LMC Tech
Problem solved
Home inkjets are designed around selling you ink, not printing.
Why your printer clogs, why the ink costs more than the printer, and the boring machine you should probably buy instead.
The problem
The business model is the problem
You print twice a month. Both times, half the nozzles are blocked, it demands a cleaning cycle, and the cartridges cost more than the printer did.
- Inkjets are often sold at or below cost, because the money is in cartridges. That is why a replacement set can approach the price of the machine.
- Inkjet ink dries. If you print infrequently, the nozzles clog, and the cleaning cycle that fixes it consumes yet more ink. Printing rarely is the worst possible pattern for the technology, and it is exactly what most households do.
- Laser printers use toner powder, which does not dry out. A mono laser left alone for four months will simply print when you come back. For text documents this is transformative.
- Third-party cartridges are cheaper, and manufacturers increasingly push firmware updates that reject them. That fight is not one you will win reliably.
- Where inkjets genuinely win is photos and colour on decent paper. If that is what you actually do, the calculation changes.
The fix
Pick by what you actually print
Cheapest and most effective first. A surprising amount of this costs nothing at all, which is not what most sites selling you things will tell you.
- Mostly text, occasionally: a mono laser. Boring, reliable, cheap per page, and it will not clog while you ignore it. This is the right answer for most households and it is the one people resist.
- Text plus occasional colour documents: a colour laser. More expensive up front, still nothing to dry out.
- Photos, seriously: a proper inkjet, and print often enough to keep it healthy.
- Lots of colour printing: look at refillable ink-tank models. Higher purchase price, dramatically lower running cost, and they suit high volume.
- Check the cost per page before you buy the machine, not after. It is the number that actually matters and it is the one not on the box.
- Buy one with Ethernet or reliable Wi-Fi and duplex printing. Fighting a printer's network setup twice a year is its own tax on your time.
Refurbished
Refurbished printers are a mixed bag
Buying used is often the best value in tech, and occasionally a terrible idea. Which one it is depends entirely on the category.
Amazon Resale store- Ex-office mono lasers are frequently excellent value. They are built for tens of thousands of pages and most have printed a fraction of that.
- Check the drum and toner status, since on some models the drum is a separate consumable that costs real money.
- Avoid used inkjets. You are buying somebody else's dried-out print head.
Honesty note
How to actually find refurbished stock.
Worth knowing, because it is not obvious and we checked: you cannot filter an Amazon search to refurbished items from a link. We tried every documented approach and each one quietly returned ordinary new products instead.
The used and refurbished offers live on the individual product page, under the buying box, as "Other sellers" or "Used" options. Find the item you want first, then look there. The Amazon Resale storefront above is the other way in.
Who is telling you this
We fix this sort of thing for a living.
LMC Tech builds websites, software platforms and AI-readiness work, and supports the technology behind them. These pages exist because we answer the same questions repeatedly, and writing them down is quicker than repeating ourselves.
- Our work and portfolio, including Time Out Recovery, Echo Moon Western and LODORi.
- Web and software development: Django platforms and custom builds.
- IT support: the day job behind these opinions.
- IT support.
- All the problems we have written up.
Rather not do it yourself?
We can just sort it.
Across Lincolnshire and remotely. If you would rather someone specified it, fitted it and made sure it works, that is the day job.