I'm looking to replace my home inkjet printer (all-in-one) for a newer one.  We're homeschooling the kids, and my wife does quite a bit of printing for work, so I want to get away from an inkjet that has $100 cartridge refills.  Our printing is ramping up significantly, so I can justify the cost of a $400 printer as it will save on refills over the long term.  

Does anyone have experience with both?  If so, which do you prefer?  What specific brands?

Thanks.

I have an Epson ET-2760 eco tank with the scanner on it, and got it back in April 2020, if I remember correctly.  I got this when I needed a printer to work from home during our remote work time and bit the bullet and got this instead of the cheap printers that have toner that cost more than the printer.  This was just over a couple hundred, on sale at Staples.

So far it's done well, though I found that after not using it for a bit, the cyan jet clogged and needed the cleaning setting run a few times and some prints sent to get it to work.  I haven't used it too much so I'm doing better on ink than someone that probably runs it constantly, but the pic below is the toner tank levels after all this time from the original bottles of toner that came with it.

So far no glitches or screw ups with it, and the scanner works very well.

I've heard that about them.  That could be an issue...

I've use all sorts of HP, Lexmark, Canon home and business inkjets over the last 25 years. From regular 8.5x11" paper all the way up to engineering plotters (Arch E = 36x48") for blueprints.
First one was a HP 660CSE back in the mid 90s.

Anyways they all have one thing in common; they're all ink wasters. I've never seen anyone confirmation my suspicions, but I've suspected for decades that inkjet printers are dumped on the market at or below cost and then they make their money on cartridge replacements. The ink drains down rapidly even if you only print 1 page/month with all the "maintenance" that goes on while in standby. It felt like every time I went to use that damn thing there was a low ink warning or it just flat out wouldn't print. And it's not like I was printing books. I only printed what was absolutely necessary, knowing how much each sheet was costing me.

I switched from inkjet to a moderately priced home/office Canon laser all-in-one(MF229DW - I'm sure it's obsolete now) about 5 years ago and I've never looked back. Just works fantastic! It's pretty fast even doing double sided. It came with 1 toner cartridge and that lasted about ~850pages. I just bought my first toner cartridge replacement last fall at about $75! Keep in mind it's just black and white, but color laser is available. Now I don't even think about printing things. If I'd like to print it, I click the button and she spits it right out. Keeping it stocked with paper is the only thing I need to do to it.

Does it have to be color?  If not, laser printers are sooooo much cheaper per page that it's ridiculous.

And if only some has to be color... buy the laser printer for BW pages, and only use the inkjet when it's needed.

Also, some laser toner cartridges are more expensive per-page than others... when you're picking printers, look at the cost and estimated page number of the replacement cartridges.  Years back I helped some insurance offices that printed all day, every day.  I got them some laser printers that had low per-page costs, and which had replaceable drums (they do EVENTUALLY wear out).  They've still got a bunch of those old printers in use, cranking things out all day long.



Cheap injets are, indeed, dumped below cost to get you to buy ink.

And, you're right, you MUST use them, or the nozzles clog up.  It's kind of a good thing that the printers self-cycle to prevent that now, in the old days when they didn't, if you let the nozzles clog, you'd waste a ton of ink in the self-cleaning cycles trying to get them to work again.

Try not turning it off. Have heard from people who should know that some inkjets run anti or de clogging routines when left on. That might work for you.

I bought the same printer last month and like it so far.

And here we go with another thread where people spend tons of time and money trying to get garbage jet printers to work well.

Seriously, with decent laser printers available for under $200, its just NOT worth the stress.  Connect to it via USB or ethernet (wifi on printers tends to be a huge shit show), and you should be good to go.