink in bottles that lasted years.
I even had my student cousin coming and refilling her cartridges.
Since then I had two other printers.
Some printers are designed for refilling, some we refill directly through nozzles, drip by drip.
And we all know from a decade ago that laser printers are more reliable and cheaper to use.
So yeah this rant is legitimate, but comes two decades later.
Only morons still buy ink printers.
I am retired, no more printing needed and still have a laser printed. I even bought a spare cartridge. But when I need, once a year I still use the old one just out of spite even the role is damaged and smears a little the paper.
So come on, grow up. Change the title from, is a scam to was a scam two decades ago, or in .. I am a moron. I still buy ink printers.
Gronk it up! #notacult
In my city, I can get empty ink cartridges refilled at a print shop for $5 - $10!!! I don't have to keep buying new ink, it's awesome!!!
We've known about this for so long, why we still don't have consumer protections against this is a mystery to me. It's like a benchmark for seeing how many years behind law makers are when it comes to the tech industry.
In a decadent society, due diligence is spread thin.
When the law makers get paid more than there salaries by companies they ofcource will make laws that help said companies
It's capitalism, as long as people buy it, they'll keep selling it. The problem is that people are idiots, myself included, so we buy the cheapest printer we can find (often sold at a loss) then keep wasting money on expensive ink. I bought a cheap Deskjet that wouldn't let me print in B&W or grayscale when any of the color cartridges were empty. But even worse than that, I had some documents to scan, and... it wouldn't let me scan because one of the cartridges was empty. Great, ''cause I do need ink to scan, of course.
Sure. Let's get the government involved to protect us from our stupidity. People deserve this because they buy this crap.
We don’t have consumer protections cause people don’t take activism seriously.
I am using an Epson ET_2750 for my business since what, 5 years ?, and am still only on my 2nd bottle of black and still on the first bottles of any color.
And the printer still works absolutely flawless! I even bought a second hand one for my wife's business same story there.
And people called me crazy when I said they were scamming with the ink! I remember in the 90’s one cartridge would print a book darn near. Late 90’s early 2000’s hit and u can’t even print your syllabus without needing a new cartridge!
Capitalism, the endless pursuit of paying the least amount of money to generate the most amount of money
@@LoLaSnya no. Capitalism is someone having the ability to do that and then 20 competitors like epson come along and make better products you can buy instead. Grow up.
@@ohno7582 And yet products like these are still around, hmm
@@ohno7582You forget collusion by businesses at customers' expense. Capitalism is evil and so is communism.
@@ohno7582chill out bro it's just a printer
Well when the ink is more expensive than the printer, then yeah, it’s a obvious scam. It’s like when companies put less food in their product. Consumers are always getting scammed somewhere!😂
Same with medical supplies. You can get a glucometer for free but the test strips are expensive. Smh...
And we just take it
Everywhere
Its not a scam. Thats why these companies can sell their printers for peanuts. Instead, they make their money out of the printer cartridge. its a marketing tactic.
@customer7575 I've noticed that the cans of soup started getting smaller, but with the same or higher price....a little strange don't you think....pay more for less....
5:10 regarding longevity, I’ve had my absent ego tank for about five years and only recently had to order replacement ink (it claims to come with two years worth of ink) It has a built-in clean print head function and yes. It can get dirty. But if you run the cleaning process enough times it can and will fix that issue. It’s happened 2 times now where you get streaking lines and running the clean function 2 to 5 times has solved that problem.
2:12 I had that ecotank. I must say it printed photos like it was an actual photo and I was very pleased. Until half a year later the printer lost one of its colors. A deep clean resolved this, but the spilt ink container was full and needed costly replacement. This started to happen ever so often.
The problem was I didn't print that much. Only a few sheets a week and often with weeks between where no print was made. You apparently need to print every day to keep the print nozzles from drying out.
The Epson is absolutely the answer. My wife is a teacher, we print a lot, daily. We have had this printer for at least 8 months and I am STILL using the original ink the printer came with. Absolutely amazing. I also had a Canon with the cartridges, but she was going thru a cartridge a week. Even buying knockoff ink on Amazon was still 30 bucks a pop. Not one problem with the Epson.
laser printers are even better, better printing and cheaper in the long run, no clog issues unlike inkjet, invest in one, hopefully one with wifi or networking capability, you will not look back.
Yeah same I have an Epson ecotank and it works great.
all of printer that i own and used epson still stay strong
in college we print a lot on epson l250 and L310 series till this day those think still run
I’ve had one of those for at least 5 years, and it seems the original black ink is getting low, maybe it lasts a year or two. Magenta is still over half full.
i 2nd that - i have an epson - and no complaints = i go months whithout printing a thing, and then print without issues.
I've been using an epson printer L110 since 2010, it's a tank based printer as well. Working perfectly till date. Can trust epson blindly as long as you're using original ink bottles
How is the print quality on that
@@Daniel-dj7fh awesome
I had a brother printer for many years and tried using generic ink in it and after a couple of refills, I would have to take the printer to the shop to get it fixed so I also have stopped using printers basically because of this
Mine was kinda broken on the printer head (?) because I didn't use it for quite some time and it got dusty. My uncle took it from me trying to repair it for his own use because he's a teacher and the I think the repair shop my uncle went tl can't fix it.
Great printer though, now I have a Brother printer+scanner that also use an ink bottle instead of cartridges
I've been using epson l360, l1800 and m105 for pigment all with 3rd party ink that's way cheaper ypuke you can get almost 1200 ml of any color for about 5$ and with that amount of ink I am able to print almost 35k prints
I have an Epson ET-2720 that you refill the tank with. The only problem is that if you don't use it every day, you get clock heads and you have to run the cleaning several times.
You can put a paper towel under the head in the non parking position with some alcohole. Then move the head over that towel a few times. After that my L555 printed like brand new.
The way companies like HP make money is by giving you printers worth $300 for just $50, but obliging you to buy their ink. It is no scam, it is a strategie.
Just an hour ago I went to office depot for 3 toner cartridges. They cost about $100 more than the original printer.
although to be fair the cartridges that come with most printers are starters with less than normal print capacity, plus given how many pages a laser printer can print its still not as bad as an inkjet (inkjet will cost about $100 for oem ink for B/M/Y/C and print around 750 pages - per HP specs on the 902xl cartriges, my laser printer is about $400 for B/M/Y/C toner, which will net you about 10x the pages 7600 for black oem canon 055h cartridges' and 6800 for the C/M/Y cartridge's) so price per page at minimum for inkjet is around 13cents a page on OEM XL cartridges, for price per page on the laser at its minimum colored yield is about 5cents per page, so while a laser has a higher upfront cost for the toner, its cheaper in the long run.
Technically i have been running the same starter cartridges' for years and have a page count of around 1700, half being b/w and half being full color, and while 3 of my cartriges are end of life, they still print just fine. unlike many inkjets that refuse to print when out of a color.
Its a scam. get the refillable ones with the resetting chip you will save alot of money.
the ink you get with the new printer is basically just a small sample cart. but I agree, unless it is for color or some weird format cart (which I wouldn't buy).
One more advantage of laser printers (and for my use case it’s a HUGE advantage)
Laser printer can sit unused for days weeks months even years, and still work.
Inkjets sit unused for a week? They start drying out. And then getting clogged. Which almost always means total replacement .
My use case: documents, instructions, lists… usually two-three a month, maybe 20-50 pages MAX… B&W ok
Photographs, or other prints that need/want COLOR… once, perhaps three a month… these get printed at WalMart, or on-line photo labs for higher-quality needs.
@@MightyGimp…yes, maybe so, but still far less expensive than the liquid ink when pricing PER-PAGE.
I always loved that Walmart sold printers that came with color and black for usually 15 bucks cheaper than cartridges themselves.
That was forever ago, all printers only come with "starter" cartridges that last only a handful of ptints
@@dragons_redOh, I didn't know they switched to "starters"... I assume those are worse (actually I wouldn't be surprised if they were better too, like to convince you that you made a good purchase), but back when I was in need of printer etc, and that was like a decade ago, I already knew that you can pretty much just buy a new one instead of new cartridges and still be in + (all the more since you can sell the old printer too) .
@@dragons_red lol we got around that in 2010.. just return or exchange the printer when you're done. Lost the receipt? Buy a new one and put the old one it its box. They dont check serials.
I just buy the ink and inject them into the cartridges.
They're starter cartridges
I gave up on ink jet printers years ago. I have a Brother HL2270DW laser printer for B&W everyday use and an HP M25DW for color. That one paid for itself after my first use when I printed 21 copies of a 25-page family history booklet with photos (many in color) to send as Christmas presents. I even bought a used spiral binding punch off of eBay and still came out money ahead instead of having it done at an office supply store.
I agree on the Epson Ecotanks. We have two of the lowest end et-2400 printers and use one for Sublimination ink and one for regular ink. They work a charm!
Yep that Epson eco tank is the printer for any small business owner. I have a business and I print something every single day. I've been printing everyday since like 2020 and I still haven't run out of the original ink that came with the printer lol. My black is just now getting a little low after all these years. it was really expensive up front. But it was worth every penny because I haven't had to do anything to it, change any ink or nothing. It just works every time. I've never been happier with a printer in my life.
It depends on the need. Laser printers have a place too if you need to print loads of pages as suddenly time becomes a factor too.
If the workers need to wait minutes for all pages to print instead of seconds that accumulate over the course of a year.
Does that mean that the ink doesn't dry up as it happens with cartridges when you don't print for a while?
Or have you been using it regularily to a point where it'd be impossible to tell if they would or not dry up?
Asking about your impressions because you're the only other person than the video host, that happens to own one of those 😀 Have a great week mate!
its a trash printer though, its weird that most people don't know this but you can convert just about any printer on the market into a tank system. CIS kits have been common place for like 20 years. You can even buy the ink by the gallon from chinese wholesellers (literally the same crap epson uses) for pennies on the dollar. One thing we used to do for all our printers back in the late 2000's was run around to all the goodwills grabbing up highend photo printers slapping a 20 dollar chinese kit on them and just run them non-stop. People would buy them find out how much they cost to operate and then just chuck them to donation sites / yardsales / flea markets etc so you could get them for next to nothing.
Clearly a cheap printer can be made with big ink tanks, it is outrageous that printer companies have financially raped consumers for so many years
Same, we have that Epson printer at home too and the ink lasts forever.
It would have been good to weigh the cartridge before opening it, then rinse out the ink sponges completely with isoalcohol then put them back in once they were dry and re-weigh it. Then you could see exactly how much ink by weight was really in there.
Thanks for pointing this out, I was thinking about this too. Kinda flying light with the facts here!
Doesn’t matter if the ink is stuck to the sponge!
@@Wltrwllyngaeiou kinda matters more than your comment though
I think Isopropyl alcohol may partially melt the synthetic sponge and not give accurate results
@@Mindseasdoes it? How does it matter how much ink is in the sponge if it cant actually go from the sponge to the paper.
What really annoys me is that cannon sells different size cartridges for your printer, the thing is the cartridges are all the exact same dimensions, but they don’t fill the ‘standard’ size with much ink.
I have an EPSON Inkjet L360, it's great.
It takes months before I need to refill the ink, I never had any issues with the heads clogging up and I have the printer for at least 5 years now.
I can even connect with it flawlessly on Linux (I use Arch btw)
One thing to keep in mind is that you should print at least one page per week (with all colors) if you have an ecotank. Otherwise the ink will get dry and clog the header, which will require you to pay maintenance. So, if your print very little, create a weekly task in your computer for it to print a page with a bit of every color.
Every week orint a photo of the rainbow. Got it
I was able to clean the heads successfully myself. There are videos out there with instructions and a cheap kit to buy. I spent maybe 15 bucks, can't recall exactly, but it was not much, and it took me maybe 30 minutes max to do it.
ecotanks are great!
and it actually isn't the head clogging up, they have wipers built in to keep the printer head clean, it's simply because the ink system isn't airtight, so over time pressure will decrease making the ink draw back into the tank.
if this happens just run a couple of the thorough head cleaning procedures from the pc interface, and it'll get back up to pressure.
by far the best style printers we get in for repair haha :P
Having one off the first ecotank (which were worst a this) I can say this allaways a fixable issue. When it happens (more than a week off no use usually). I just launch the "cleaning heads" program then print a photo of a rainbow (with black parts) one, two, maybe tree times and then it is fixed. You might say that is wastefull ! I say as a 7 year old user i bought a ink set twice maybe tree times for 13 bucks each.... yeah just buy the printer it is awsome it's a no brainer.
yes, he mentioned this in the video
As a former ink refiller in a photo center at Costco, I can confirm that cartridges are a scam. They don't have that department anymore, but they used to have an official ink refilling machine you could also find at Fry's Electronics that would literally drill 3 holes in the cartridge, and use needles with the correct tone of ink to refill the sponges. After that, we would put stickers on the holes and reset or replace the digital chip so the printer could see it as a new cartridge. It was always a 50/50 chance of working though because of how cheap that design of printer is in general and the different uses each person has with their printer. About 5 years ago, I first saw Epson's Eco Tanks come on the shelf. the 2800,3800, and 4800. I thought that is the solution! I've talked to many people who still have the original black ones and now the newer white ones that they are the way to go for sure.
I have the Epson L120 printer, instead of using their ink. I just but a knockoff that prints the same for 2$ 20ml all 4 colors.
Machine? We used to do it manually 😅
@@caliFRAGitubeDid you not need a machine to reset the digital chip?
@@yanmarle2864 nope. I used button combination or resetter software.
I had an epson printer I threw it away. After like 6 months hardly any use started printing awful copies
I bought the HP smart tank 450 wireless in August 2022. I threw it yesterday October 2023 (the reason I'm looking at printer reviews today). My Smart tank didn't get used often so it was stored between printing. WARNING! don't tip it at all. Mine tiped over to a 45 degree angle in a cupboard (left side down). Black ink flowed out over everything. Setting it straight didn't stop the flow. It made it worse and flowing ink poured out onto everything below.
I have 3 Epson eco tank printers. One, the ET-4750, is about 5 years old. According to its counter it has printed over 10,500 pages. Have only bought a set of ink bottles for it ONCE. Works perfectly and is quiet.
Epson has been so successful with these eco tank printers, that HP has been forced to now sell one. Because of them forcing the consumer to buy their ink guzzling printers for so many years now, I will NEVER buy another HP printer!
Why da fk you bought 3 printers when one works perfectly fine???? 😂
For black and white text, laser printers are by far the less expensive option in the end, when you factor in the price of ink and that it tends to dry out over time. I haven't owned an inkjet printer in over 20 years.
plus most people think ‘i’m saving ink’ by only printing black and white but many printer companies actually put cyan in with the black just because. so you have to buy more ink regardless.
Same, weve just invested in Kyocera laser printers for blk&wht prints, coz its powder cartidges are cheaper.. Plus there are third party providers too, which is way more cheaper.. Then reservoir type printers for the colored ones..
Laser is great but the main issue is it’s still a huge up front cost for cartridges, and the printers with any extra features (i.e. a scanner or a document feeder) are quite big and heavy. One black toner cartridge for the stock standard Brother laser printer costs like $80 (AUD) for 1200-ish pages, whereas a full set of bottles for an ecotank for anywhere between 5000 and 7500 pages is about the same price.
I have Brother HL-L2365DW since 4 months ago and it's printing about 40k till now. The catridge are still strong. I just have to refill the toner for about every 3k pages.
@@sammcclain3778 that's not how black&white laser printers work, but okay. With laser printers, black and white LITERALLY only prints black and white since there's only black toner in it (and no color toner)
I remember when ink cartridges were refillable, then they made them non-refillable but we(some of us) would still do it and they would work just fine but then they put those chips inside and it complicated thing but we found a way around to continue refilling them(well at least I did). It's good to see that Epson is giving a shit about the consumer. I just hope the printer actually lasts at least 3 years or five would be preferable.
The eco-tank printers are very reliable. I bought one for my family after we had an expensive HP laser printer that was gifted to us die. I purchased the Epson et-3700 back in 2018 and it still prints like new to this day. And crazy enough the printer is still running on the ink refill containers that it came with back in 2018! I have never purchased ink in 5 years of moderate use of the printer.
i have one for 2 years. It works just fine
My Epson Ink Tank printer is about 3 years old now and I have printed close to 8,000 pages. One black plus 3 color cartridges together give around 1,500 to 2,000 pages (depending on page content). Very satisfied. Canon cartridge printer was sh*t.
I've had my epson eco printer for a couple years at least and it's showing no signs of slowing down after printing thousands of pages.
I have a L555. Was one of the first ecotank ever. 5 years later, it prints. If it drys up: You can put a paper towel under the head in the non parking position with some alcohole. Then move the head over that towel a few times. After that my L555 printed like brand new.
Thanks for the video.
I have been eyeing off the tank printer for the last month, searching online for pro's and cons.
I would be very interested to see how it's going 6 months or so later.
Did the print heads jam up/clog like you thought may happen, or any other problems arise ?
Thanks. 👍
I love my Epson EcoTank…I have 1 at work, and 2 at home- because I enjoy doing crafts I have one converted to use sublimation ink.
I've worked at Best Buy and bought one of these for my mom who works from home but has to do a lot of paperwork. We've had it for over a year and we've only had to buy bottles of ink once and she does a decent amount of printing. Epson started to give a shit and it shows.
They have been doing this design for years. We bought one back in 2013.
@@baraki808 🤌
I always think a laser printer is going to be the better option. Sure it’s expensive up front but in the long term you’re saving a lot of money from buying a ton of ink cartridges. Also even if you don’t print that much, ink dries up over time so if you have a full ink cartridge and don’t use it for months you’ve lost money cause that ink has at least partially dried up.
The ink drying up problem can be remedied by storing it in a cool airtight container.
I would never have another laser printer.
@@v6pulsar Why, what's wrong with laser printers apart from the upfront price?
You can now buy a laser printer for cheap. The toner, on the other hand, is far from cheap. It used to be 5000 sheets per cartridge, now it’s 3500 if you are lucky. A chip counts prints. Also, the chip limits you to only their brand while an off brand can sell you two cartridges for the price of one brand cartridge.
Not only that but on older printers you have a head that sprays the ink and if it dries in the head ,you basically have to replace it or buy a new printer. So laser printers are the better option in my opinion
I like toner printers. Companies often use years-old printers of this type. I had an inkjet printer at home, it is quite good if you print a lot, but this was not the case for us, so I refilled the ink almost every time I wanted to print, because it dries out over time, I still had to clean the print head several times. Once the printer wrote that they would not let me continue until some service was performed. So I got around it. Well, finally the print head stopped working. In fact, inkjet companies often sell HW cheaply and are fueled by ink cartridges.
I started using rhe library printer wyen i had to print low fare airline boarding passes
Don’t forget that the little chips on some cartridges are programmed to give an “out of ink” message after some amount of time, regardless of if you actually used it or not.
Yeah, they make their own expiration dates in some cases. And they will brick themselves.
Yes and there's a good documentary on planned obsolescence where a guy even shows you how to un brick old printers, real good doco too
Bro i work with these companies, even the biggest ones just replace the label once it hits the expiry date and its on stock. The ink is more then fine though it lasts long. Its a pure scam.
My comment wouldn't post with the link but the documentary is called the light bulb conspiracy and it's free on CZcams 👍
Even in enterprise settings, the printer will complain "order maintenence kit" every set number of pages, it doesn't actually know if it's broken or not, it just knows that it's printed 10k pages and so tells you to buy a maintenence kit.
Sounds like what some elites are trying to do to a digital currency. If you don't spend the money, it expires. Or, the money won't work to buy certain things that they don't want you to buy.
My favorite thing about printers and ink is when during the pandemic there was a chip shortage and the ink wouldn't work without a chip and they literally shipped ink without a chip. Hilarity ensues.
Right, they had to modify firmware in some cases to turn off the DRM that would read the chip. It's so ridiculous.
It's not a scam. It's much worse. It's a tactic to force people to live digital then analog. If we have all on paper why use Word, Dropbox or digital storage options as much. It's forced customer selection. 😑
nah, the printer companies won't benefice from what you say @@somerandomchannel382
I don't know if the "chip shortage" included nfc tags
@@somerandomchannel382 Brother what about a printer is analog? If you want analog you need to print via woodblock
My family got a new HP printer last year. I was surprised when it ran out of ink 2 weeks later, so I went to a nerby tech store. The man who is working there explained the connection thingies which require you to buy new cartridges. Thankfully though he has a lot of experience so he is able to refill it every time the ink runs out so that the printer doesn't notice.
I bought a Brother monochrome laser printer for $99 at over 10 years ago. The initial toner, at least for me, lasted a couple years, and I bought generic toner cartridges super cheap that the printer accepts (no DRM). I've never had any issues with the printer other than having to restart it because it doesn't show up on the network (USB was never an issue).
Individual results may vary; I mostly used it for college, and then shipping labels over the years, so it's possible excessive use cases may experience more issues. Though, i have Heard mostly good things about these printers on social media.
Been a loyal Epson fan for nearly three decades. Had to send my previous all-in-one printer to the junkyard after Epson ditched cartridges, but my current tank-based unit is the most dependable model I've owned.
Epson still uses chips for ink cartridges that expire after a certain amount of time. I have one and I have printed maybe 1-200 pages over 2 years and it said I was out of ink. I slapped it on paper and plenty of ink came out
@@Ryan-wx1bi In my neck of the woods, all brands except HP stopped selling cartridges.
i have the tank epson to print my labels for my business, this is the one you NEED, and its not that expensive either, ull def save alot in the long run on refills of any ink you desire.