alt Hacker NewsEpson EcoTank has been a great system for my personal needs. They sell devices for full price but will ink that is distributed via bottle that fill a visible tank. If you’re using one color more than others you only have to buy that one. I’m sure the print head will eventually need replacement but it’s been going strong for 5 years so far.
How well do these work when infrequently used?
I can go months between needing to print, maybe even over a year. It is infrequent enough that the Brother laser printer I bought a little over 7 years is still on the toner cartridge that came with it and has maybe 1/4th or 1/5th left and still works perfectly.
Before that I had several inkjet printers (one I bought, and at least 3 that came bundled when I bought computers), and on every one I got maybe 5 pages per cartridge.
One particularly annoying time I went to print and the cartridge was dried out, I bought a new cartridge which the store only had in a two pack, and printed what I needed to print. Next time I needed to print that cartridge was dead, and the unopened one I had bought at the same was also dead.