Budget Buster: Printer Ink

[The Iron Giant]

I'm really getting tired of spending almost $50 to replace the color and black ink cartridges in our HP photosmart printer.

We barely use it and it seems like it needs new ink every few months.

It really is ridiculous... I think I only paid like $85 for the printer itself when we got it at Costco.

Can anyone recommend a good ink jet printer that doesn't cost a fortune to maintain?

 

[dawson5]

I like my epson (stylus photo). It has 5 or 6 cartridges. I buy the cartridges from supermediastore.com. I am signed up for the newsletter which gives me coupon codes and usually free shipping. I can pick up ink for about two refills for around $45. I like that if the black is running low I only have to change the black. Mine is more of a photo printer. I read mixed reviews but it's usually by people printing a lot of papers, not photos. I can also print onto discs.

ETA: The two refills, I mean enough to change ink twice. 12 cartridges.

 

[pigletto]

YES! We had the same problem. This Christmas we got a Kodak ESP3250. Their entire add campaign is "Stop Spending a Fortune on Ink!"

You can check out their website. Our printer/scanner/copier is listed as 129.99 on the site but we got it for less from Staples. I just paid 13 dollars to replace the black ink cartridge.. (didn't need it yet but picked up one for when we do).
We're really happy with it.

 

[deerhart]

We refill our ink cartridges at Walgreens. Its $10 for black, $15 for color and they frequently have coupons to make them $5/$10 for that week.

We have a lexmark and our new cartridges run $20/black, $30 color.

 

[luvmarypoppins]

Yeah, it costs a fortune for us too. but we have 3 ds who use it for school and college and pictues too.

I recycle the cartridges at staples for the staples rewards and use the rewards to purchase new cartridges. It helps with the cost a little.

 

[torinsmom]

I just took a scanner/printer to Goodwill because the ink was going to cost me $60 and a replacement scanner/printer with ink was $40

Marsha

 

[The Iron Giant]

What a scam... they give the printers away for cheap and charge you an arm and a leg for the ink.

I want my old dot matrix printer from the 80s back - that thing never ran out of ink

 

[tinker&belle]

We have tried the ink refill kit from Target. We like the black one, it is not too much trouble, but the color one is a pain.

 

[sherry7]

That is exactly why I got rid of my HP printer....it cost a fortune to put ink in it. Right now, I have a Brother MFC-685CW all-in-one. It's a couple of years old, so there's probably a newer model by now. I use generic ink cartridges which I buy on the internet for less than $2 each.

Brother is one of the only companies that still produce printers that can use a generic ink cartridge. The others have all incorporated a computer chip into the cartridges that makes the practice prohibitive (and of course makes the ink cartridge more expensive because of the chip).

I've also heard good things about the Kodak printers, because the (brand name) cartridges for those are only about $15-$20.

 

[formill]

There must be online places in the states you can get cartridges cheaply? We are Canadian there is a website I order from and they are new cartridges so no more trying to refill and they cost all the same for our Brother printer- $5 each cartridge- ours is a cartridge for each colour and if I order enough shipping is free too. It is a place called blankdvd media http://www.blankdvdmedia.com/ and it is in Quebec (we are Ontario)- its great can let the kids print without freaking out. Maybe the ink is not as "good" or something but I can't tell and do print pictures sometimes.

 

[AbbysFamily]

Do you NEED color? If not, you are better off finding a LOW cost b/w laser printer. We picked up a samsung on sale at one point (well under $100) - I can re-fill the toner cartridge cheap, it prints faster, and no wasting ink due to it drying out in between usage.

For inkjet, I have an epson - I use aftermarket ink thats much better priced and that works well.

 

[formill]

That is exactly why I got rid of my HP printer....it cost a fortune to put ink in it. Right now, I have a Brother MFC-685CW all-in-one. It's a couple of years old, so there's probably a newer model by now. I use generic ink cartridges which I buy on the internet for less than $2 each.

Brother is one of the only companies that still produce printers that can use a generic ink cartridge. The others have all incorporated a computer chip into the cartridges that makes the practice prohibitive (and of course makes the ink cartridge more expensive because of the chip).

I've also heard good things about the Kodak printers, because the (brand name) cartridges for those are only about $15-$20.

Really- I did not know that (the chip)-maybe I should be buying a new printer now - really like our Brother but it is getting older and I like the cheap cartridges- the one thing it does not like that drives me crazy- is any kind of different paper.....photo paper, labels etc....they like to get jammed.

 

[JoiseyMom]

That is how they make their money. Keuring is following suit...buy the machine..spend oodles of money on k kups..

 

[bobcat]

Even with the chip you can still buy refills. it just won't show you the correct amount of ink left. I use a local company for my canon printer and they will replace them if you have any problems.

I have seen a place online I think called carrot ink that does refills but I haven't tried them yet.

 

[cjnix29]

I have an epson printer, ink jet. I get my ink from 123inkjets.com. They have all sorts of kinds of ink. When I put it in my printer, I get a message saying that it is not epson ink and may damage my printer. (what a scam!!!!). But I have never had a problem with it. I think I paid about $7 for black and the same for color. When I ordered it, I got three black and three color for the cost of ONE epson ink. I have had no problems with it at all, and my printer works great. When I did it, I hated the printer, always a pain with the ink. We were talking about replacing it anyway. So I figured what the heck. If it works, I don't have to replace the printer, if it doesn't, I return what I didn't use, and get a new one. I have never looked back. Plus, if you go through some of the rewards sites, (I use sunshine, but I think there are some on mypoints too) I get some great deals and great cash back.

 

[wtrmlnlabs]

We just got a new printer for the same reasons. During our research we found it better to get the ones with separate colors, you'll have a cartridge for black, yellow, red, blue, not sure what all there is. So when you need ONE color, you don't have to replace the whole thing. BUT mostly we got a new printer because we found these continuous ink systems. They'll cost about $70 for the system, you add it to the printer, it connects into the ink and you refill these BIG bottles of ink. This way you can but the ink in bulk, cheaper and lasts longer. We figured even though we also don't us a lot of ink, for what we do it'll pay for itself very quickly and I can do more printer and not feel like I'm killing the budget!

 

[LoraJ]

We just got a new printer for the same reasons. During our research we found it better to get the ones with separate colors, you'll have a cartridge for black, yellow, red, blue, not sure what all there is. So when you need ONE color, you don't have to replace the whole thing. BUT mostly we got a new printer because we found these continuous ink systems. They'll cost about $70 for the system, you add it to the printer, it connects into the ink and you refill these BIG bottles of ink. This way you can but the ink in bulk, cheaper and lasts longer. We figured even though we also don't us a lot of ink, for what we do it'll pay for itself very quickly and I can do more printer and not feel like I'm killing the budget!

I got a kit like this for my HP printer off of ebay. I haven't had to replace the ink in ages!!!

 

[wtrmlnlabs]

I got a kit like this for my HP printer off of ebay. I haven't had to replace the ink in ages!!!

Glad to hear that I've not actually dished out the $$ for it yet, I know we're getting it, but the ink in the new printer is going fine, so I've been putting it off! I'll have to get it soon so I can start printing off school work for DS's They're lucky to have a mom that is a procrastinator when it comes to spending money

 

[meanser]

How timely, I was just at Target to buy replacement cartridge but thought, there has to be a cheaper way! Thanks for all your suggestions!