Megatank vs EcoTank vs Laser

[13Gigatons]

Some things have really changed over the years. Laser printer prices have fallen and inkjets now come with Mega-tanks. I found a Samsung color laser for $94 which is super cheap although the toner is laughably overpriced.

The new inkjets come with large tanks that can be refilled with bottles. Boasting 7000 color pages it almost seems worth it. The price is almost triple what the color laser would cost upfront.

The Canon mega-tanks seems to edge out the Epson ecotank when it comes too refill ink price.

 

[VirtualLarry]

My understanding (from HP's version), that you have to sign up with a "service", and that, while you own the device, you still have to pay per-page printing fees. (Much like a Library photocopy machine.)

 

[tynopik]

inkjets still dry out if you don't use them enough

 

[bfun_x1]

I bought a color laser printer a few months ago for $150 and I love it. The color prints are better than any of the cheap ink jets I've burned through.

 

[13Gigatons]

inkjets still dry out if you don't use them enough

Never had that problem. I always hear people touting that but it's never happened to me personally. I have ink in bottles for years that still works same as it ever did.

 

[13Gigatons]

I bought a color laser printer a few months ago for $150 and I love it. The color prints are better than any of the cheap ink jets I've burned through.

Laser Printers are GREAT but the toner is gawd awful expensive and you still need to pay up front cost to get the features inkjets offer for pretty damn cheap.

 

[TennesseeTony]

Ink in bottles is a far cry from ink sitting in a print nozzle exposed to the atmosphere for 90+ days.

 

[13Gigatons]

Ink in bottles is a far cry from ink sitting in a print nozzle exposed to the atmosphere for 90+ days.

How about sitting for a few years and still working just fine. Did have to print a few copies to get the ink flowing again though.

 

[Mike64]

How about sitting for a few years and still working just fine. Did have to print a few copies to get the ink flowing again though.

Frankly, that's very unusual. Which printer was that? Usually when the heads dry out past a certain point (well short of "years"), they're not cleanable at all, much less merely by "printing a few copies".

 

[bfun_x1]

Laser Printers are GREAT but the toner is gawd awful expensive and you still need to pay up front cost to get the features inkjets offer for pretty damn cheap.

Per page cost should be less for lasers. It's something like .03 to .15 for toner and .07 to .20 for ink. The only two negatives I can think of are it's extra large size and complexity. After the first week my printer kept saying it was out of toner. Turns out I needed to set the elevation for it to work correctly in Colorado. I got into the configuration menu and it was enormous.

 

[CZroe]

Never had that problem. I always hear people touting that but it's never happened to me personally. I have ink in bottles for years that still works same as it ever did.

Though inks have expiration dates, they generally don't matter. I just installed some ink that expired in 2009 in my Epson Stylus Pro 3880 and it works great.

"Ink in bottles" or old ink isn't what the person you responded to was talking about though. It's residual ink inside the print head and exposed to air. For most ink jet printers you will get clogged nozzles if you don't print once a month or even more frequently with some printers. Having a few lines in your papers may not bother you if you are just printing memos or instructions and you may not even notice, but it can ruin a photograph with expensive ink and photo paper.

For older two-cartridge printers where the print heads were built into the cartridges you would just buy new carts but this made the carts even more expensive and wasteful (toss all three colors just because you ran out of one in your color cart, for example). I remember being stingy with my first inkjet printer in 1997 specifically because the replacement carts were so expensive. It was a Lexmark and, sure enough, most nozzles were clogged when I went to print almost a year later. In my attempt to save on replacement cartridges I ended up ruining my carts!

I recently got an HP OfficeJet 7000 Wide Format E809a printer from Goodwill and, sure enough, the printhead has some clogged nozzles that ruin photographic output. Was hoping to get lucky and get a decent wide format photo printer for cheap. That one was $6 and luckily a replacement printhead is $20 (most photo printers will be over $100 and impossible to self-install). Before I could get one, however, I came across that Pro 3880 for $10 (another Goodwill find). This one leaks Photo Black but works fine when you switch to Matte Black. All nozzles firing (*whew*).

Canon Pixma printers are known for performing "maintenance" every 48 or 72 hours or something if not being used. This uses a bit of ink but keeps the nozzles from clogging. If it runs out of ink or you leave it unplugged or it can't do its thing for some reason or another, it will clog too. It still happens and this is why people are buying the $60 Pixma Pro-100 just to sell the printhead for $125 (well, the ink is also worth that and the included paper details for $40). Pretty sweet deal if you can stomach the $250 rebate!

 

[VirtualLarry]

My brother printer "self-cleans" every night or several nights a week, usually at odd hours.

 

[sdifox]

Colour laser is not expensive anymore. Third party toners abound.

 

[bfun_x1]

My brother printer "self-cleans" every night or several nights a week, usually at odd hours.

My Brother did that. Every night at 12:00AM. And every time I heard it I'd get startled and wonder who was printing so late at night. I don't miss that.

 

[Synomenon]

So my printer finally died and looking around I've discovered these giant ink tank printers. They don't get great reviews though on Amazon. Anyone have much experience with these new ecotank printers from Epson or magatank printers from Canon?

 

[CZroe]

So my printer finally died and looking around I've discovered these giant ink tank printers. They don't get great reviews though on Amazon. Anyone have much experience with these new ecotank printers from Epson or magatank printers from Canon?

If you’re doing photo or 17” wide prints, it’s hard to beat one of the older Epson Pro-series printers (Stylus Pro 3800, 3880, European SureColor P800, etc) with resettable ink carts. Because they use the same UltraChrome pigment-based inks in some industrial printers, you can get giant 700ml carts to extract and refill your 80ml carts. This way you can get economical 9-color photo prints with OEM ink.

Yes, the $1,300 MSRP printer cost me $9.99 at Goodwill but I had to spend $175 on a part (bad black ink switch). Even so, the included ink was worth more than that.

Never even considered an Ecotank model after seeing that you had to use a code to register the volume of ink added, which blocks unofficial refills.

Watch out for the North American SureColor P800. The chips couldn’t be reset last I checked but I recall hearing something recently which implied some promising news for it. It’s essentially just a 3880 with a roll paper adapter and higher density black.

 

[CZroe]

Colour laser is not expensive anymore. Third party toners abound.

Indeed. I got a Ricoh 250DN (auto-duplex, network) for $75, then bought a spare for $75. I can’t reset the chips but I can buy cheap replacement chips. I keep this around with a second refill the second set of refilled toner carts ready to go. It isn’t photographic quality but there’s suddenly no reason to avoid color. Total freedom!

I used it primarily to print large art on legal size paper for 1,200 Universal Game Case inserts from TheCoverProject (kinda like oversized DVD inserts). No way I could afford to do that with a photo printer!

Still, I think there is a better option. I hear good things about a Dell printer that sometimes goes on sale for $120 which supposedly has near photographic quality from a color laser. IIRC, it’s called the E525W, and SlickDeals users say it can be refilled. Set up a Deal Alert.

 

[mindless1]

Laser Printers are GREAT but the toner is gawd awful expensive and you still need to pay up front cost to get the features inkjets offer for pretty damn cheap.

Depends on what you're talking about. COLOR laser printers can be ridiculously expensive per page (depending on which you choose) but not necessarily because the toner is expensive.

Rather it is because every time you print the drums have to be charged with all colors just in case that print job needs them so there is a lot of waste, if your print job didn't print using a lot of every color. You can "use up" colors even if you only printed monochrome, just as waste toner that gets scraped off to be thrown away.

Monochrome lasers on the other hand can be very, very inexpensive compared to any other option. Over the years I've ran them, I don't think I've ever had over 3 cents a page print cost. This was achieved refilling cartridges with bulk toner and choosing printers where you didn't have to buy a new drum with every cartridge.

In some cases that did mean the up front cost of the printer was more but generally that also means more features, and in the case of an AIO, much, much better scanner quality than you get on sub -$300 printers. Sub-$300 means regular price, if you are deal savvy the price of entry to low cost per page falls below that.