Printers have become an untenable grift, but they don’t have to be

With more people working from home than ever before, ensuring your home office is up to the task has become a high priority for many to maintain productivity. However, the one area that often incites sheer bewilderment and frustration are printers.

Up until recently we were able to get by with a five-year-old HP inkjet printer. But in the COVID-era with my wife working a few days a week from home, as well as my kids reaching an age where they need to print out their homework and assignments on a more frequent basis, it didn’t take long before buying new ink cartridges became financially unsustainable.

Epson’s EcoTank printers can print thousands of pages and cost as little as $15 to refill.

Printers are typically sold at a loss and ink cartridges (or toner in the case of a laser printer) are where manufacturers recoup their profits. As such companies do everything they can to keep you buying their ink cartridges, including going as far as installing microchips and issuing firmware updates to prevent the use of cheaper aftermarket ink cartridges.

My other favourite grifts include refusing to print in black and white as soon as one colour runs out, even if the other colours are still full, and using as much ink on “maintenance cycles” as on actually printing (thank you Consumer Reports for confirming I’m not crazy).