Basically the business model is that if they can sell you a cheap printer at a loss, you won’t consider a less cheap model from a company that isn’t as shitty. Then they can lock you into years of buying their ink, which is overpriced deliberately.
Last I checked, if you need an inkjet printer, get a Brother or an Epson. All the rest will rip you off in various ways.
Even better, get a laser printer if you can afford it (or don’t mind forgoing colour with a b&w model)
The amount of ink that comes with an inkjet printer is tiny. So a new printer comes with 10mL of ink, and the refills are 35mL or more. You quite literally get what you pay for.
The other reason is that inkjet printers need to be used on a regular basis, or the ink can dry out. But manufacturers have handled this by having the printer drip out tiny bits of ink all the time, so it’s literally using the ink even when you aren’t using it.
For the vast majority of people, a cheap laser printer is the far better option. Unless you want to produce art prints, but at that point you’re looking at spending a ton of money anyways.
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Yep. Can anyone explain why this is?
Because printer manufactures are money grubbing bastards.
Unregulted corporate greed
Basically the business model is that if they can sell you a cheap printer at a loss, you won’t consider a less cheap model from a company that isn’t as shitty. Then they can lock you into years of buying their ink, which is overpriced deliberately.
Last I checked, if you need an inkjet printer, get a Brother or an Epson. All the rest will rip you off in various ways.
Even better, get a laser printer if you can afford it (or don’t mind forgoing colour with a b&w model)
On top of this, the starter cartridges that come with the printer are often sized smaller than the refills.
A caveat to the HP thing, they split off their enterprise hardware division years ago, and it’s actually a decent company.
The amount of ink that comes with an inkjet printer is tiny. So a new printer comes with 10mL of ink, and the refills are 35mL or more. You quite literally get what you pay for.
The other reason is that inkjet printers need to be used on a regular basis, or the ink can dry out. But manufacturers have handled this by having the printer drip out tiny bits of ink all the time, so it’s literally using the ink even when you aren’t using it.
For the vast majority of people, a cheap laser printer is the far better option. Unless you want to produce art prints, but at that point you’re looking at spending a ton of money anyways.