At their "cheapest" 0.099 euro / $0.11 USD tier it is already literally cheaper per page (albeit certainly not faster) for me to print documents as 8.5x11" 0.1mm thick single layer slabs of plastic on my 3D printer.
An entire "blank" page, i.e. no cutouts for text or anything, would be about 0.754 grams of plastic. That's about $0.0143 per page at a not-too-exorbitant retail cost of PLA filament ($18.99 USD for a kilo) and the material usage would be even less once the negative space for text is subtracted. And I don't even have to buy the paper.
That's mind boggling. Apparently I'm in the wrong racket.
That's pathetic, hopefully they go out of business soon. Just think of all the filiment that could have been made instead of e waste
Get a Brother laserjet.
I was highly considering a Brother, now I definitely will get one.
Epson Eco Tank is the cheapest best printer I've ever had.
Do you use a model with pigment inks or dye inks? I currently use a pigment based hp inkjet. I thought about switching to ecotank but the pigment refills are comparable to hp pigment cost. I assume the ecotank would get a higher page count from the same cost of ink? The pigment based ecotank models I shopped around were quite a bit more expensive than the entry level dye based models.
I use the cheap Eko tank that doesn't auto feed...wish I had done the auto feed. It just takes a 15 dollar bottle of ink for each color. In 4 years I've used one black bottle and 1/2 the colors.
I've had two in the span of about 16 years. Only reason I got a new one was because I couldn't find decent drivers for it for Windows 8. Considering with HP and Epson inkjets they wouldn't even last 2 years, 8+ years is a good deal. Brother printers are excellent.
Mines been good. Light to medium duty use.
I've had my brother for 11 years, still going strong
I'm at five years for ours. We used the included 'teaser' toner cartridge for almost three years. After the first year, it warned us the toner was low. We laughed and turned the warning off and it just continued to provide toner for nearly another two years.
We now have an "extra large" toner cartridge. Like owning a parrot, my wife and I expect it'll outlast both of us and our children or grandchildren will get stuck with it. We're both 35.
I got a huge office printing center thing from government liquidation out of my nearby military base for $55. It came with more toner than I could ever use in my lifetime.
Sadly, they are also evil now. Latest firmware (~2020) outright blocks third party cartridges or, even more evil, accepts them and then secretly and intentionally, prints like crap:
Everything until ~2019 is awesome, though. Just disable firmware updates.
Holy shit, .15 euros per page? Why not just run to der Kinkos? I haven’t checked but I imagine it’s cheaper there. I get the convenience of having a printer at home but this is like if every cup of coffee you make at home cost you the Starbucks $8.25.
Or just don't buy HP.
probably cheaper to print with blood than to use HP printers
In the US, if you print ~52(+) B&W pages a year, HP Instant Spyware is seemingly cheaper.
FedEx Kinko’s:
Non-EU- lett Packard:
For color, HP’s cheaper once you print two pages a month.
Printing is a good excuse to walk to the local print shop. Let’s say, though, you have to drive your Honda Civic a couple miles through Los Angeles - that adds roughly thirty cents of fuel (ignoring other vehicle costs). (That’s our bestselling car in our second largest city, because you wouldn’t give up your parking spot in NYC.)
Conventional wisdom is to buy a Brother laser printer, but there’s a bit of upfront cost for the color models, which are a little larger when comparing versions with scanners to inkjet all-in-ones. Who wants to do the math on those :)
…whoh they have their own subscription!
Anyway I think this is more like having a printing-press-barista in your closet instead of going to the print-barista down the street. It could be anywhere from 76 cents more expensive to $5.80 less expensive a month. Compare to a Mr. Coffee which you’ll pay off right away by skipping Starbucks.
tl;dr let HP siphon your data, what’s the worst that could happen? 😈
Does that include the price of the printer?
Oops yeah add in $45!! That’s 67 color pages worth of cheddar if you walk to Kinko’s - that I forgot about.
You forgot about that beautiful thing also known as your local library!
Mine is around 2 miles away from my home and only charges me 10¢ per b&w sheet. Its absolutely perfect for any printing needs I may have.
Unfortunately my city's library system was hacked a few months ago and all of their computer services are down until January while they un-fuck things. In the meantime I go to Staples when I want to print.
Great point!
In San Francisco, it’s ten cents AND you get two bucks worth a day free.
You reminded me: sometimes local politicians will let you fax (and thus perhaps print) free at their offices.
My thing is…they can dictate how much you use YOUR OWN PRINTER??? Like…how? Why?
What.
Like…
WHAT.
$8.25 for a Starbucks? Man, it's like £3.55-£4 here in UK.
Depends on the drink. Get a super-frappa-extrashot-sugar bomb and yeah, it’ll be $8-9 easy. A regular medium coffee is $3 or so.
Depends on location too. I live in Seattle, I don't know the last time I've seen a cup for less than $6 on anything other than drip
I've got a whole 0.5kg bag of coffee for that much in Germany, and that'll last me almost a month (~25 cups). What's so good about Starbucks that it costs as much per cup?
Nothing really. I just can't make that when traveling. Unfortunately when out and about in the UK you either have Costa, Starbucks or Nero around the same price or McDonald's and Greggs which is cheaper. It's very hard to find any local coffee shops.
The cheapest plan
0.099 Cents for each page
10 pages in the month.
1500 pages per month
54.99 € respectively.
Yeah, depending on where you live, it may be cheaper to go to your local printer shop.
Plus minus cost of transport and your time.
I did not check HP's prices to Poland.
Table lists 100 pages as 0.07EUR/page.
Krakow, Poland, nearby printer shop takes ~0.02-0.07EUR per A4 page, and there is no subscription. Nor doing 100 pages.
Brother printer gang printing with their tears of joy.
I got a Brother with the big chonker carts, I usually only print once every 5-6 months and I'm still g2g like 5-6 years in.
I gotta run a cleaning cycle each time usually but that's perfectly understandable haha.
Here too, just don't update your firmware (and turn off auto-updates). Brother went evil around 2020, too.
What !! Really? That's sad
Jesus fuckin Christ I was today years old when I learned about HP Instant Ink. Good gracious what a scam
The whole company is a scam. I've seen a couple of big companies get nice bulk discount contracts.
$1600 off of laptop workstations. Who the fuck can afford a bulk discount of 50%?
I don't think they even used HP printers.
The whole company is a scam
HP laptops also come with spyware installed. Hp touchpoint analytics, that you can't remove.
You can always reinstall windows
While I do agree that HP is a very scummy + awful company, their pricing system is not worse than that of many other companies. Many many companies use an inflated listed price system in combination with very large discounts, often fixed discounts per customer.
There's several benefits to this. One of the biggest is that it allows their vendors to give nice "discounts" to entice ignorant customers. Ignorant people are more likely to buy a $2000 computer with 50% discount than a $1000 with 0% discount. And occasionally someone will come along and be scammed out of paying full listed price.
Inflating the list price is just very common and 50% is not even one of the worst offenders, just look at American health insurance prices for a much more egregious example. Construction building suppliers also systematically use it and "discounts" of 40 to 70% are common.
The big companies like that get the laptops at cost because they sign up for juicy support contracts, which is where the real money is
I used instant ink when I was living temporarily in Vancouver. It was actually worth the price back then. Now? Forget it.
Easy. Never buy HP. Their printers are shit and so are their laptops.
What's wrong with their laptops? I've never had any issues.
For starters you don't need a heating unit if you keep their laptop running inside
I've never had that problem. But I've never had a particularly high end HP laptop so maybe those are different.
Also their batteries get pregnant every other year and if you don't fix it, it sets your house on fire.
Damn it, people need to stop fucking batteries or use protection.
🤣🤣🤣
Hahahahaja
Thanks for the laugh, and the vision.
Also, I'll be stealing the "getting pregnant" line
Source?
Anecdotal.
There's someone to say something bad about every computer brand.
Their consumer line has very poor build quality. Cheap everything. All of the plastic is flimsy and breaks easily, inadequate cooling, etc. They're built about as good as Acer, but at a price that you'd expect from a much, much better brand.
Then there's how dedicated they are to screwing you. I won't touch them again for any reason after how malicious they were with the nVidia failures.
It amazes me that there are so many people who buy a printer, are offered this "pay $x a month for Y pages" type of plan, and say yes. I mean, sure, HP sucks, but they wouldn't be able to get away with such slimy business practices if there weren't so many people willing to pay.
I am obligated by my work to offer this to customers when they buy an HP printer and I make it really clear that it's a bad deal for most customers. There are some edge case examples, like a lady with a small business who always prints exactly like 3 pages a day. The other customers who agree to buy it are almost always the super old people who don't want to have to come to the store to get more ink. I think it's a shit program that should be scrapped entirely, but some people really don't care if it's a bad deal as long as they get the convenience. No different than 7-11 up charging shit because it's easier to buy it at the market down the street than the Walmart a few miles down the road.
Spend a bit more and get a laser and have it last exponentially longer. That's how I've been rollin.
I keep saying it around here - my 1996 Lexmark laser just died in July.
Almost 30 years old. And I think I can fix it.
My cheap 300$ laser died after 8 years, so replaced it with a 600 better one. Let's see how this goes 😂
If you still own a HP printer, it's your own fault. Sorry. Got an Canon with liquid refill, loved it, equipped my company with it & recommended it to everyone I know. It's not even expensive & the quality is impeccable. Plus: no problems whatsoever over Linux.
EDIT: CANON, not Epson. I'm distracted sometimes. Canon PIXMA G4511, sub 300 Eur.
Wait till you find out it purges the lines every print, and while you can replace the purge sponge, the system doesn’t always have a “reset the purge sponge” option. And the ones that do use a rather unknown button combination that may or may not work.
I have an ecotank, no linux support.
Sorry, that happens when I do too many things at the same time. Canon. I'm talking of the Canon G4511 liquid refill.
My epson ecotank l6490 works like charm with Linux..
For me too with wifi, and the standarised network printing 🤣 but not when directly connected to pc with usb.
My FIL owns an HP with a subscription. I've given up on the things he wastes money on; most of them he's not really technically savvy enough to implement anyway. (And, yes, buying a printer and getting it installed may exceed his technical abilities)
I have one of those, it won't work with my Linux though :/
Now I fucked it up, my finger wrote "Epson x while my brain thought "Canon"... I was talking the Canon G4511.
I only use it for scanning now. I was mad when my parents bought a new one.
Education is the key.
Breaking news: Printer company behaves like printer companies always have. User hostile.
This just in: Capitalism works
hahahaa i recently dumped them for a big, sturdy, traditional, offline Brother laser. it's ridiculous how much more satisfying it is to print, especially without HP breathing over your shoulder counting how many pages you've printed in the last billing period
Satisfying isn't the word. We have to generally use HP for SAP purposes so unfortunately I have to buy HP for work. Guess what? Every fucking month a few clients need printer support. Just HP bullshit time and time again..
I have brothers, kyoceras and others that just work and work without any issues. But HPs are just nagging offline fucking pains in the ass.
So the plan dictates how many pages you can print each month? Feck no! I own a Brother laser printer and I’m so glad I escaped the HP madness years ago.
Yes and no. If you exceed that, I think they just bill you for the next tier.
If you cancel, they immediately remote disable the perfectly working cartridges already in your printer that are still full of ink. Even if you've fully paid for the remainder of the month.
It's a complete scam. Just don't buy an HP printer, Instant Ink or not.
Of course they disable the cartridge. You're paying for ink on a subscription. If you didn't pay for cart in full, why should you be able to use the rest of it? That's literally what you signed up for. Otherwise everyone would get a full cartridge for $1.
If you don't want to do ink-cart-layaway, don't sign up and buy the cartridge.
Disabling mid-month is a scam though.
Me: writes whole reply about why mid month canceling is a scam, and then realizing I didn't read your last line and writing this instead.
They could have made this subscription far easier and fairer if they wanted to. A service that simply buys a new cartridge once your existing one reaches a threshold (say 20% left) would be simple to implement, simple to understand and even be quite useful. Instead this Instant Ink thing is an abomination of multiple tiers and price gouging.
Just making it easier not to buy one!
"buy"
Being boycotting this shitstain company since Carly Fiorina turned it into a perfect example of peak 1990's MBA management style (the kind that killed companies like GE) and, once again, I get to pat myself on the back for it.
Almost 20 years of regular smug self-satisfaction for free is a pretty good investment.
Any reliable recommendations for ink jets, in that case?
Last time around I needed a new printer a couple of years ago, I looked around for decent inkjets and couldn't really find any brands which weren't undergoing enshittification, so as I only really need B&W I decided to pony up the extra money and bought a "cheap" Brother laser printer instead.
Thanks, I share the same opinion, but don’t want a particle source at home for small/mid-volume printing.
None.
Go laser. It's worth the difference in price.
I have a 1996 Lexmark laser that just quit on me in July. It's 14" wide, about 9" tall and 9" deep.
I prefer lasers in special ventilated environments, but not at my home 😀
If like me you don't print much but still need a printer occasionally, get a laser printer (possibly a scanner multifunction, since it can be handy to scan your receipts), and just buy your cartridges normally. Laser toner won't dry up like ink does, so you end up paying less for your infrequent prints in the long run.
Go to your local goodwill/thrift store and check for laser printers.
Get a laser printer, with toner cart, for less than 20, often less than 10, bucks.
Yeah but, how big are they?
Old ones can be big, yeah.
Depends.
Though I suspect what you can find used for a good price will generally be larger.
You have a scanner in your pocket, just a reminder.
It doesn't do as good a job, unless there's something I could be doing better.
It's probably down to the scanner app. I'm using CamScanner.
Tiny Scanner for Android
Adobe Scan works as good as a scanner if you use their cropping system to square up the page afterwards.
Ink subscription is a bad descriptor
You pay per page, if you have extra ink leftover then you don’t have access to it
Isn't that worse? It's hard to say at these levels of corporate nastiness but I was surprised they could go lower
Yes, the ink subscription is their corporate speak
At this point, I am positive the HP printer marketing department, have lost their collective minds.
Most marketing departments are retarded, but this seems to be a new level of dumb. Bricking printers, blocking 3rd party, messing with firmware, price gouging..
Brother are simple, reliable, low cost and dependable. Every one I have used in commercial or watched in home use have been straight up boss. I don't own one, but it will be my next printer when the Epson runs out of ink, mark my words!
They do it because they can get away with it. Zero consequences, and they still have a legion of customers who are happy to piss their money down the drain on egregiously overpriced ink.
I totally agree with you: Brother laser printers all the way.
As a satisfied owner of a Brother laser printer, I can safely say I would never want anything else.
I'm so glad I just happened to get a Brother. It was the cheapest one that had the features I wanted (that wasn't from a completely unknown brand) and it wasn't an HP. I've been nothing but happy with mine and seeing all the love Brother printers get it feels like I totally lucked out.
People keep buying them and signing up for an ink subscription. If people are that dumb, they'd be insane NOT to milk them for cash
This. Just like Apple users.
Wow, what a scam!
Seriously, fuck HP.
You know why all of the printer companies are so shitty? It's because they're in the business of selling printers. That's why they break and cost so much to maintain. You know why the sewing machine company sells printers that work? Because they accidentally let some of their sewing machine engineers make printers.
Who is the sewing machine company?
That would be Brother.
i had no idea, nice
Yeah, until the printer engineers took over from the sewing machine engineers in around 2020. Even Brother is evil now, rolling out firmware updates that render third party toner useless or do even more evil shenanigans via firmware:
I don't think there's a good brand left these days, Brother was the last bastion of "not shitty" and now they, too, were enshittified.
I've seen a lot of recommendations for Brother, I want to add one for Ricoh.
I bought a B/W laser printer from Ricoh (213w IIRC) a decade ago for under 40 bucks and a new generic, no-name Amazon toner refill for 25 like 5 years ago. Printed thousands of pages, just sitting in a corner under the stairs.
Bonus: it uses Wi-Fi (so anyone in the house can print) and is compatible with generic PCL drivers in Linux.
Any laser printer is better for occasional printing. Ink doesn’t dry up, no nozzles to get clogged. It just sits there waiting to be used and prints beautifully when you do. I’m so done with ink jets.
"Ink doesn't dry up" maybe you meant toner.
Well, ink can't dry up if it doesn't have any ink to dry up.
Thanks for the advice I am going to see if I can find one
I think they don't make the home printers anymore.
That sucks, but maybe second-hand can be found, even cheaper.
HP actually has a brilliant business strategy.
First get a huge customer base via cheap ass product
Remove the customers who care about quality
Remove the customers who care about reliability
Remove the customers who care about price
Remove the customers who pay attention to their monthly bills
voila, you have like 3 people left who you can charge infinite money for a lump of shit. Infinite profit margins
The only thing that still might save printers is competition.
Euuhh does nobody realize Brother has existed for like 20 years and doesn't pull all this HP shit? They even have label printers which allow third party labels.
There are inkjet printers now from multiple other brands which are great too and allow full refills.
Just don't buy HP it's that easy.
Dude. Brother was founded in 1908.
1908 was … like 20 years ago.
Euuhh does nobody realize Brother has existed for like 20 years and doesn't pull all this HP shit?
You were right until around 2020 when Brother, too, started to roll out firmware updates outright blocking third party toners or even worse, making the printers intentionally print like crap with third party cartridges:
Now, that even Brother has turned to the dark side, I really don't know what printer to recommend other than older/used Brothers with firmware updates disabled.
With all the Big Brains at HP making up all this atrocious bullshit you'd think one of them would say "why don't we buy all the competition like the large media companies are doing? It's not like the US will stop us, hell they'll give us subsidies or something."
I will never buy or recommend HP printers ever again. If you need a general printer, Brother all the way now.
Are these posts about HP just a way for Brother to advertise in the comment section
I mean I'm definitely cancelling my HP subscription, but still. It's a lot.
No. It's like bitwarden. Everyone's praising them to shill levels because they are generally that good. Brothers just run and run without nagging or insane prices. They do tend to be a little more expensive because they don't lose money on the hardware like HP or cannon will.
Perfect analogy. I completely shill for both Bitwarden and Brother printers because they legit are just that good. When I find products like that they're what I push to my family and friends because they "just work."
Not advertising but I did buy a brother laser maybe two years ago for home. I rarely need color, if I need something stunning I’ll send it to Office Depot and pay .50 each. That’s maybe two time a year. $20 a year for an off brand toner cartridge otherwise.
LOL, if not, Brother's marketing should lean into it. I got an old HP laser that cranks 1,000+ pages for $20. I'll run the wheels off it and buy a Brother.
HP is coasting on goodwill from us old folks who remember when they were the best of best.
I think it’s just wave after wave of people who are shocked to discover what a horrible mess HP printers are. Some of us learned it many years ago.
If it helps even it out for you - I'm quite happy with my Epson lol
I hate to /HailCorporate but it was affordable, takes cheap unbranded ink, and hasn't given me much trouble (I don't use it often, so the ink heads do dry, but a couple of cycles of head cleaning and they're good to go again).
I'll shill for brother because it's cheap, they don't lock out generic cartridges, prints well on the network from Linux, and seem to last.
What they are missing on compared to HP is parts support. However, the comparable HP printer with parts support is twice the price and the parts are almost the cost of a new cheap printer.
Lexmark is okay too, I guess.
Who the fuck keep buying HP in 2023 when there are lots of other brands available in the market?
companies and uninformed people who fall for the "recommendations" at the store.
Corps.
I've heard their business-oriented products are much much better. Which makes sense, because business customers tend to have contracts that cost the supplier money when things don't work, whereas pissing off consumers usually costs nothing in the short term.
Go into a store like Walmart and you will have 6 different HP printers, 1 epson, and empty spots where the 1 Lexmark sits. Once you get to rural areas you don’t have much of an option to specially when the point of purchase already limits your purchase options.
Most people will not drive 1-2+ hours to get more options.
Man, if only we could buy printers online!
B-b-b but the $2 shipping is gonna ruin me!
Yes some can. I’m one of them. My in-laws, nope wanna see it I. Person first. And when you need it now, not in a day or two
The number of papers that subscribers are allowed to print...
hahaha
It's literally cheaper for me to drive to a local printing shop, pay for parking, and drive back, than buy one of these dogshit HP printers, and then get scammed by their ink cartridges
This is yet another reason why I would not buy or recommend HP printers anymore. My ancient laserjet from 10 years ago is still going strong, but if it ever kicks the bucket, I'm getting a Brother. They seem to just work without any hassle.
HP selling hardware with digital blackmail fees
I am guessing people aren't printing as much as they used to and the prices will just go up eventually.
Also, fuck printers, and HP specifically.
Subscription-based hardware business models, or anything that is cloud-based have a strong tendency to do this. They sucker you into buying their hardware with rock bottom prices and reasonable subscription fees and slowly they increase the prices and put more and more features and functionalities behind increasing paywalls.
Never buy anything that you don't fully own after paying for it.
My brother laser jet still happily prints.
the way you phrase it I thought your brother is a laser jet lol
Don't be silly. The laser jet ain't my brother. That's reserved for Brother P-Touch ❤️❤️
Cannon has gotten so bad, that I can't remember what printer brand I hated before them. I am pretty sure it was cannon though.
too bad. they used to be petty good
I hate hearing that about Canon. I’ve always been a big fan and they used to be the reasonable ones. Of course my printer is a bit older, to the extent that it’s not supported in Windows 11 (it’s easier to print Windows documents from Linux or my iPhone), and it’s off my list for any future printers
Oh Brother, where art thou?
Yeah, I had a Canon BW laser printer that has chugged along and gave no complaints with a toner cartridge I paid $20 for a 3-pack. Another family member has inherited it but hearing the fact they are stepping up their DRM leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
We solved printing decades ago. What’s the need to constantly add more complexity in pricing? It’s not like there were major breakthroughs in technology or something. Printing is printing.
We've had some major breakthroughs in gouging and selling things as a service at exorbitant rates.
We've had some major breakthroughs in regulatory capture of the FTC.
Maybe you should think a little more about the shareholders and little less about yourself. /s
It's called capitalism, and it relies on constant and infinite growth, which is impossible, but that's not going to stop those making all the money from trying (until the whole thing collapses on us all while they hide out in their bunker).
*aas run amok.
The cheapest plan is .10 euro a month per page if you only print 10 pages. (.99 euro, max 10 pages). Just pay a library or kinkos at that point!
they charge you PER PAGE??!
No, you get billed X euro per month, which gives you the "right" to print up to X pages each month. Even worse.
in the year of our lord below 2023, it is so easy to just go to a print shop the 0.5 times per year you have to print something
... if you live in a city
Exactly. Everyone needs to live in bumfuck nowhere atleast a year or two, just as a personality building exercise.
Lived there for about five years. Pretty sure my small backwater burg was built over a hell mouth. Very interesting high school years. Teenagers aren't smart but even relative to that low standard willful stupidity was almost as abundant as substance abuze, field cars, and animals that live in a weird Twilight zone between pet and wild around a house that lives in a weird Twilight zone between being renovated and being whole.
I hope you live in a better place now. I know the kind of place you're talking about.
God, the amount of times I've had to explain the EcoTank vs HP math to customers in my store, and then STILL have them pick an HP is fucking baffling.
My deepest condolences - the absolutely dire mathematical skills of the purchasing public never cease to horrify me.
They are both terrible. HP for obvious reasons, Epson for its self destruct timers.
If they want a third option, I usually recommend Brother, and even more I tend to recommend used/refurbished. We just don't carry those in my store.
Brother used to be the best choice, until ~2020 when they, too, went over to the dark side and secretly blocked third party toners via firmware auto-updates.
Not sure if any non-shitty printer makers are left, there's only so long that you can recommend "try to find an old Brother printer and disable firmware updates" is an effective choice.
Until the software counter decides that the waste ink pad is full and the thing blows a software fuse.
Epson's official solution to a full pad is to throw out your printer and buy a new one - literally a printer with a self destruct timer. Not very "eco".
Cursory research about this seems you can replace it yourself for $10. Are you sure about this?
Yes, the hardware (a cheap sponge, essentially) that the counter "protects" is easily replaced for little money - but you still can't just reset the counter.
For "North American users" Epson now offers a tool to reset the self destruct counter one, single, time.
There are third parties now, that offer a reset of the software destruct counter, for a fee.
The fact that a printer sold as "Eco" has a software self destruct that the user requires an unlock key to reset - an occurrence frequent enough to make it a profitable business for third parties to sell such keys - should tell you all you need to know about these printers.
I couldn't confirm, but there supposedly are more premium models with user serviceable waste ink tanks that don't have a self destruct, but most consumer models very much have this limitation.
Thanks for the info, that's absurd. I don't know why more people are talking about this then.
/Shocked pickachu face.
Get 'em hooked, make 'em pay.
dell
brother
I pity the fool that doesn't listen to the Hulkster.
I actually have a HP printer with instant ink. When it first launched it was great, there was a "free" tier that was like up to 10 pages free per month.
I don't print a lot but like having a printer for the odd job so that was ideal for me. Now and again a new ink cartridge would arrive and I just didn't think about it.
But they took away the free tier, so I've been on that £0.99 plan which is like 15 pages a month. I put up with it because it was convenient enough to not have to worry about ink, but I was still pissed off at the rug pull.
If they do raise the price in the UK, I'll just sell the printer and buy a new one that does super cheap ink.
Any recommendations out there?
Inkjet is pretty much terrible for anyone printing very little (more ink wasted on cleaning cycles than actually printing, high chance that the ink dries up regardless) and very much (stupidly expensive and unreliable).
If you don't need color, get a cheap b/w laser printer. Brother used to be one of the last good ones until they, too, decided to block third party cartridges via firmware updates last year.
If you can get an old, used, Brother laser printer for cheap, go for it - they were borderline indestructible and would print with any cheap toner.
Damn, and I thought brother was gonna keep riding out being good until the bitter end
Thats why I like ecotanks. Cant block a bottle.
The Epson printers with the non-serviceable waste ink pads and the software self destruct timer? Not sure how user friendly or "eco" those are.
Great idea, atrocious execution.
ET 4750 has a user replaceable waste pad. Which models don’t?
I have two Epson ecotank printers, one at home and one for small business. Not cheap, but the ink that comes with the printer lasts for years. That is at 30 pages a month or so. Avoid all inkjet printers with replaceable ink cartridges.
I have a Epson printer and the damn thing can only be setup through their official app, which requires location services to be enabled.
It also refuses to print documents from any device that doesn't have the Epson app installed.
Never buy a printer without a USB cable.
My Epson eco tanks don’t need any app for setup or printing. What model is yours?
Epson XP 2150
If you don't really need color, just buy a laser printer.
if you need color, the epson ecotank line is great. they do also have a counter that stops the entire printer after around 18000 pages, but it can be reset with 3rd party software and a 10$ software key. the purge tank for cleaning the nozzle fills up, so just take it out, wash the sponge and reset the counter. idk if newer models still have that counter.
If you live in or near a city, taking a USB stick with the docs to print to a print shop is probably the best option if you print very little - you even just "print to PDF" at home and take only that file to have the flexibility to print just the stuff you want the way you want it.
Unfortunately that is not a workable solution to me, but I appreciate that it's the best idea for most.
I'm in the same boat. I lost the free plan because we had to print a lot more during homeschooling that made sense to go up a couple of tiers for a month. Been on the £0.99 tier since. Didn't mind it because we do still use it occasionally and one time the nozzels on cart dried up and it got replaced at HP's expense.
So I don't hate instant ink, but only at it's current price. If it gets jacked up I'll probably just buy ordinary carts and take my chances on it clogging again. I can still nip into the office if I need a one off print, this one is just convenient.
Edit: it's £1.49
HP is like the facebook of printers. Hugely popular; absolute shit product.
Anything corporations think you can't do without will be raised until enough people have no choice but to stop buying them, then they'll hold it there.
Epson Eco tank to F HP's bullshit in the A.
I got one during Black Friday years ago and it came with so much extra ink that I still haven't bought more ink for it 😅
HP taking business ideas from Elon I see.
“The beatings will continue until moral improves”
After 15 years of having to buy a new ink printer almost every year. We just bought an entry level laser printer. Same printer for 20 years now. Never even changed the toner yet. Was a huge upfront cost of 500$ compared to the 100$ ink jets, but man is it ever nice to just completely forget your printer exists until you hit the print button, grab your document, then go back to completely forgetting you own a printer. Never have to put any thought or effort into it. Just sits there always being ready and fully functional.
When we do have to change the toner, the exact same standardized cartridges are still the ones they use on the new ones, so they will be around when we need them.
I fortunately only did a inkjets for 3-4 years before I went laser. I even bought a second toner cartridge at the same time! 15 years later, I actually used the 2nd cartridge-the printer is still going (albeit it seems it may only last another 5-10 years).
the article sorta implies that only 'hp+' denies use of third-party cartridges for life of the printer.. but just plain 'instant ink' subs do, too, through mandatory automatic firmware updates to the printer that will immediately install a firmware update with 'dynamic security' that blocks all but 'genuine' oem cartridges.
I use Instant Ink in the US, and I haven't received an email about a price increase.
I know no one wants to hear this, based on past experience, but I'll say it anyway: The plan has worked fine for us. Our ink costs went from $60-$80/year to $12. The printer works fine, too; we've not had any problems with it. Obviously we don't print a ton, but we do print enough that we want to have a printer. If we did print a ton of stuff, I'd definitely go a different direction than Instant Ink, but for our light use, it works fine.
If you were paying $60/year to print, I'd say you were printing a lot.
That's as much as I ever paid for a printer. I have two currently, a BW laser and a color. Paid $50 for the color used...its 2 years old.
Just can't see wasting money on inkjets with their issues, and I've had many. First was a 1992 HP Bubble jet, which worked great for the time, but died before it ran out of ink.
Good. Stop printing.
You can pry my EcoTank from my cold, dead hands.
Do they still do the free tier that gives 10 pages a month?
50% of 0 == 0 :)
No, that's 0.99 and going up to a buck fifty.
Too bad, you can either use expensive ink, or use expensive subscription.
or other printer
This! Get your ink from Ali Express and live your best life.
Did... did they suffer some head trauma?
There's a simple solution to that:
Well color me shocked.
You Dawg, that's still a big FU! HP for me...
Damn. I don't print much, but I did get my HP printer dirt cheap. Wish there was some sort of hack around this.
Bold move, Cotton. Let's see if it works out XD
Can't read "Cotton" without thinking of the fiddy men he traded for his shins.
Phase printers the fuck out already. No, we dont absolutely need paper in every office.
I have not had to print anything in a long time. A long time. What are people printing?
Shipping labels, legal documents, receipts, and more. Just because 99% of things can be done digitally, doesn’t mean the 1% stops existing.
Hmm. I guess whenever I need to ship something, the place I go prints the label. Most recently UPS printed and packaged a Steamdeck I shipped to my nephew. If it’s going back to Amazon I just take the item to Kohls and they handle it. The receipts and more…I just show the email with the QR code if I’m returning something to Home Depot or Best Buy.
It’s crazy, I really have no need for a printer for the past …god. It’s been forever.
One thing you could likely benefit from, even if it’s only sometimes. Look into Pirate Ship. You do need to print your own labels, but they are much cheaper than retail. I’ve had package labels as much as 40% discounted in some instances.
Receipts are normally fine digital, but a lot of government bodies want paper for some things. And “mail in rebates” and the like need printed as well.
The only reason I still have my HP is because they have a free tier. It’s extremely limited, but I pay nothing since I don’t go over 10 pages a month. If they ever try to take that tier away, or if we start needing more prints, I’m definitely looking into a laser printer, maybe even a second hand office unit.
Edit: Spelling mistake in link.
You don't print out memes to put on your fridge like everyone else?
I tattoo memes onto the inside of my eyelids for maximum exposure.
Color by numbers for the kids. Got a LaserJet though and I use that website that sells bootleg yet serviceable toner cartridges.
That sounds like a good use. For me, my kids are dogs. If I print things out for them to color they just chew them up. Speaking of receipts, somehow one of them got ahold of one today. I chased him and he escaped under the bed, to chew at his leisure.
I'm going to poke the hive.
I actually have zero issues with my HP laser printer, and I've never been pestered to use their Ink/Toner subscription service.
It's only a hassle if you choose to use it?
They're a fucking shitty company, sure agreed, but last I checked (unless it's specific models that I'm unaware of which require it) it's still a service you have to choose to use. If you don't choose to use it... you can just buy ink and toner normally, like I do.
It took me almost two years to run out of toner from the date of purchase. I don't print a lot.
I choose to use Instant Ink because I don't print a lot and it still beats buying the carts. HP ships them to me for free and automatically before I run out and gives me return postage for the empties to be recycled.
They also don't have different rates for B/W and Color so I just print everything in color.
I dont stress over $1/mo (or $1.50/mo if this increase hits me). I've had this printer for 2yrs on the cheapest plan and I've still not paid the full price of a set of cartridges.
I'm sure I'll be down votes for saying anything positive about the program but whatever. It works fine for me.
Unless you REALLY need color, just buy a Brother BW laser printer. Toner doesn't dry up. It is all but guaranteed to be the cheapest option. I bought the scanner BW laser printer combo like 8 years ago for $130.
+10 for being able to take a document right from the printer and rub it all over without the ink smearing.
But buying a second printer would make my current 2yr investment a waste so savings would be a wash.
Also I do need color sometimes making the HP the better value until they start charging more for color.
Definitely will consider it when this printer dies though.
At their "cheapest" 0.099 euro / $0.11 USD tier it is already literally cheaper per page (albeit certainly not faster) for me to print documents as 8.5x11" 0.1mm thick single layer slabs of plastic on my 3D printer.
An entire "blank" page, i.e. no cutouts for text or anything, would be about 0.754 grams of plastic. That's about $0.0143 per page at a not-too-exorbitant retail cost of PLA filament ($18.99 USD for a kilo) and the material usage would be even less once the negative space for text is subtracted. And I don't even have to buy the paper.
That's mind boggling. Apparently I'm in the wrong racket.
That's pathetic, hopefully they go out of business soon. Just think of all the filiment that could have been made instead of e waste
Get a Brother laserjet.
I was highly considering a Brother, now I definitely will get one.
Epson Eco Tank is the cheapest best printer I've ever had.
Do you use a model with pigment inks or dye inks? I currently use a pigment based hp inkjet. I thought about switching to ecotank but the pigment refills are comparable to hp pigment cost. I assume the ecotank would get a higher page count from the same cost of ink? The pigment based ecotank models I shopped around were quite a bit more expensive than the entry level dye based models.
I use the cheap Eko tank that doesn't auto feed...wish I had done the auto feed. It just takes a 15 dollar bottle of ink for each color. In 4 years I've used one black bottle and 1/2 the colors.
I've had two in the span of about 16 years. Only reason I got a new one was because I couldn't find decent drivers for it for Windows 8. Considering with HP and Epson inkjets they wouldn't even last 2 years, 8+ years is a good deal. Brother printers are excellent.
Mines been good. Light to medium duty use.
I've had my brother for 11 years, still going strong
I'm at five years for ours. We used the included 'teaser' toner cartridge for almost three years. After the first year, it warned us the toner was low. We laughed and turned the warning off and it just continued to provide toner for nearly another two years.
We now have an "extra large" toner cartridge. Like owning a parrot, my wife and I expect it'll outlast both of us and our children or grandchildren will get stuck with it. We're both 35.
I got a huge office printing center thing from government liquidation out of my nearby military base for $55. It came with more toner than I could ever use in my lifetime.
Sadly, they are also evil now. Latest firmware (~2020) outright blocks third party cartridges or, even more evil, accepts them and then secretly and intentionally, prints like crap:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860131
Everything until ~2019 is awesome, though. Just disable firmware updates.
Holy shit, .15 euros per page? Why not just run to der Kinkos? I haven’t checked but I imagine it’s cheaper there. I get the convenience of having a printer at home but this is like if every cup of coffee you make at home cost you the Starbucks $8.25.
Or just don't buy HP.
probably cheaper to print with blood than to use HP printers
In the US, if you print ~52(+) B&W pages a year, HP Instant Spyware is seemingly cheaper.
FedEx Kinko’s:
Non-EU- lett Packard:
For color, HP’s cheaper once you print two pages a month.
Printing is a good excuse to walk to the local print shop. Let’s say, though, you have to drive your Honda Civic a couple miles through Los Angeles - that adds roughly thirty cents of fuel (ignoring other vehicle costs). (That’s our bestselling car in our second largest city, because you wouldn’t give up your parking spot in NYC.)
Conventional wisdom is to buy a Brother laser printer, but there’s a bit of upfront cost for the color models, which are a little larger when comparing versions with scanners to inkjet all-in-ones. Who wants to do the math on those :)
…whoh they have their own subscription!
Anyway I think this is more like having a printing-press-barista in your closet instead of going to the print-barista down the street. It could be anywhere from 76 cents more expensive to $5.80 less expensive a month. Compare to a Mr. Coffee which you’ll pay off right away by skipping Starbucks.
tl;dr let HP siphon your data, what’s the worst that could happen? 😈
Does that include the price of the printer?
Oops yeah add in $45!! That’s 67 color pages worth of cheddar if you walk to Kinko’s - that I forgot about.
You forgot about that beautiful thing also known as your local library!
Mine is around 2 miles away from my home and only charges me 10¢ per b&w sheet. Its absolutely perfect for any printing needs I may have.
Unfortunately my city's library system was hacked a few months ago and all of their computer services are down until January while they un-fuck things. In the meantime I go to Staples when I want to print.
Great point!
In San Francisco, it’s ten cents AND you get two bucks worth a day free.
You reminded me: sometimes local politicians will let you fax (and thus perhaps print) free at their offices.
My thing is…they can dictate how much you use YOUR OWN PRINTER??? Like…how? Why? What.
Like…
WHAT.
$8.25 for a Starbucks? Man, it's like £3.55-£4 here in UK.
Depends on the drink. Get a super-frappa-extrashot-sugar bomb and yeah, it’ll be $8-9 easy. A regular medium coffee is $3 or so.
Depends on location too. I live in Seattle, I don't know the last time I've seen a cup for less than $6 on anything other than drip
I've got a whole 0.5kg bag of coffee for that much in Germany, and that'll last me almost a month (~25 cups). What's so good about Starbucks that it costs as much per cup?
Nothing really. I just can't make that when traveling. Unfortunately when out and about in the UK you either have Costa, Starbucks or Nero around the same price or McDonald's and Greggs which is cheaper. It's very hard to find any local coffee shops.
Yeah, depending on where you live, it may be cheaper to go to your local printer shop. Plus minus cost of transport and your time.
I did not check HP's prices to Poland. Table lists 100 pages as 0.07EUR/page. Krakow, Poland, nearby printer shop takes ~0.02-0.07EUR per A4 page, and there is no subscription. Nor doing 100 pages.
Brother printer gang printing with their tears of joy.
I got a Brother with the big chonker carts, I usually only print once every 5-6 months and I'm still g2g like 5-6 years in.
I gotta run a cleaning cycle each time usually but that's perfectly understandable haha.
Here too, just don't update your firmware (and turn off auto-updates). Brother went evil around 2020, too.
What !! Really? That's sad
Jesus fuckin Christ I was today years old when I learned about HP Instant Ink. Good gracious what a scam
The whole company is a scam. I've seen a couple of big companies get nice bulk discount contracts.
$1600 off of laptop workstations. Who the fuck can afford a bulk discount of 50%?
I don't think they even used HP printers.
HP laptops also come with spyware installed. Hp touchpoint analytics, that you can't remove.
You can always reinstall windows
While I do agree that HP is a very scummy + awful company, their pricing system is not worse than that of many other companies. Many many companies use an inflated listed price system in combination with very large discounts, often fixed discounts per customer.
There's several benefits to this. One of the biggest is that it allows their vendors to give nice "discounts" to entice ignorant customers. Ignorant people are more likely to buy a $2000 computer with 50% discount than a $1000 with 0% discount. And occasionally someone will come along and be scammed out of paying full listed price.
Inflating the list price is just very common and 50% is not even one of the worst offenders, just look at American health insurance prices for a much more egregious example. Construction building suppliers also systematically use it and "discounts" of 40 to 70% are common.
The big companies like that get the laptops at cost because they sign up for juicy support contracts, which is where the real money is
I used instant ink when I was living temporarily in Vancouver. It was actually worth the price back then. Now? Forget it.
Easy. Never buy HP. Their printers are shit and so are their laptops.
What's wrong with their laptops? I've never had any issues.
For starters you don't need a heating unit if you keep their laptop running inside
I've never had that problem. But I've never had a particularly high end HP laptop so maybe those are different.
Also their batteries get pregnant every other year and if you don't fix it, it sets your house on fire.
Damn it, people need to stop fucking batteries or use protection.
🤣🤣🤣
Hahahahaja
Thanks for the laugh, and the vision.
Also, I'll be stealing the "getting pregnant" line
Source?
Anecdotal.
There's someone to say something bad about every computer brand.
Their consumer line has very poor build quality. Cheap everything. All of the plastic is flimsy and breaks easily, inadequate cooling, etc. They're built about as good as Acer, but at a price that you'd expect from a much, much better brand.
Then there's how dedicated they are to screwing you. I won't touch them again for any reason after how malicious they were with the nVidia failures.
It amazes me that there are so many people who buy a printer, are offered this "pay $x a month for Y pages" type of plan, and say yes. I mean, sure, HP sucks, but they wouldn't be able to get away with such slimy business practices if there weren't so many people willing to pay.
I am obligated by my work to offer this to customers when they buy an HP printer and I make it really clear that it's a bad deal for most customers. There are some edge case examples, like a lady with a small business who always prints exactly like 3 pages a day. The other customers who agree to buy it are almost always the super old people who don't want to have to come to the store to get more ink. I think it's a shit program that should be scrapped entirely, but some people really don't care if it's a bad deal as long as they get the convenience. No different than 7-11 up charging shit because it's easier to buy it at the market down the street than the Walmart a few miles down the road.
Spend a bit more and get a laser and have it last exponentially longer. That's how I've been rollin.
I keep saying it around here - my 1996 Lexmark laser just died in July.
Almost 30 years old. And I think I can fix it.
My cheap 300$ laser died after 8 years, so replaced it with a 600 better one. Let's see how this goes 😂
If you still own a HP printer, it's your own fault. Sorry. Got an Canon with liquid refill, loved it, equipped my company with it & recommended it to everyone I know. It's not even expensive & the quality is impeccable. Plus: no problems whatsoever over Linux.
EDIT: CANON, not Epson. I'm distracted sometimes. Canon PIXMA G4511, sub 300 Eur.
Wait till you find out it purges the lines every print, and while you can replace the purge sponge, the system doesn’t always have a “reset the purge sponge” option. And the ones that do use a rather unknown button combination that may or may not work.
I have an ecotank, no linux support.
Sorry, that happens when I do too many things at the same time. Canon. I'm talking of the Canon G4511 liquid refill.
My epson ecotank l6490 works like charm with Linux..
For me too with wifi, and the standarised network printing 🤣 but not when directly connected to pc with usb.
My FIL owns an HP with a subscription. I've given up on the things he wastes money on; most of them he's not really technically savvy enough to implement anyway. (And, yes, buying a printer and getting it installed may exceed his technical abilities)
I have one of those, it won't work with my Linux though :/
Now I fucked it up, my finger wrote "Epson x while my brain thought "Canon"... I was talking the Canon G4511.
I only use it for scanning now. I was mad when my parents bought a new one.
Education is the key.
Breaking news: Printer company behaves like printer companies always have. User hostile.
This just in: Capitalism works
hahahaa i recently dumped them for a big, sturdy, traditional, offline Brother laser. it's ridiculous how much more satisfying it is to print, especially without HP breathing over your shoulder counting how many pages you've printed in the last billing period
Satisfying isn't the word. We have to generally use HP for SAP purposes so unfortunately I have to buy HP for work. Guess what? Every fucking month a few clients need printer support. Just HP bullshit time and time again..
I have brothers, kyoceras and others that just work and work without any issues. But HPs are just nagging offline fucking pains in the ass.
So the plan dictates how many pages you can print each month? Feck no! I own a Brother laser printer and I’m so glad I escaped the HP madness years ago.
Yes and no. If you exceed that, I think they just bill you for the next tier.
If you cancel, they immediately remote disable the perfectly working cartridges already in your printer that are still full of ink. Even if you've fully paid for the remainder of the month.
It's a complete scam. Just don't buy an HP printer, Instant Ink or not.
Of course they disable the cartridge. You're paying for ink on a subscription. If you didn't pay for cart in full, why should you be able to use the rest of it? That's literally what you signed up for. Otherwise everyone would get a full cartridge for $1.
If you don't want to do ink-cart-layaway, don't sign up and buy the cartridge.
Disabling mid-month is a scam though.
Me: writes whole reply about why mid month canceling is a scam, and then realizing I didn't read your last line and writing this instead.
They could have made this subscription far easier and fairer if they wanted to. A service that simply buys a new cartridge once your existing one reaches a threshold (say 20% left) would be simple to implement, simple to understand and even be quite useful. Instead this Instant Ink thing is an abomination of multiple tiers and price gouging.
Just making it easier not to buy one!
"buy"
Being boycotting this shitstain company since Carly Fiorina turned it into a perfect example of peak 1990's MBA management style (the kind that killed companies like GE) and, once again, I get to pat myself on the back for it.
Almost 20 years of regular smug self-satisfaction for free is a pretty good investment.
Any reliable recommendations for ink jets, in that case?
Last time around I needed a new printer a couple of years ago, I looked around for decent inkjets and couldn't really find any brands which weren't undergoing enshittification, so as I only really need B&W I decided to pony up the extra money and bought a "cheap" Brother laser printer instead.
Thanks, I share the same opinion, but don’t want a particle source at home for small/mid-volume printing.
None.
Go laser. It's worth the difference in price.
I have a 1996 Lexmark laser that just quit on me in July. It's 14" wide, about 9" tall and 9" deep.
I prefer lasers in special ventilated environments, but not at my home 😀
If like me you don't print much but still need a printer occasionally, get a laser printer (possibly a scanner multifunction, since it can be handy to scan your receipts), and just buy your cartridges normally. Laser toner won't dry up like ink does, so you end up paying less for your infrequent prints in the long run.
Go to your local goodwill/thrift store and check for laser printers.
Get a laser printer, with toner cart, for less than 20, often less than 10, bucks.
Yeah but, how big are they?
Old ones can be big, yeah.
Depends.
Though I suspect what you can find used for a good price will generally be larger.
You have a scanner in your pocket, just a reminder.
It doesn't do as good a job, unless there's something I could be doing better.
It's probably down to the scanner app. I'm using CamScanner.
Tiny Scanner for Android
Adobe Scan works as good as a scanner if you use their cropping system to square up the page afterwards.
Ink subscription is a bad descriptor
You pay per page, if you have extra ink leftover then you don’t have access to it
Isn't that worse? It's hard to say at these levels of corporate nastiness but I was surprised they could go lower
Yes, the ink subscription is their corporate speak
At this point, I am positive the HP printer marketing department, have lost their collective minds.
Most marketing departments are retarded, but this seems to be a new level of dumb. Bricking printers, blocking 3rd party, messing with firmware, price gouging..
Brother are simple, reliable, low cost and dependable. Every one I have used in commercial or watched in home use have been straight up boss. I don't own one, but it will be my next printer when the Epson runs out of ink, mark my words!
They do it because they can get away with it. Zero consequences, and they still have a legion of customers who are happy to piss their money down the drain on egregiously overpriced ink.
I totally agree with you: Brother laser printers all the way.
As a satisfied owner of a Brother laser printer, I can safely say I would never want anything else.
I'm so glad I just happened to get a Brother. It was the cheapest one that had the features I wanted (that wasn't from a completely unknown brand) and it wasn't an HP. I've been nothing but happy with mine and seeing all the love Brother printers get it feels like I totally lucked out.
People keep buying them and signing up for an ink subscription. If people are that dumb, they'd be insane NOT to milk them for cash
This. Just like Apple users.
Wow, what a scam!
Seriously, fuck HP.
You know why all of the printer companies are so shitty? It's because they're in the business of selling printers. That's why they break and cost so much to maintain. You know why the sewing machine company sells printers that work? Because they accidentally let some of their sewing machine engineers make printers.
Who is the sewing machine company?
That would be Brother.
i had no idea, nice
Yeah, until the printer engineers took over from the sewing machine engineers in around 2020. Even Brother is evil now, rolling out firmware updates that render third party toner useless or do even more evil shenanigans via firmware:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860131
I don't think there's a good brand left these days, Brother was the last bastion of "not shitty" and now they, too, were enshittified.
I've seen a lot of recommendations for Brother, I want to add one for Ricoh.
I bought a B/W laser printer from Ricoh (213w IIRC) a decade ago for under 40 bucks and a new generic, no-name Amazon toner refill for 25 like 5 years ago. Printed thousands of pages, just sitting in a corner under the stairs.
Bonus: it uses Wi-Fi (so anyone in the house can print) and is compatible with generic PCL drivers in Linux.
Any laser printer is better for occasional printing. Ink doesn’t dry up, no nozzles to get clogged. It just sits there waiting to be used and prints beautifully when you do. I’m so done with ink jets.
"Ink doesn't dry up" maybe you meant toner.
Well, ink can't dry up if it doesn't have any ink to dry up.
Thanks for the advice I am going to see if I can find one
I think they don't make the home printers anymore.
That sucks, but maybe second-hand can be found, even cheaper.
HP actually has a brilliant business strategy.
First get a huge customer base via cheap ass product
Remove the customers who care about quality
Remove the customers who care about reliability
Remove the customers who care about price
Remove the customers who pay attention to their monthly bills
voila, you have like 3 people left who you can charge infinite money for a lump of shit. Infinite profit margins
The only thing that still might save printers is competition.
Euuhh does nobody realize Brother has existed for like 20 years and doesn't pull all this HP shit? They even have label printers which allow third party labels.
There are inkjet printers now from multiple other brands which are great too and allow full refills.
Just don't buy HP it's that easy.
Dude. Brother was founded in 1908.
1908 was … like 20 years ago.
You were right until around 2020 when Brother, too, started to roll out firmware updates outright blocking third party toners or even worse, making the printers intentionally print like crap with third party cartridges:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860131
Now, that even Brother has turned to the dark side, I really don't know what printer to recommend other than older/used Brothers with firmware updates disabled.
With all the Big Brains at HP making up all this atrocious bullshit you'd think one of them would say "why don't we buy all the competition like the large media companies are doing? It's not like the US will stop us, hell they'll give us subsidies or something."
I will never buy or recommend HP printers ever again. If you need a general printer, Brother all the way now.
Are these posts about HP just a way for Brother to advertise in the comment section
I mean I'm definitely cancelling my HP subscription, but still. It's a lot.
No. It's like bitwarden. Everyone's praising them to shill levels because they are generally that good. Brothers just run and run without nagging or insane prices. They do tend to be a little more expensive because they don't lose money on the hardware like HP or cannon will.
Perfect analogy. I completely shill for both Bitwarden and Brother printers because they legit are just that good. When I find products like that they're what I push to my family and friends because they "just work."
Not advertising but I did buy a brother laser maybe two years ago for home. I rarely need color, if I need something stunning I’ll send it to Office Depot and pay .50 each. That’s maybe two time a year. $20 a year for an off brand toner cartridge otherwise.
LOL, if not, Brother's marketing should lean into it. I got an old HP laser that cranks 1,000+ pages for $20. I'll run the wheels off it and buy a Brother.
HP is coasting on goodwill from us old folks who remember when they were the best of best.
I think it’s just wave after wave of people who are shocked to discover what a horrible mess HP printers are. Some of us learned it many years ago.
If it helps even it out for you - I'm quite happy with my Epson lol
I hate to /HailCorporate but it was affordable, takes cheap unbranded ink, and hasn't given me much trouble (I don't use it often, so the ink heads do dry, but a couple of cycles of head cleaning and they're good to go again).
I'll shill for brother because it's cheap, they don't lock out generic cartridges, prints well on the network from Linux, and seem to last.
What they are missing on compared to HP is parts support. However, the comparable HP printer with parts support is twice the price and the parts are almost the cost of a new cheap printer.
Lexmark is okay too, I guess.
Who the fuck keep buying HP in 2023 when there are lots of other brands available in the market?
companies and uninformed people who fall for the "recommendations" at the store.
Corps.
I've heard their business-oriented products are much much better. Which makes sense, because business customers tend to have contracts that cost the supplier money when things don't work, whereas pissing off consumers usually costs nothing in the short term.
Go into a store like Walmart and you will have 6 different HP printers, 1 epson, and empty spots where the 1 Lexmark sits. Once you get to rural areas you don’t have much of an option to specially when the point of purchase already limits your purchase options.
Most people will not drive 1-2+ hours to get more options.
Man, if only we could buy printers online!
B-b-b but the $2 shipping is gonna ruin me!
Yes some can. I’m one of them. My in-laws, nope wanna see it I. Person first. And when you need it now, not in a day or two
hahaha
It's literally cheaper for me to drive to a local printing shop, pay for parking, and drive back, than buy one of these dogshit HP printers, and then get scammed by their ink cartridges
This is yet another reason why I would not buy or recommend HP printers anymore. My ancient laserjet from 10 years ago is still going strong, but if it ever kicks the bucket, I'm getting a Brother. They seem to just work without any hassle.
HP selling hardware with digital blackmail fees
I am guessing people aren't printing as much as they used to and the prices will just go up eventually.
Also, fuck printers, and HP specifically.
Subscription-based hardware business models, or anything that is cloud-based have a strong tendency to do this. They sucker you into buying their hardware with rock bottom prices and reasonable subscription fees and slowly they increase the prices and put more and more features and functionalities behind increasing paywalls.
Never buy anything that you don't fully own after paying for it.
My brother laser jet still happily prints.
the way you phrase it I thought your brother is a laser jet lol
Don't be silly. The laser jet ain't my brother. That's reserved for Brother P-Touch ❤️❤️
https://www.brother-usa.com/ptouch
Do not update its firmware and disable auto-updates:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860131
Cannon has gotten so bad, that I can't remember what printer brand I hated before them. I am pretty sure it was cannon though.
too bad. they used to be petty good
I hate hearing that about Canon. I’ve always been a big fan and they used to be the reasonable ones. Of course my printer is a bit older, to the extent that it’s not supported in Windows 11 (it’s easier to print Windows documents from Linux or my iPhone), and it’s off my list for any future printers
Oh Brother, where art thou?
Yeah, I had a Canon BW laser printer that has chugged along and gave no complaints with a toner cartridge I paid $20 for a 3-pack. Another family member has inherited it but hearing the fact they are stepping up their DRM leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
We solved printing decades ago. What’s the need to constantly add more complexity in pricing? It’s not like there were major breakthroughs in technology or something. Printing is printing.
We've had some major breakthroughs in gouging and selling things as a service at exorbitant rates.
We've had some major breakthroughs in regulatory capture of the FTC.
Maybe you should think a little more about the shareholders and little less about yourself. /s
It's called capitalism, and it relies on constant and infinite growth, which is impossible, but that's not going to stop those making all the money from trying (until the whole thing collapses on us all while they hide out in their bunker).
*aas run amok.
The cheapest plan is .10 euro a month per page if you only print 10 pages. (.99 euro, max 10 pages). Just pay a library or kinkos at that point!
they charge you PER PAGE??!
No, you get billed X euro per month, which gives you the "right" to print up to X pages each month. Even worse.
in the year of our lord below 2023, it is so easy to just go to a print shop the 0.5 times per year you have to print something
... if you live in a city
Exactly. Everyone needs to live in bumfuck nowhere atleast a year or two, just as a personality building exercise.
Lived there for about five years. Pretty sure my small backwater burg was built over a hell mouth. Very interesting high school years. Teenagers aren't smart but even relative to that low standard willful stupidity was almost as abundant as substance abuze, field cars, and animals that live in a weird Twilight zone between pet and wild around a house that lives in a weird Twilight zone between being renovated and being whole.
I hope you live in a better place now. I know the kind of place you're talking about.
Oh yeah. Cities rock.. fuck the country.
most people do, obviously there are exceptions
omg, fuck these guys
Good, HP finally running their printer businesses into the ground. Paperless or bust.
Laughs in Epson Ecotank
laughs in off-brand toner sitting in my Brother
Laughs in BizHub color laser copier that fell off a truck
God, the amount of times I've had to explain the EcoTank vs HP math to customers in my store, and then STILL have them pick an HP is fucking baffling.
My deepest condolences - the absolutely dire mathematical skills of the purchasing public never cease to horrify me.
They are both terrible. HP for obvious reasons, Epson for its self destruct timers.
If they want a third option, I usually recommend Brother, and even more I tend to recommend used/refurbished. We just don't carry those in my store.
Brother used to be the best choice, until ~2020 when they, too, went over to the dark side and secretly blocked third party toners via firmware auto-updates.
Not sure if any non-shitty printer makers are left, there's only so long that you can recommend "try to find an old Brother printer and disable firmware updates" is an effective choice.
Until the software counter decides that the waste ink pad is full and the thing blows a software fuse.
Epson's official solution to a full pad is to throw out your printer and buy a new one - literally a printer with a self destruct timer. Not very "eco".
Cursory research about this seems you can replace it yourself for $10. Are you sure about this?
Yes, the hardware (a cheap sponge, essentially) that the counter "protects" is easily replaced for little money - but you still can't just reset the counter.
https://epson.com/support/epson-ink-pads-reset-utility-faqs
For "North American users" Epson now offers a tool to reset the self destruct counter one, single, time.
There are third parties now, that offer a reset of the software destruct counter, for a fee.
The fact that a printer sold as "Eco" has a software self destruct that the user requires an unlock key to reset - an occurrence frequent enough to make it a profitable business for third parties to sell such keys - should tell you all you need to know about these printers.
I couldn't confirm, but there supposedly are more premium models with user serviceable waste ink tanks that don't have a self destruct, but most consumer models very much have this limitation.
Thanks for the info, that's absurd. I don't know why more people are talking about this then.
/Shocked pickachu face.
Get 'em hooked, make 'em pay.
dell
brother
I pity the fool that doesn't listen to the Hulkster.
I actually have a HP printer with instant ink. When it first launched it was great, there was a "free" tier that was like up to 10 pages free per month.
I don't print a lot but like having a printer for the odd job so that was ideal for me. Now and again a new ink cartridge would arrive and I just didn't think about it.
But they took away the free tier, so I've been on that £0.99 plan which is like 15 pages a month. I put up with it because it was convenient enough to not have to worry about ink, but I was still pissed off at the rug pull.
If they do raise the price in the UK, I'll just sell the printer and buy a new one that does super cheap ink.
Any recommendations out there?
Inkjet is pretty much terrible for anyone printing very little (more ink wasted on cleaning cycles than actually printing, high chance that the ink dries up regardless) and very much (stupidly expensive and unreliable).
If you don't need color, get a cheap b/w laser printer. Brother used to be one of the last good ones until they, too, decided to block third party cartridges via firmware updates last year.
If you can get an old, used, Brother laser printer for cheap, go for it - they were borderline indestructible and would print with any cheap toner.
Damn, and I thought brother was gonna keep riding out being good until the bitter end
Thats why I like ecotanks. Cant block a bottle.
The Epson printers with the non-serviceable waste ink pads and the software self destruct timer? Not sure how user friendly or "eco" those are.
Great idea, atrocious execution.
ET 4750 has a user replaceable waste pad. Which models don’t?
I have two Epson ecotank printers, one at home and one for small business. Not cheap, but the ink that comes with the printer lasts for years. That is at 30 pages a month or so. Avoid all inkjet printers with replaceable ink cartridges.
I have a Epson printer and the damn thing can only be setup through their official app, which requires location services to be enabled. It also refuses to print documents from any device that doesn't have the Epson app installed.
Never buy a printer without a USB cable.
My Epson eco tanks don’t need any app for setup or printing. What model is yours?
Epson XP 2150
If you don't really need color, just buy a laser printer.
if you need color, the epson ecotank line is great. they do also have a counter that stops the entire printer after around 18000 pages, but it can be reset with 3rd party software and a 10$ software key. the purge tank for cleaning the nozzle fills up, so just take it out, wash the sponge and reset the counter. idk if newer models still have that counter.
If you live in or near a city, taking a USB stick with the docs to print to a print shop is probably the best option if you print very little - you even just "print to PDF" at home and take only that file to have the flexibility to print just the stuff you want the way you want it.
Unfortunately that is not a workable solution to me, but I appreciate that it's the best idea for most.
I'm in the same boat. I lost the free plan because we had to print a lot more during homeschooling that made sense to go up a couple of tiers for a month. Been on the £0.99 tier since. Didn't mind it because we do still use it occasionally and one time the nozzels on cart dried up and it got replaced at HP's expense.
So I don't hate instant ink, but only at it's current price. If it gets jacked up I'll probably just buy ordinary carts and take my chances on it clogging again. I can still nip into the office if I need a one off print, this one is just convenient.
Edit: it's £1.49
HP is like the facebook of printers. Hugely popular; absolute shit product.
Anything corporations think you can't do without will be raised until enough people have no choice but to stop buying them, then they'll hold it there.
Epson Eco tank to F HP's bullshit in the A.
I got one during Black Friday years ago and it came with so much extra ink that I still haven't bought more ink for it 😅
HP taking business ideas from Elon I see.
“The beatings will continue until moral improves”
After 15 years of having to buy a new ink printer almost every year. We just bought an entry level laser printer. Same printer for 20 years now. Never even changed the toner yet. Was a huge upfront cost of 500$ compared to the 100$ ink jets, but man is it ever nice to just completely forget your printer exists until you hit the print button, grab your document, then go back to completely forgetting you own a printer. Never have to put any thought or effort into it. Just sits there always being ready and fully functional.
When we do have to change the toner, the exact same standardized cartridges are still the ones they use on the new ones, so they will be around when we need them.
I fortunately only did a inkjets for 3-4 years before I went laser. I even bought a second toner cartridge at the same time! 15 years later, I actually used the 2nd cartridge-the printer is still going (albeit it seems it may only last another 5-10 years).
the article sorta implies that only 'hp+' denies use of third-party cartridges for life of the printer.. but just plain 'instant ink' subs do, too, through mandatory automatic firmware updates to the printer that will immediately install a firmware update with 'dynamic security' that blocks all but 'genuine' oem cartridges.
I use Instant Ink in the US, and I haven't received an email about a price increase.
I know no one wants to hear this, based on past experience, but I'll say it anyway: The plan has worked fine for us. Our ink costs went from $60-$80/year to $12. The printer works fine, too; we've not had any problems with it. Obviously we don't print a ton, but we do print enough that we want to have a printer. If we did print a ton of stuff, I'd definitely go a different direction than Instant Ink, but for our light use, it works fine.
If you were paying $60/year to print, I'd say you were printing a lot.
That's as much as I ever paid for a printer. I have two currently, a BW laser and a color. Paid $50 for the color used...its 2 years old.
Just can't see wasting money on inkjets with their issues, and I've had many. First was a 1992 HP Bubble jet, which worked great for the time, but died before it ran out of ink.
Good. Stop printing.
You can pry my EcoTank from my cold, dead hands.
Do they still do the free tier that gives 10 pages a month?
50% of 0 == 0 :)
No, that's 0.99 and going up to a buck fifty.
Too bad, you can either use expensive ink, or use expensive subscription.
or other printer
This! Get your ink from Ali Express and live your best life.
Did... did they suffer some head trauma?
There's a simple solution to that:
Well color me shocked.
You Dawg, that's still a big FU! HP for me...
Damn. I don't print much, but I did get my HP printer dirt cheap. Wish there was some sort of hack around this.
Bold move, Cotton. Let's see if it works out XD
Can't read "Cotton" without thinking of the fiddy men he traded for his shins.
Phase printers the fuck out already. No, we dont absolutely need paper in every office.
I have not had to print anything in a long time. A long time. What are people printing?
Shipping labels, legal documents, receipts, and more. Just because 99% of things can be done digitally, doesn’t mean the 1% stops existing.
Hmm. I guess whenever I need to ship something, the place I go prints the label. Most recently UPS printed and packaged a Steamdeck I shipped to my nephew. If it’s going back to Amazon I just take the item to Kohls and they handle it. The receipts and more…I just show the email with the QR code if I’m returning something to Home Depot or Best Buy.
It’s crazy, I really have no need for a printer for the past …god. It’s been forever.
One thing you could likely benefit from, even if it’s only sometimes. Look into Pirate Ship. You do need to print your own labels, but they are much cheaper than retail. I’ve had package labels as much as 40% discounted in some instances.
Receipts are normally fine digital, but a lot of government bodies want paper for some things. And “mail in rebates” and the like need printed as well.
The only reason I still have my HP is because they have a free tier. It’s extremely limited, but I pay nothing since I don’t go over 10 pages a month. If they ever try to take that tier away, or if we start needing more prints, I’m definitely looking into a laser printer, maybe even a second hand office unit.
Edit: Spelling mistake in link.
You don't print out memes to put on your fridge like everyone else?
I tattoo memes onto the inside of my eyelids for maximum exposure.
Color by numbers for the kids. Got a LaserJet though and I use that website that sells bootleg yet serviceable toner cartridges.
That sounds like a good use. For me, my kids are dogs. If I print things out for them to color they just chew them up. Speaking of receipts, somehow one of them got ahold of one today. I chased him and he escaped under the bed, to chew at his leisure.
I'm going to poke the hive.
I actually have zero issues with my HP laser printer, and I've never been pestered to use their Ink/Toner subscription service.
It's only a hassle if you choose to use it?
They're a fucking shitty company, sure agreed, but last I checked (unless it's specific models that I'm unaware of which require it) it's still a service you have to choose to use. If you don't choose to use it... you can just buy ink and toner normally, like I do.
It took me almost two years to run out of toner from the date of purchase. I don't print a lot.
I choose to use Instant Ink because I don't print a lot and it still beats buying the carts. HP ships them to me for free and automatically before I run out and gives me return postage for the empties to be recycled.
They also don't have different rates for B/W and Color so I just print everything in color.
I dont stress over $1/mo (or $1.50/mo if this increase hits me). I've had this printer for 2yrs on the cheapest plan and I've still not paid the full price of a set of cartridges.
I'm sure I'll be down votes for saying anything positive about the program but whatever. It works fine for me.
Unless you REALLY need color, just buy a Brother BW laser printer. Toner doesn't dry up. It is all but guaranteed to be the cheapest option. I bought the scanner BW laser printer combo like 8 years ago for $130.
+10 for being able to take a document right from the printer and rub it all over without the ink smearing.
But buying a second printer would make my current 2yr investment a waste so savings would be a wash.
Also I do need color sometimes making the HP the better value until they start charging more for color.
Definitely will consider it when this printer dies though.