Why are printers so terrible? $4 vs $400 printer

There’s always that one form that you just HAVE to print out, that one professor that demands a hard copy. Is it really worth buying a printer for that once-in-a-while problem?

Purchases made through some store links may provide some compensation to Linus Media Group.

CHAPTERS
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0:00 Intro
1:47 We got Tanks
4:27 and Lasers!
6:44 What's a Pantum?
8:44 Where did he dig that up?
11:13 I'll just write it out by hand, thanks.
13:35 Credits

[Scitch]

5:10 "After that we plugged it into our Windows 11 machine and it suddenly worked. Why? We're not quite sure." - Every printer issue i have ever seen can be explained the same way.

[Ravenousjoe]

Printers and their God awful drivers are what make them the bane of my existence. I'm normally the tech guy, but when it comes to printers, I get borderline violent when troubleshooting them!

[johneisele]

"Only printing blank pages" is the analogy I needed in my life today

[snazzy]

If it's not a Brother laser, it ain't a printer—it's a tantrum-throwing ink sponge with delusions of grandeur.

[timmolderez]

"Oh that isn't smoke. It's steam. Steam from the paper jams we're having! Mmh steamed jams!"

[Dracounguis]

Ink is always been a scam. When I was working at Walmart, some guy bought THREE printers because it was cheaper to buy the printer (that came with ink) than to buy the replacement ink cartridges!

[nickpiovesan]

Can I get a praise from the Brother laser printer crowd that's had that one reliable printer for nearly a decade with no issues 🙌

[cbakos]

As a 30 year+ veteran of the print industry, I can confirm that you have not even scratched the surface of the "ink wars". Step into the enterprise world and and you will start hearing terms like Managed Print Services and "clicks" as a way of determining how much profit can be made on ink and other consumable items.

[DeinonychusCowboy]

Brother laser printer sqad here. Mine was 60 bucks new. Ten years ago. Still using the "starter" toner cartridge, never bought one. The 2 times per year I need to print something, it works great. And it has linux drivers that still get updates!

[qsdfcvgyjmkl]

I bought a Brother laser all-in-one for university back in 2017... I once printed a 300 page pdf textbook for my friend to study with literally zero issue. One toner cartridge from 2019 is still in my printer today and STILL WORKS.

[brad]

Word of advice: buy a laser. Toner doesn't dry up. If you mostly do black and white, you can get a decent laser for $150 or less & go to your printing store of choice to print color when you need it.
Edit: exceptions would be photographers (higher dpi printing than most non-commercial lasers) or those using the color print from the inkjet frequently but not in the volume necessary to justify a $300 color laser.

[dusty.]

okay but that squeak at 8:03 is just original lol

[zabuza]

I am never buying another HP printer again. Not after the nightmare that happened when my dad bought a printer in the US and brought it to Japan (was cheaper to buy it in the US at the time) only to find that HP REGION LOCKS THEIR FUCKING INK so we couldn't just buy a Japanese HP ink cartridge (would fail the genuine ink check, if we could find a compatible cartridge at all).

[soy_leche]

Pro tip: Your local library does prints for dirt cheap if not free. Many libraries even have an app/software that let you print it directly there from your computer. Libraries are awesome.

[bigbubba]

My dad bought a roughly $2, 000 dust printer in 2009. It was really expensive, but it has never had any printing issues, nor requiring any bs ink refills (just some dust every few years). It only prints in black and white, but it is so reliable that my family still uses it to this day (it’s a Ricoh Aficio). For people who mostly print in black and white, it has been a godsend, since my dad prints a lot of papers. By the way, it has such great compatibility that I am able to use it with my Windows PC… without installing drivers… when the printer is connected to my dad’s Mac Studio on the other side of the house. Now that is what a real printer should be!

[mousalamalsyrawan]

I work at a shop in Iraq where we sell and repair printers so I want to say a few things from my experience (not sure if the models I will mention are available in the US or not and if the prices are similar or not):

-there are great options from Epson that cost way less than 400$ and also have ink tanks, like the L8050 (only print, no scanner) and L3150, L3160 (almost the exact same but 3160 has a color LCD for easier access to WiFi connection settings)


-Brother has a different lineup from that inkvestment that was mentioned here which has ink tanks and has good printing quality like the DCP-T520, DCP-T720 and DCP-T920 (the difference is 520 only has printing and scanning, 720 also has ADF and duplex printing, 920 has color LCD and fax)

-Canon is the cheapest option when looking at printers with ink tanks but it's also the one with the print heads failing the most, in my experience I have seen Brother and Epson print heads being left for months then we were able to make them print almost perfectly again, meanwhile Canon print heads have been the hardest to restore back to their original quality even if they were left for only a month or 2

many times we had to tell the customer to buy a 70$ set of print heads (Black and Color) just because 1 or more colors couldn't be fixed no matter what we tried (especially if the print head doesn't have any white lines but instead it prints in a curved line ruining all color mixing, at that point there is nothing that can be done for the print head afaik)

-if you're choosing Canon products I would suggest steering away from their newer models (G2430, G3430, G2470, G3470 and G4470) because those models are the most anti-repair ones so far and they break a lot within the first few months after buying them

instead go for an older model like G3410 (with wifi) or G2410 (without WiFi)
also, another advice, stay away from Canon's Maxify lineup, it has been the worst nightmare in my life in a printer repair shop

-the prices for the printers I mentioned are around 130 to 170 USD for the Epson L3150

240 to 280 USD for the L3160 and L8050 (idk why the one with the least features is the most expensive)
120 to 140 USD for the Brother T520
180 to 200 USD for the Brother T720
240 to 260 USD for the Brother T920
and as for the Canon Printers, all models I mentioned except the G4470 are sitting at around 110 USD to 140 USD
the G4470 has fax and ADF so it's at around 250 USD

-One last thing about Canon printers I want to add is that when you install the driver they're defaulted to enabling Borderless printing
and while that is a nice feature, if you're printing pictures it makes the printing slower and the colors will look washed out
to fix that either disable Borderless printing or if you want to preserve the Borderless feature then set the paper settings to Matte paper, the printing process will take much longer time to finish but the quality will be much better (around 30 seconds up to a minute for a full borderless page on Plain Paper settings and around 4 to 6 minutes for the same page on borderless Matte paper)

[badgmodmovies]

The LGR cameo was one of the best things ever! And his video shows the extent of issues with old printers in the modern age, despite him using period correct computers in his testing

[svrsakura]

"it's only a printer" is so rare these days that it genuinely is a feature to be marvelled at.

[Henry.]

9:11 My dad had one of these printers in his home office.
I still remember the day the printer stopped working and instead of trying to fix it or being patient, my dad called me, gave me the printer and the task of destroying it with a hammer, while he went to buy another one. 😂😂😂

[pelanth]

Paid $80 for a Brother laser printer/scanner somewhere around 15 years ago. Ink never dried up. Only on my 2nd cartridge which was actually a 3rd party brand and it works great. In that same time my mom has purchased at least 4 junk inkjets because she refused to buy a slightly more expensive laser printer. She's spent more than double the cost over time not including ink.