Our Picks: Inkjet Printers

Cartridge-free inkjet printers have provided consumers with the first choice for high quality inkjet prints without worrying about the insane cost of ink cartridges. Traditional ink sold in cartridges cost as much as $12,000/gal–more than any other liquid sold commercially. But having used the Epson EcoTank ET-4760 myself for the last several months, I will never go back to ink cartridges again.

These tank-based printers use generously sized refillable tanks for each color, with ink sold in reasonably priced bottles. If you go by the manufacturer’s recommended OEM ink, the cost is around $55, but that will provide thousands of pages worth of printing. Estimates are that the tank printers cost some 20x less to run than printers with cartridges. But you can easily find 3rd-party suppliers for the ink as well for as little as $20 for a complete set of black, cyan, magenta, and yellow bottles.

The one caveat is that the printer itself will cost more. For decades manufacturers have sold printers at a loss because their profits were entirely based on ink sales. So tank printers are understandably more expensive. At the time of writing, the Epson ET-4760 costs around $499. That said, I found mine on sale at Sam’s Club for $399, so with a little luck you can usually save a bit, especially around the holidays and during back-to-school sales.

Other features for this model include:

• Wired and wireless network connections
• Scanning with 30-sheet automatic document feeder
• Automatic 2-sided printing
• Printing from mobile devices
• 250-sheet paper tray
• Google Home/Amazon Alexa integration