[masraum]

Originally Posted by CurtEgerer

In the good old days (before the China flu) HP sold inkjet printers for $29 at Walmart. I bought many of them over a 15 year period of time. Great color print quality and when the cartridges ran out? Toss it in the trash and buy another. That all came to an end a couple of years ago

So I bought the cheapest Canon I could find at around $70. That lasted all of about 2 months before requiring head cleaning before every use and then had connection problems and eventually just quit printing In the trash it went. Bought an Epson for around the same money on the promise that it has 3 individual color cartridges so you can just buy the one color that runs out. That printer was an absolute piece of crap from day 1. Horrible print quality and was good for maybe 25 prints before needing all 4 new cartridges. Was not compatible with 3rd party refill cartridges. Worst printer ever. In the trash it went.

So now we're 1 month into our new $49 HP 2700 series, very similar to the old $29 specials. Happy days are here again. So far.

If you just need black & white, probably tough to beat a laser.

We used HP exclusively for a long time. I think my first printer way back was an Epson ink jet, but then went to HP. We mostly bought large small business color laser printers on clearance or refurbished. They always lasted many, many years and thousands of pages (probably tens of thousands). We don't print as much any more, hence the cheap brother black/white laser printer.