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!
@@axgrfAnd my Brother will never dry up, never ever. My Toner will always be true, and it will print thousands upon thousands of pages, no subscription necessary.
Agreed. Been using a Brother HL-L3220CDM color laser printer for several years and never had any issue. Toner doesn't go bad and is surprisingly cheap for how far they go.
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.
@@Scitch87 Each time I print, my HP printer has a different error, I just pray for it to be able to print, and the next day, it is fixed, but a new error has taken its place. I just don't know anymore and live with those errors.
Reminds me of mine HP P2055 printer that I configured to work with Windows Server 2003 as a network printer (some really old program, only works in 16/32-bit OS) and it did. Until one September Microsoft rolled a W10 update and killed it. After weeks of troubleshooting it worked again. Until it broke several months ago and I don't feel like spending any time fixing it again.
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!
The only thing with buy newer printer is they just give you "Starter Ink" which sometimes is not filled as much as regular ink tanks. But if you can get a printer for under $30 I say go for it!
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.
As someone who's worked with both HP and Xerox with their managed print services, I feel you. HP in particular (though the program itself is better than Xerox's) is absolutely FLEECING large enterprises with their leasing structure. The long-term prices for leasing small printers is absolutely hilarious. The last place I worked for wised up and just bought the devices outright instead of leasing them, but kept the managed support structure. The way they were stockpiling toner and paying for independent repair contractors, HP's Managed Print Services actually saved each site about $200k a year in printing costs, and that was while they were still falling for HPs leases.
i bought a hp tank printer in 2018 and just now had to buy more ink for 20 dollars all colors original hp ink, how cant enterprise printer be more like that?
@@leandrrobLOL you think a big business would let their staff handle LOOSE ink?? 🤣 But in all seriousness big companies don’t manage their own printers, they pay some third party and then forget about it
I could say the same think about Brother Inkjet. Been running mines for 15 years without issues, using easy-to-refill 3rd party cartridges. Never had any issues. But sure, I agree that laser would be even better.
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
I can recall having lots of weird issues with printers in the late 90’s and early 2000 too though, where setting it up it’d not work properly, after that I became obsessed with office laser printers with network support due to their long support life…
Fun fact about printers: Most printers nowadays if not all printers have an encoding mechanism called "printer steganography", Its an arrangement of small yellow dots which can barely be seen with the naked eye, it encodes the serial number of the device, date and time of the printing and is repeated several times across the printing area in case of errors and can be analyzed even when shredded the prints can still be identified, In the 80's the companey Xerox developed this tracking code to assuage fears that their color copiers could be used to counterfeit bills, also for health care information, account statements, tax declaration or balance sheets, can be traced to the owner of the printer and the inception date of the documents can be revealed, Thats why in most printers when you run out of yellow inc it wont let you print anything even if its just black text, Their are also other newer methods of identification are not as easily recognizable as yellow dots For example, a modulation of laser intensity and a variation of shades of grey in texts are feasible.
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. 😂😂😂
Yop thats what I did this spring. When I was trying to send out my monthly invoice (I dont have e-signiture, so I have to print it, sign it, scan it). Exactly that :D
I had one of these as a small child in 2003. I used it for about 6 years till we got a multifunction inkjet. I gave it to my grandfather who continued to use it for a further decade before it packed up.
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)
I can attest to the Epson print heads being quality. I print very rarely and with a head cleaning or 2 and it is back working like nothing. ET-2750 is the one i use.
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.
@@soy_leche in my city, the printing machines in different libraries/schools are owned by one company and the prices range from 0.04€ to 0.06€ per bw page, or 0.20€ to 0.32€ per color page. For something more than a couple of pages, it's better to go to a print shop. Afaik, they have better prices and deals for bulk printing
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).
The worst part is, twenty years ago, HP used to make absolutely awesome printers. Hell, those very same printers are still chugging along just fine. These days though? Even their Laserjet Pro line is cheap shit, which will try and lock you out of printing. Heck you HP, why couldn't you stay good? (Their Linux drivers are still good though)
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.
I've been using the same Brother HL-1440 laser printer for nearly 20 years (since 2006). In that time, I've only replaced the toner once (about 10 years ago). It works on every platform I've tried (Linux, macOS and Windows) as a generic PCL printer, no drivers necessary.
On average annually my business prints 20,000 pages a year for contracts. You're telling me I should go to a library with confidential information, connect to a public network with said confidential information, pay 10c a sheet. $2000 p/a. Really cheap for
@@Midori_Ringo The video was about printing for personal use. Of course my comment is not directed towards businesses that prints tens of thousands of confidental pages per year.
@@Noaaaaaaaaaah If you do the break even it's about 1000 - 1500 pages p/a. Roughly $150. That's for a printer, toner and paper. That's mild home use territory if you have a couple of school age kids needing to print assignments. That's well within reality. So no not really.
@@Midori_Ringoif you consider 1000-1500 pages each year to be "mild home use", then you do you. I believe that most people are not even close to that number.
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.
I bought a Samsung ML-1510 for university back in 2004. The "starter" toner cartridge lasted me until about 2015, and an off-brand replacement that cost £15 lasted until the controller board finally died in 2022. 18 years isn't bad for a cheap printer! Replaced it with a Brother all-in-one, which I'm expecting to last until the mid 2040s :D
HP also has SmartTank printers with no genuine ink checks and no subscriptions. The SmartTank 7601 is a direct competitor to the EcoTank ET-4850 featured in this video. Epson pretty much forced HP's hand to bring a competitive product to the U.S. market, but HP has had them in Europe for several years already.
My family has an Epson printer, and they don’t just it that often, but when they do they really need it. The only issue, is that if you don’t print every few days, the ink dries out. This means you have to refill it with expensive ink, but by the time you have the ink installed, you don’t need to print something for a while. Then the cycle starts again, meaning that it’s so cumbersome to use that they’ve almost never used it
You can pay 4, 40, 400 or 4000 bucks for a printer, it'll hate your guts with a passion no matter what. It'll sense the exact moment when you need it most and crap out on you without fail
when i was working as an IT tech going to peoples homes to repair stuff half, if not more, of the call outs were Printer problems. Also So many people (mainly older) didnt understand when i said it would be cheaper for you to buy a new cheap printer than to try fix anything on it.
Brother. Laser. B&W unless you absolutely NEED (and I mean NEED) color, if not, don't). Get a model with wired networking, duplex (both sides) printing, and airprint if needed. Victory. EDIT: The one we have goes a step further and even lets you ignore low toner settings at the reduction of print quality granting 100's more pages of print capacity)
Add old Lexmark networked lasers to that - I had one that was a tank, and the only reason I no longer own it was because I was a dumbass and didn't want to move it half-way across the country. Yes, as a matter of fact, I *do* still kick myself.
Had an HP printer for almost 8 years. Last year I got so fedup with buying HP's criminal ink I bought some third party ink. Printer instantly bricked itself and said "Contact HP Service" on the screen with no ability to do anything else. Threw that sh*t in the trash and bought a brother laser printer for $90. #NeverAgain with HP.
Signing up for Instant Ink permanently locks the printer’s firmware to only allow first-party ink cartridges, even if you cancel your subscription. Not only that, but if you cancel your subscription and still have ink in the Instant Ink cartridges, the printer won’t print. You have to replace the still-good Instant Ink cartridges with genuine HP ones to regain functionality.
Thats wild. My 10yr HP printer doesn't do that. I have a third party ink and It does recognise it as third party, but still prints xD hahaha. Even weirder my printer thinks its own print cartridge is third party.
The nice thing about having that last printer working on linux is that you could attach it to a small computer, like a Raspberry Pi Zero W, and run a network print service. That way, any modern device, including a Windows machine, could print to it without needing to do any further driver fiddling.
I haven't used it in a few years, but I THINK with the built-in Windows Printer Sharing function, you can specify the driver to use, eliminating the need to manually install drivers on other Windows machines.
I have had a Pantum P2500W since 2016. HIGHLY recommend. The option he didn't get into is refilling the toner cartridge. It's super easy at only 2 screws and a plastic cap. That will bring the cost down per page to under an Ecotank.
Have you not encountered any ink drying up in the printhead issues with the Epson printer?, as i assume its built into the machine and not the cartridge like other brands. I found if i didnt print on mine (Epson) every few weeks the ink would dry inside the printhead and clog it, i hear from people if you print reguarly that doesnt occur.
@@SecretOfMonkeyIsland784 Yes, mine did after 6 months and i want to print some photos. Apparently if you do deep clean (hold the stop button for ~10 second) 3x and wait for a day plugged it _might_ sort itself. Better waste some ink since (third-party) refills are cheap af.
@@hanifarroisimukhlis5989 Sadly i tried nozzle checks, print head cleans and a physical clean on the printhead with window cleaning fluid (Breaks down ink) and it still didnt work. I went through 2x sets of brand new copy carts trying to fix it :( ended up throwing it out, it wasnt gonna clear
@@L0op Yes i think lasers are the way to go if reliability is what you want. Its hard to justify the cost / storage space though for people that print very very rarely.
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.
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!
5:35 if you're going to be showing toner shaken out into free-air, you really should have a "don't do this" on screen. Toner dust is fine enough to cause lung problems just by breathing it, never mind the constituents of toner. Printer technicians who work with laser printers normally use a high filtration vacuum to clean up spills, to reduce the risk if it getting airbourne.
I think the cost of toner is enough of a deterrent for me, kids can just do the cinnamon challenge on the cheap if they really want lung problems from particulates.
@@jorelplay8738 Channels with 15.9 million subscribers should be held to an appropriate standard. The simple solution to resolve the issue at 5:35 is NOT to add that disclaimer. It's to not mess with toner in risky ways in the B-roll in the first place!
What are you doing with the ink cartridge and what does it have to do with your toner-using printer? 🤔 (But also me too I've really grown to appreciate Brother)
The black toner in my Canon MF628CW lasted me 9 years before it needed replacing. The colour ones are still at 40% 11 years later. When they run out, I'll probably get a new printer.
I have a canon G3160, the print heads are actually not that expensive and are very easy to replace while buying straight from canon's website, plus it has been very reliable after several years. Rhe only downside is print speed, but everything else is great for the price.
We have an Epson monochrome at work and it's still chugging away although i had to replace the maintenance box and add some rubber rejuvenation spray on the pickup rillers
The cannon you show has a non replaceable sponge that when it is saturated will throw an error that can’t be corrected. Another UA-camr mentioned this, it turns the thing into a massive paperweight
Isn't that the case with pretty much all inkjet printers tho? Sometimes you can seemingly replace the sponge, but info on what to replace it with and how to reset the counter is usually nowhere to be found. Brother laser printers is where it's at!
@@axgrf Not sure about the US market, but here in SEA, there are 2 types of Epson EcoTanks ink absorbers. One with a user replaceable Maintenance box, and others with a non-user replaceable porous pad. Now even if you did end up with a model with the porous pad, it is still rather easy to replace although you will have to track down the Epson Adjustment software for your model of printer to actually reset the ink absorber counter.
Used to be a copier tech. I only use laser now when I print. Be aware, HP and many others have a toner cartridge life counter that also will say it's expired after a certain amount of time. The drums have an organic coating that does degrade and the developer roller can get marks after sitting for a while. Just be advised
This is good to know. Is there a color laser that's worth getting now outside of HP? I don't print that often but when I do it's in color and doesn't have to be magazine quality.
@@riopato2009 I have a Canon color laser printer and it is by far the best printer I have owned. Never had any issues with it in the last 5 years. It may not be photo quality but its close and I don't have to replace all the cartridges when i need to print after sitting for months.
Not necessarily, each has their strengths and weaknesses. Canon tends to use HP technology but keeps the drums and toner cartridges separate. Brother loves life counters for all components but makes it easy to reset them without replacing them (usually)@@riopato2009
My wife is a private teacher, so she uses our printer A LOT, 1.000 pages per month at the very least. We've had an epson L4160 (tank) for about 6 years now, and it only required professional maintenance 2 times. Once after transportation, and once after we let the ink empty on one tank and something got damaged. It is a printer that works as it should (big compliment)
As soon as I had a pile of 3 dead printers in my house I finally decided to invest in a good laser printer. Not only has it lived longer than any other printer I've owned, it has worked every time I turned it on! Imagine that! A working printer!
I bought a Brother wifi laser printer and I don't regret it. It just works. Event if it has been deep sleeping for months, it still immediately wakes up and start printing when I send it a print job.
i have used ecotank printers in work for years and i can tell you they are absolutley great. no software issues connects instantly and obviously you almost never had to buy ink again. we easily averaged the advertised 3k pages black/ 14k pages coloured and only had to get ink once ever 4-6 months.
You should probably add that this is in a commercial setting with frequent printing. Don't get a tank printer if you plan on going 6 months between printing sometimes.
Heck no, that's a lie right there, their Software would had been old in 1998 and the premium ecotank I have won't even start printing without erroring about paper that it absolutely just prints on without any issues, with it's quality from 1995. Honestly, once you've used canons printers, you don't want to touch this garbage, the only thing worse is probably Lexmarks business printers😂
@DanKaschel I bought one of the original ecotanks proberbly about 6 years ago now for a hugeeeee school project and since then I have only used to once of twice every few months since and I have never had any problems with ink drying out. ( it really does like to put up a fit about paper tho but if you just keep trying it does always work eventually)
At the moment I got the Epson ET 8550 and it's functioning excellent. I use it for photo printing and it prints beautiful, even black 'n white. The Canon inkjet I had before (one of the cheaper models) was a disaster , before printing it started cleaning the nozzles wich takes quite a time. Wait a few minutes between prints and the damn thing started cleaning again. And when you switched it of, it started cleaning again before going off. I lost more than half of my ink cartridges to cleaning. After the 3rd set of cartridges I threw it in the carbage, no Canon for me anymore.
@@halfblood_drag0n Yellow ink is used lightly that isn't visible to the eye but great under black light to fingerprint the pages so every page can be tracked down to the printer it came from.
Printers add tracking markers called printer steganography (sometimes called DocuColor tracking dots, yellow dots, secret dots, or a machine identification code (MIC),to every print these identify the type on printer used and the time and date of the print. These yellow dots are tiny, so small you wont see them unless you know where to look. They were initially developed to track counterfeits. So every time you print you have to use yellow ink
the timing on this video is impeccable. i just put in brand new cartridges and the machine said they were 50% full, and forced me to stop printing when the software said it was empty, even when they physically still had tons left. the next refil showed 100%... all from the exact same pack of epson 212
Years ago I worked at a Staples store and Lexmark were the cheapest printers. It was pretty well known that they sold most of their printers at a loss because they made their money on the cartridges. The least expensive color inkjet Lexmark printer we sold was something like $50 and the cost for the cartridges for it added up to over $60. The other thing was that the printer actually came with a starter set of full-size cartridges (many came with starter cartridges that only had a fraction of the ink compared to the regular cartridges). We had a regular customer who every time his ink ran out on the printer, would just come in and buy a new printer, take the ink cartridges out and resell the printer for like $20 on Craigslist or wherever he could.
i don’t print often. so if i need a print i just pop down to the library, they got a big office grade copier that i can use for cheap, 10 cents a sheet for black and white, 50 for color. and i don’t have to deal with maintenance
find a good working used Brother Laser Printer get a generic toner cartridge for it, and you can let it sit there for years, as long as you dust it, and it will print just fine on about any OS you can think as most of them work fine with the Generic print drivers, and if you need a specific one, then Brother supports just about every os you can think of from Windows, to mac to Linux, to even Android, and Chrome OS/Chrome OS Flex thanks to using Cups drivers. and it's a fraction of the cost, and time of going to your library.
@@CommodoreFan64 nah im good, savings not worth the headache of owning/maintaining a printer. again its only once in a blue moon when i need to print something, so going to the library is better for me. plus i enjoy going to the library so not a hassle for me there
@@CommodoreFan64 Most people print like 1 page a year. At that rate they're not saving with any reasonably priced printer. More people should be considering paying per-print at libraries, print shops, Kinko's etc.
I bought a Samsung black & white laser printer/scanner about 6 years ago for occasional printing toner cartridge doesn’t dry out or run out of date. Love it.
I worked at an Office Depot for several years. Learned a lot. Unless you’re printing photos, (don’t lie, you’re never going to) never buy an inkjet! Lasers are king when it comes to quality, reliability, and overall running costs. They’re practically bulletproof. We’re all familiar with the razor blade model. That garbage $99 inkjet is cheap because the ink is expensive. So I’ll just buy the ones with an ink tank right? Wrong! The inkjets with those tanks are just the same cheap quality printers except the pricing model has been reversed. Instead of paying $99 you’re paying $250+. The ink will still dry out and that print head will inevitably clog/fail. Edit: Fun tidbit, laser printer technology has gone virtually unchanged since it was invented over 50 years ago. Inkjets came out in like, the mid 80’s and they still suck.
"But what if I _want_ to print in color?" Then bring it to a print shop! "Hrmm, I don't know..." Trust me, paying a shop 10 dollars for 10 pages beats paying 60 bucks for 20 pages and then not using it for months until the ink cartridges dry up.
@@fluidthought42 What they also don't understand is the quality of paper isn't the the same, which plays just a big a part in the quality of the prints. The photo paper you buy at Best Buy etc? It's toilet paper compared to what a quality print shop has.
Epson is great. Bought a WF-110W for 200 bucks. Small, compact, portable. Packs down tight, doesn't stop you from using your own ink and all I need to do when I print once in a blue moon is run a few cleaning cycles
I bought the Epson ink tank printer a few years ago and it's been working perfect. Did get gummy ink, but so far it's been fixing itself pretty well, and it runs maintenance cycles automatically
Regarding the Eco-Tack printer, there is a non-serviceable sponge that sucks up excess ink (presumably from the tubes after printing) and once it reaches max capacity the printer is basically dead. There is no way to change the sponge or the sensor that locks out the printer. I would go with a laser printer personally.
There are videos on UA-cam showing how to replace the sponge with something else in addition to increasing the number of copies on the printer. My printer is already making almost double the original copies and has a small container to put the ink that went into the sponge.
The latest generation of EcoTanks do not use the sponge anymore… or at least the EcoTank Pros don’t. Mine (ET-16650) uses what they call a “maintenance box” instead, which is easily replaceable.
Not quite right. The waste ink tank is a thing in epsons inkjet design. It probably needs dismantling to get to it, and running the epson factory service software to reset it. I bought the entirely legit and totally not using black sails cd rom woth it for £5, and a replacement sponge/tank is also cheap. Hell, you can strip the printer, rinse ir with isopropyl alcohol and attempt to reuse it.
Important to note, for viewers we will not see the same colors as they do in the video, CMYK color gamut is much narrower compared to RGB's color gamut range. In the printing industry when we are sent RGB files we are required to convert them to CMYK which will in turn dull the colors compared to what the original RGB image is. This is why the pantone standard exists, I am sure if linus had the pantone books, or chips they own next to him when working on this project he could compare the color test page to the Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black pantone swatches.
@GingerJLD oh boy I found that out the hard way. We wanted to support local businesses and went to a local printshop to print hundreds of pieces. I gave them the file, they printed three hole order in one day and the colours were off. "Yeah, I had to convert the files you gave me. Can change the colour" ....... YOU COULD HAVE TOLD ME And yes, I was young and learned a lot about how to order stuff like this
I own one Samsung monochrome laser printer with wi-fi, and one older HP colour laser printer that I got for free, repaired and hooked up to my home network, and since I don't print stuff daily it's very nice to have something that doesn't dry out basically ever. Also, learning to repair printers feels like a superpower.
Those tank printers aren't as great as you might think. The biggest problem is that all the ink used during head cleaning is dumped into a simple sponge located in the back of the printer. When the printer assumes the sponge is full, it will lock itself up. Depending on the model and brand of your printer, you may be able to clean and reset it-or you may not, and then you're out of luck. It's a big drawback, and you have to print very frequently to avoid this issue.
Can we do a follow up on using second hand larger commercial printers, that market is very price competitive and the laser toners of yesteryears model are often still readily available as well as spare parts?
For anybody having issue installing drivers of old printers. Always look for PCL5 drivers, and for HP/Xerox Universal drivers. Also don't buy ink jet printers if you plan to print only occasionally, a way better deal is BW laser 2nd hand stuff. If you want super cheap and non destructive printer, buy any old HP from early 2000.
I'm noticing a trend - printing is just way easier on Linux. This correlates with my own experience where the HP multifunction drivers for Windows are 700mb and hplip on Linux is about 10mb with full functionality and ends up functioning far better.
I think I noticed cyan dots on my Konica Minolta color laser printer. Search from net and "ok. tracking dots". At that time it was only color laser feature to track who tried to print money or that was explanation. Edit: I think that pattern was directly on drum so you can hack that off by software.
About three years ago I bought an HP LaserJet M29. I replaced the toner cartridge like a month ago because it ran out not because it dried out. Third-party toner can be found on Amazon for like 20 bucks. It’s got Wi-Fi printing and I can print from my Windows computer or my Mac or my iPad or my iPhone. I always love how warm the paper is when I’m done printing.
Linus, you've often said you read many comments so I really hope you read mine, or someone involved in your QA process at least. I've spent decades working with printers commercially, with most of the brands, this is an atrociously researched video. Did you really just suggest that Pantlum also goes by the names of Xerox and Fujifilm? Seriously? That's like saying NCIX goes by the names of Apple and Microsoft, I'm sure Fujifilm will love having their trademarks associated with the likes of the completely unassociated NineStar, and it's owned properties, in such a libelous manner. Also, why did you pick inkjet printers for 2 of 3 of the printers you looked at? You really didn't discuss properly why you would pick inkjet over laser/LED which is ridiculous given that 90% of people watching this would be best served by a laser or LED based consumer Brother printer or something. It's bizarre you'd give any consideration to an ancient inkjet in 2024 over, say, another laser or even an LED printer. Frankly, there's enough bad information and misinformation for this video to be pulled and your QA processes to be reevaluated, again. These are really basic errors that should have been found by anyone who has spent more than 5 minutes working in, or around, the print sector.
The ecotanks are fantastic printers though and epson doesn't have nearly as many issues as other brands. If you print with any regularity and want photo prints as well it's definitely the way to go.
@@draginator6 I can generally agree with that but I would argue the vast majority of people are better served by a laser or LED because most people aren't printing with regularity nor doing that many photo prints. I also think the other printer choices were strange and unhelpful, also, the Xerox/Fujifilm thing I mentioned really demonstrated a weird lack of knowledge about the brands and the printer industry.
I have an HP laser printer from the pentium 4 era, and it STILL works today, still using the same cartridge that has been in it for 8 years. Toner in dry parts of the US can last decades, your more likely to loose driver support (but then you can just put it on a linux machine to be your print server anyway). Thing works like a champ.
I actually learned a good bit from this - didn't know tank printers were a thing or that the minimum viable product for the "once per month" uses were totally viable.
Printers are the one thing that feels like it hasn't evolved since they started to use ink. They're deplorable to work on and I feel like everyone releases their violent side when one needs fixing/don't work
Nah, you're just getting annoyed when they don't work - you show up your violent side and really have to hold back if you're working in anything somewhat IT related and people come up to you "Well you work in IT, could you fix my printer?" fully expecting you to know how they're built and work just because you're a programmer, or even better, work on excel sheets.
Individual use cases can vary. On that end of the spectrum, I'd seriously look into copy shops and libraries as a low fuss, cost effective solution. They often let you print direct from a USB stick.
Edit: I typed all this before Linus actually mentioned literally everything I say below, so yeah, take this as a serious sidenote to these types of printers. You're new to tank style printers, so let me tell you something from experience... They seem nice on paper. Companies like HP often give you 2 years worth of ink* included out of the box (*2 bottles of XL black and a bottle of each of the colours, based on a calculation made by HP of you printing a specific amount of pages per day) The price of the inks is dirt cheap, and last for thousands of pages potentially... and the print quality is really good... but that's where the good ends. You have to print regularly to keep them working. If you go a month or two without printing (maybe even a week or more), the print heads ARE going to get clogged up, and they are not easy to unclog. In fact, running the printhead clean programs can not only waste a huge chunk of your ink, but also damage the printheads themselves. Even worse: the print heads are not as readily available on the market as inks themselves. You go into an electronics store and see aisles full of inks, but no printheads. This is by design. This makes tank printers not realistically designed for most home users, and primarily aimed at small offices who don't need to print thousands of pages a day, but need to print enough that huge cost savings can be made vs. toners or cartridges. Companies like HP want you to have to either print so much they keep the money coming in for as little work as possible (designing a bottle to hold ink literally requires no work and they can get the money for nothing essentially), or have you getting so frustrated you'll buy yet another printer outright and go back to the expensive cartridge model, throwing away the several hundred dollar tank printer just because you can't find a new printhead for it. If they wanted the printers to survive long term, the market would be full of replacement printheads. This clearly isn't a priority for them, and neither is device longevity. I personally ended up giving up and going back to laser. At least laser printers can't dry up since it's literally plastic particles which get melted and fused to the page acting as ink. Only reason a laser printer that I had previously stopped working, is because the paper feed mechanism stopped working and there were paper jams relentlessly. Replacement parts obviously became unobtainable after Samsung was acquired, by again, HP.
Some occupations do need to print at least once per week. And if you have holidays or something, there are simple test print pages with spots of BYMC on one quarter of the page you can just print once a week to prevent if from clogging. Flip it to use said page up to four times to note waste too much paper.
setting up a raspberry pi as a CUPS print server on my old printer was one of the most useful projects for my old Pi sitting in my drawer. USB to the pi, and pi on the network. worked perfectly!
7:40 I dont really understand what you mean by this. Do you suggest that Pantum manufactures printers for Xerox, Fujifilm, ... and they just print their logo on the printer? Or do you mean that Pantum owns Xerox and all the other brands? Because the latter is definitly not correct
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!
I work in tech. Fuck printers.
@@Ravenousjoe so.. 30 years later printers are still crap.
Im soon buy a 3d printer and simpky use them to print on a paper.
I feel you, I can troubleshoot stuff for a week straight, but when it comes to a printer I wanna be as quickly gone from wherever that thing is
yeah, i don't remember the last time i printed from linux. it's easier to send the file to my phone and print from there
@@matsv201 haha, we just going back to tablets at that point!
If it's not a Brother laser, it ain't a printer-it's a tantrum-throwing ink sponge with delusions of grandeur.
I disagree. Epson Ecotanks are very solid. The current models seal the printhead when storing it, so it doesn’t dry up.
@@axgrfI also really like my eco tank. Have had zero problems with it
@@axgrfAnd my Brother will never dry up, never ever. My Toner will always be true, and it will print thousands upon thousands of pages, no subscription necessary.
Agreed. Been using a Brother HL-L3220CDM color laser printer for several years and never had any issue. Toner doesn't go bad and is surprisingly cheap for how far they go.
@@axgrfI will easily get well over 1,000 prints with my toners.
I would only go with ink when I would do photography.
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.
@@Scitch87 Each time I print, my HP printer has a different error, I just pray for it to be able to print, and the next day, it is fixed, but a new error has taken its place.
I just don't know anymore and live with those errors.
They're bastards, they just want you to waste your time trying a bunch of shit before deciding to work again
as a (mainly) printer technician I can relate to that
Reminds me of mine HP P2055 printer that I configured to work with Windows Server 2003 as a network printer (some really old program, only works in 16/32-bit OS) and it did. Until one September Microsoft rolled a W10 update and killed it. After weeks of troubleshooting it worked again. Until it broke several months ago and I don't feel like spending any time fixing it again.
It's the Windows driver version of the USB A port. Try to plug it in, doesn't go. Flip it over, doesn't go. Flip it over again, and it fits.
"Only printing blank pages" is the analogy I needed in my life today
I was wondering if anybody else caught that. Smooth delivery.
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!
The only thing with buy newer printer is they just give you "Starter Ink" which sometimes is not filled as much as regular ink tanks. But if you can get a printer for under $30 I say go for it!
@@mlong9475 100% correct
I had a similar experience at office depot. Guy would come in and buy a new printer every few months rather than buy ink
@@LightningMcQueen-rc3mh Yep, i saw the same when i worked at Staples back in the day.
Buy an epsom workforce reman cartridges are dirt cheap and I think I bought the all in one for aboutb£50 new
"Oh that isn't smoke. It's steam. Steam from the paper jams we're having! Mmh steamed jams!"
At this time of year?
@@DwellerBenthosin this part of the country? 🫨
@@39zack Localized entirely within your office?
@@jzlazy1057 yes!
@@39zack can i see it?
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.
As someone who's worked with both HP and Xerox with their managed print services, I feel you. HP in particular (though the program itself is better than Xerox's) is absolutely FLEECING large enterprises with their leasing structure. The long-term prices for leasing small printers is absolutely hilarious. The last place I worked for wised up and just bought the devices outright instead of leasing them, but kept the managed support structure. The way they were stockpiling toner and paying for independent repair contractors, HP's Managed Print Services actually saved each site about $200k a year in printing costs, and that was while they were still falling for HPs leases.
i bought a hp tank printer in 2018 and just now had to buy more ink for 20 dollars all colors original hp ink, how cant enterprise printer be more like that?
Yes but those full tower gigaprinters are way more solid. HPs old laserjets are tanks.
@@leandrrobLOL you think a big business would let their staff handle LOOSE ink?? 🤣 But in all seriousness big companies don’t manage their own printers, they pay some third party and then forget about it
printing companies are right up there with oil, tobacco and gambling when it comes to being scummy dirtbags.
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 🙌
This is the only solution worth mentioning
And if you get a new one, never upgrade firmware
27,000 pages printed and counting!
Never a single issue with my B&W Brother laser printer, cheap generic toner, and never jammed.
I could say the same think about Brother Inkjet. Been running mines for 15 years without issues, using easy-to-refill 3rd party cartridges. Never had any issues. But sure, I agree that laser would be even better.
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
I can recall having lots of weird issues with printers in the late 90’s and early 2000 too though, where setting it up it’d not work properly, after that I became obsessed with office laser printers with network support due to their long support life…
Gotta love LGR, he's awesome.
Fun fact about printers: Most printers nowadays if not all printers have an encoding mechanism called "printer steganography", Its an arrangement of small yellow dots which can barely be seen with the naked eye, it encodes the serial number of the device, date and time of the printing and is repeated several times across the printing area in case of errors and can be analyzed even when shredded the prints can still be identified, In the 80's the companey Xerox developed this tracking code to assuage fears that their color copiers could be used to counterfeit bills, also for health care information, account statements, tax declaration or balance sheets, can be traced to the owner of the printer and the inception date of the documents can be revealed, Thats why in most printers when you run out of yellow inc it wont let you print anything even if its just black text, Their are also other newer methods of identification are not as easily recognizable as yellow dots For example, a modulation of laser intensity and a variation of shades of grey in texts are feasible.
Well xerox is dying they refused os on their printers and now they will shred their printers if detected a third party parts.
so make sure to practice writing in different styles :D
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. 😂😂😂
Yop thats what I did this spring. When I was trying to send out my monthly invoice (I dont have e-signiture, so I have to print it, sign it, scan it). Exactly that :D
@@Henry.25 😄😄😄😄😄
I had one of these as a small child in 2003. I used it for about 6 years till we got a multifunction inkjet. I gave it to my grandfather who continued to use it for a further decade before it packed up.
wow, that timestamp and "task of destroying".
THE BALLS
@@shamikpal4449 Holy sh¡t, I didn't realize before. 😅
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)
I can attest to the Epson print heads being quality. I print very rarely and with a head cleaning or 2 and it is back working like nothing. ET-2750 is the one i use.
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.
my library is like 10 eurocent per page :|
Yes libraries are awesome. And I use their services regularly.
But they're not always where and when you need something printed quickly.
Equivalent of 26 cents per side here. Though that raises the question of if they force you to print double sided.
@@soy_leche in my city, the printing machines in different libraries/schools are owned by one company and the prices range from 0.04€ to 0.06€ per bw page, or 0.20€ to 0.32€ per color page.
For something more than a couple of pages, it's better to go to a print shop. Afaik, they have better prices and deals for bulk printing
Genius. I'll do my best to remember this next time I'm thinking of driving to FedEx...
okay but that squeak at 8:03 is just SOOOOO original lol
"it's only a printer" is so rare these days that it genuinely is a feature to be marvelled at.
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).
no hp is very good. buy an ink tank and you will see it has zero issues, is cheap and comes with all ink you will ever need in your life.
Ever wondered what the abbreviation for "screw you" is in Finnish? You're correct, it's HP.
The worst part is, twenty years ago, HP used to make absolutely awesome printers. Hell, those very same printers are still chugging along just fine.
These days though? Even their Laserjet Pro line is cheap shit, which will try and lock you out of printing. Heck you HP, why couldn't you stay good?
(Their Linux drivers are still good though)
first time i heard about a printer being region-locked, but knowing hp I'm hardly surprised.
@@togoxo HP employee spotted. How can you justify REGION LOCKING INK? That instantly makes it a terrible printer
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.
Agreed.
but doesnt it need special paper?
Lmao watch the vid y'all
@@nikoheino3927nope
@@nikoheino3927 nope. regular paper will work.
"You and me both buddy" That line won't get enough credit
... is that a vasectomy reference?
@@Neamow Yes, it is... I came down to comment that myself...
lmao this killed me
Best joke of the year.
@@ClassicFlower what man would allow his wife to force him to get surgery on his nuts?
I've been using the same Brother HL-1440 laser printer for nearly 20 years (since 2006). In that time, I've only replaced the toner once (about 10 years ago). It works on every platform I've tried (Linux, macOS and Windows) as a generic PCL printer, no drivers necessary.
Just go to your local library people! Basically every library has killer printing services that are really cheap. Save yourselves the hassle.
On average annually my business prints 20,000 pages a year for contracts. You're telling me I should go to a library with confidential information, connect to a public network with said confidential information, pay 10c a sheet. $2000 p/a. Really cheap for
@@Midori_Ringo The video was about printing for personal use. Of course my comment is not directed towards businesses that prints tens of thousands of confidental pages per year.
@@Noaaaaaaaaaah If you do the break even it's about 1000 - 1500 pages p/a. Roughly $150. That's for a printer, toner and paper. That's mild home use territory if you have a couple of school age kids needing to print assignments. That's well within reality. So no not really.
@@Midori_Ringoif you consider 1000-1500 pages each year to be "mild home use", then you do you. I believe that most people are not even close to that number.
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.
I bought a Samsung ML-1510 for university back in 2004. The "starter" toner cartridge lasted me until about 2015, and an off-brand replacement that cost £15 lasted until the controller board finally died in 2022. 18 years isn't bad for a cheap printer!
Replaced it with a Brother all-in-one, which I'm expecting to last until the mid 2040s :D
We gotta give props where it’s due. THANK YOU Epson for not pulling a HP. And HP, shame on you; that’s why your company has fallen into obscurity 🖕
HP also has SmartTank printers with no genuine ink checks and no subscriptions. The SmartTank 7601 is a direct competitor to the EcoTank ET-4850 featured in this video. Epson pretty much forced HP's hand to bring a competitive product to the U.S. market, but HP has had them in Europe for several years already.
My family has an Epson printer, and they don’t just it that often, but when they do they really need it. The only issue, is that if you don’t print every few days, the ink dries out. This means you have to refill it with expensive ink, but by the time you have the ink installed, you don’t need to print something for a while. Then the cycle starts again, meaning that it’s so cumbersome to use that they’ve almost never used it
HP definitely has not fallen into obscurity in the business sphere...
You can pay 4, 40, 400 or 4000 bucks for a printer, it'll hate your guts with a passion no matter what. It'll sense the exact moment when you need it most and crap out on you without fail
So true
Printers are bastards. I hated my old one so much, I made it my youtube name.
The machine spirits must be appeased. But they wont fucjing tell me how!
@@hpenvy1106 LMAO
And then there are 3d printers, add an axis add another pain point cube the frustration when it doesn’t work.
when i was working as an IT tech going to peoples homes to repair stuff half, if not more, of the call outs were Printer problems.
Also So many people (mainly older) didnt understand when i said it would be cheaper for you to buy a new cheap printer than to try fix anything on it.
A full LGR and LTT collab would be legendary.
Brother. Laser. B&W unless you absolutely NEED (and I mean NEED) color, if not, don't). Get a model with wired networking, duplex (both sides) printing, and airprint if needed.
Victory.
EDIT: The one we have goes a step further and even lets you ignore low toner settings at the reduction of print quality granting 100's more pages of print capacity)
Agreed. I have a Brother color laser and love it but 90% of the color toner I use is from accidentally printing things in color that don't need to be.
That last feature is actually awesome
NEVER UPGRADE FIRMWARE, IT WILL REMOVE FEATURES AND DRM YOUR PRINTER
Add old Lexmark networked lasers to that - I had one that was a tank, and the only reason I no longer own it was because I was a dumbass and didn't want to move it half-way across the country.
Yes, as a matter of fact, I *do* still kick myself.
Colour Brother laser with AirPrint is the bee's knees. It runs about once a week, cost around 160 quid, and just works (with no-name toner too).
Had an HP printer for almost 8 years. Last year I got so fedup with buying HP's criminal ink I bought some third party ink. Printer instantly bricked itself and said "Contact HP Service" on the screen with no ability to do anything else. Threw that sh*t in the trash and bought a brother laser printer for $90. #NeverAgain with HP.
Signing up for Instant Ink permanently locks the printer’s firmware to only allow first-party ink cartridges, even if you cancel your subscription. Not only that, but if you cancel your subscription and still have ink in the Instant Ink cartridges, the printer won’t print. You have to replace the still-good Instant Ink cartridges with genuine HP ones to regain functionality.
@@Willp4139 that's the thing. I never signed up for instant ink. My printer was older than that
@@ParkerTyler #NeverAgain
@Willp4139 my grandma was telling me this I didn't believe her that is so insane she bought the printer I have now
Thats wild. My 10yr HP printer doesn't do that. I have a third party ink and It does recognise it as third party, but still prints xD hahaha. Even weirder my printer thinks its own print cartridge is third party.
The nice thing about having that last printer working on linux is that you could attach it to a small computer, like a Raspberry Pi Zero W, and run a network print service. That way, any modern device, including a Windows machine, could print to it without needing to do any further driver fiddling.
Yeah. So to get it working you'll only need: New ink, a new print head, a tech tips guy and a separate computer XD
I haven't used it in a few years, but I THINK with the built-in Windows Printer Sharing function, you can specify the driver to use, eliminating the need to manually install drivers on other Windows machines.
@@VidarHaslum A raspberry pi zero w doesn't cost much more than the printer, and there are lots of guides on how to set up a print server on it.
I have had a Pantum P2500W since 2016. HIGHLY recommend. The option he didn't get into is refilling the toner cartridge. It's super easy at only 2 screws and a plastic cap. That will bring the cost down per page to under an Ecotank.
The LGR crossover was unexpected, but highly appreciated! I absolutely love him.
Brother Laser and Epson Ecotank owner here. The only printers I'll accept and they've been rock solid. I don't anticipate replacing them for years.
Have you not encountered any ink drying up in the printhead issues with the Epson printer?, as i assume its built into the machine and not the cartridge like other brands. I found if i didnt print on mine (Epson) every few weeks the ink would dry inside the printhead and clog it, i hear from people if you print reguarly that doesnt occur.
@@SecretOfMonkeyIsland784 Yes, mine did after 6 months and i want to print some photos. Apparently if you do deep clean (hold the stop button for ~10 second) 3x and wait for a day plugged it _might_ sort itself. Better waste some ink since (third-party) refills are cheap af.
just replaced the mainboard on my brother laser. works perfectly fine, this thing will probably run for another ten years if I had to guess.
@@hanifarroisimukhlis5989 Sadly i tried nozzle checks, print head cleans and a physical clean on the printhead with window cleaning fluid (Breaks down ink) and it still didnt work. I went through 2x sets of brand new copy carts trying to fix it :( ended up throwing it out, it wasnt gonna clear
@@L0op Yes i think lasers are the way to go if reliability is what you want. Its hard to justify the cost / storage space though for people that print very very rarely.
10:26 - "This is all a complete waste of time, and everything is stupid" 😂😂😂
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.
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!
8:03 Kudos to the EDITOR for sound effect
5:35 if you're going to be showing toner shaken out into free-air, you really should have a "don't do this" on screen. Toner dust is fine enough to cause lung problems just by breathing it, never mind the constituents of toner. Printer technicians who work with laser printers normally use a high filtration vacuum to clean up spills, to reduce the risk if it getting airbourne.
I think the cost of toner is enough of a deterrent for me, kids can just do the cinnamon challenge on the cheap if they really want lung problems from particulates.
This is true, cough cough**
Warnings are for the weak
Because of people like you we have to deal with all the annoying disclaimers. Do we really need a “ don’t breath in black ink powder” warning?
@@jorelplay8738 Channels with 15.9 million subscribers should be held to an appropriate standard. The simple solution to resolve the issue at 5:35 is NOT to add that disclaimer. It's to not mess with toner in risky ways in the B-roll in the first place!
I still have the same laser printer and ink cartridge from 7 years ago lol
Same here. Best office decision I’ve ever made.
Same lmao
What are you doing with the ink cartridge and what does it have to do with your toner-using printer? 🤔
(But also me too I've really grown to appreciate Brother)
The black toner in my Canon MF628CW lasted me 9 years before it needed replacing. The colour ones are still at 40% 11 years later. When they run out, I'll probably get a new printer.
HP LaserJet 1010 from 2003 (yes, 20+ years) still working fine and I'm only in on the third toner (which I can buy for about 25.- USD)...
10:09 vasectomy joke i assume lmao
totally
I have a canon G3160, the print heads are actually not that expensive and are very easy to replace while buying straight from canon's website, plus it has been very reliable after several years. Rhe only downside is print speed, but everything else is great for the price.
People I know: "I need a printer"
Me: Good luck! Don't call me when it doesn't work.
Watching this as I'm printing 100 colored menus on an Epson ET-2760...every time I print it says it's unable to print, and then goes on and prints.
The horrendous software side of Epson is just something else, especially when you see how seamless Canon works with it's billions of more features
funnily enough my epson has been perfect, app works every time too
We have an Epson monochrome at work and it's still chugging away although i had to replace the maintenance box and add some rubber rejuvenation spray on the pickup rillers
Your printer has low self-esteem.
@@TheXlenI just wish Canon made a photo quality ink tank printer with maintenance cartridges instead of sponges.
The cannon you show has a non replaceable sponge that when it is saturated will throw an error that can’t be corrected. Another UA-camr mentioned this, it turns the thing into a massive paperweight
Isn't that the case with pretty much all inkjet printers tho? Sometimes you can seemingly replace the sponge, but info on what to replace it with and how to reset the counter is usually nowhere to be found. Brother laser printers is where it's at!
Even being a paperweight is useless because now you can't print anything on paper to need a paperweight.
@@Nostalgia_Realm Nope- the Epson ecotanks have a user-swappable maintenance box!
@@axgrf That's awesome! Something I should keep in mind whenever my EcoTank 2720 inevitably has a saturated sponge
@@axgrf Not sure about the US market, but here in SEA, there are 2 types of Epson EcoTanks ink absorbers. One with a user replaceable Maintenance box, and others with a non-user replaceable porous pad. Now even if you did end up with a model with the porous pad, it is still rather easy to replace although you will have to track down the Epson Adjustment software for your model of printer to actually reset the ink absorber counter.
Used to be a copier tech. I only use laser now when I print. Be aware, HP and many others have a toner cartridge life counter that also will say it's expired after a certain amount of time. The drums have an organic coating that does degrade and the developer roller can get marks after sitting for a while. Just be advised
This is good to know. Is there a color laser that's worth getting now outside of HP? I don't print that often but when I do it's in color and doesn't have to be magazine quality.
@@riopato2009 I have a Canon color laser printer and it is by far the best printer I have owned. Never had any issues with it in the last 5 years. It may not be photo quality but its close and I don't have to replace all the cartridges when i need to print after sitting for months.
Not necessarily, each has their strengths and weaknesses. Canon tends to use HP technology but keeps the drums and toner cartridges separate. Brother loves life counters for all components but makes it easy to reset them without replacing them (usually)@@riopato2009
1:23 Wait.... that's how you write "segway"????
Segway is a thing with wheels. Segue is a transition from one scene to another.
My wife is a private teacher, so she uses our printer A LOT, 1.000 pages per month at the very least. We've had an epson L4160 (tank) for about 6 years now, and it only required professional maintenance 2 times. Once after transportation, and once after we let the ink empty on one tank and something got damaged. It is a printer that works as it should (big compliment)
I liked the solid joke at 3:45. well written!
As soon as I had a pile of 3 dead printers in my house I finally decided to invest in a good laser printer. Not only has it lived longer than any other printer I've owned, it has worked every time I turned it on! Imagine that! A working printer!
The iconic face never gets old
Edit: they changed the thumbnail and removed the meme face😢
I bought a Brother wifi laser printer and I don't regret it. It just works. Event if it has been deep sleeping for months, it still immediately wakes up and start printing when I send it a print job.
12:39 missed opportunity to say "print off some reading material first"
1:05 No, printer companies are still the worst!
Props to the editor: the VHS fast-forward effect is always fun
i have used ecotank printers in work for years and i can tell you they are absolutley great. no software issues connects instantly and obviously you almost never had to buy ink again. we easily averaged the advertised 3k pages black/ 14k pages coloured and only had to get ink once ever 4-6 months.
You should probably add that this is in a commercial setting with frequent printing. Don't get a tank printer if you plan on going 6 months between printing sometimes.
Heck no, that's a lie right there, their Software would had been old in 1998 and the premium ecotank I have won't even start printing without erroring about paper that it absolutely just prints on without any issues, with it's quality from 1995. Honestly, once you've used canons printers, you don't want to touch this garbage, the only thing worse is probably Lexmarks business printers😂
@DanKaschel I bought one of the original ecotanks proberbly about 6 years ago now for a hugeeeee school project and since then I have only used to once of twice every few months since and I have never had any problems with ink drying out. ( it really does like to put up a fit about paper tho but if you just keep trying it does always work eventually)
At the moment I got the Epson ET 8550 and it's functioning excellent. I use it for photo printing and it prints beautiful, even black 'n white. The Canon inkjet I had before (one of the cheaper models) was a disaster , before printing it started cleaning the nozzles wich takes quite a time. Wait a few minutes between prints and the damn thing started cleaning again. And when you switched it of, it started cleaning again before going off. I lost more than half of my ink cartridges to cleaning. After the 3rd set of cartridges I threw it in the carbage, no Canon for me anymore.
@@erwindegroot8760 That's why you should *never* buy a cartridge inkjet printer. Either buy tank or DIY one (or pay someone else to mod it).
That LGR video was such a journey, it definitely stopped me from picking up a similar looking thing I spotted at the thrift store
Got my Brother Laser printer since 2010. Changed the Toner Once. Still working Great to this day.
Now linus, explain why the yellow ink is being used more than any other. And why printers are restricted to manufacture
they dont just use black when printing black text, cause uh, supposed to look better
@@halfblood_drag0n Yellow ink is used lightly that isn't visible to the eye but great under black light to fingerprint the pages so every page can be tracked down to the printer it came from.
Printers add tracking markers called printer steganography (sometimes called DocuColor tracking dots, yellow dots, secret dots, or a machine identification code (MIC),to every print these identify the type on printer used and the time and date of the print. These yellow dots are tiny, so small you wont see them unless you know where to look. They were initially developed to track counterfeits. So every time you print you have to use yellow ink
@@NoNameDied government mandated fingerprint system the yellow dots trace it back to your printer
"printers are restricted to manufacturer" tf does that even mean
0:35 So wait, does this mean the founding fathers might've used ChatGPT to write the constitution?
@@OrangeC7 Grok for sure
Definitely wasn't Gemini
Printers are like onions...
There's way too many layers to them and they just make you cry in the end.
the timing on this video is impeccable. i just put in brand new cartridges and the machine said they were 50% full, and forced me to stop printing when the software said it was empty, even when they physically still had tons left. the next refil showed 100%... all from the exact same pack of epson 212
Years ago I worked at a Staples store and Lexmark were the cheapest printers. It was pretty well known that they sold most of their printers at a loss because they made their money on the cartridges.
The least expensive color inkjet Lexmark printer we sold was something like $50 and the cost for the cartridges for it added up to over $60. The other thing was that the printer actually came with a starter set of full-size cartridges (many came with starter cartridges that only had a fraction of the ink compared to the regular cartridges).
We had a regular customer who every time his ink ran out on the printer, would just come in and buy a new printer, take the ink cartridges out and resell the printer for like $20 on Craigslist or wherever he could.
i don’t print often. so if i need a print i just pop down to the library, they got a big office grade copier that i can use for cheap, 10 cents a sheet for black and white, 50 for color. and i don’t have to deal with maintenance
find a good working used Brother Laser Printer get a generic toner cartridge for it, and you can let it sit there for years, as long as you dust it, and it will print just fine on about any OS you can think as most of them work fine with the Generic print drivers, and if you need a specific one, then Brother supports just about every os you can think of from Windows, to mac to Linux, to even Android, and Chrome OS/Chrome OS Flex thanks to using Cups drivers. and it's a fraction of the cost, and time of going to your library.
@@CommodoreFan64 nah im good, savings not worth the headache of owning/maintaining a printer. again its only once in a blue moon when i need to print something, so going to the library is better for me. plus i enjoy going to the library so not a hassle for me there
@@CommodoreFan64 Most people print like 1 page a year. At that rate they're not saving with any reasonably priced printer. More people should be considering paying per-print at libraries, print shops, Kinko's etc.
0:11 - Is that a scoubidou on Linus's wrist? Google have this as their logo right now. Are they coming back?
Its probably just the work of his kids lol
@@VRavTech I know.
6:03 It's not smoke, it's steam. Steam from the steamed clams I've printed out.
Got an old brother inkjet for our shared flat. Aside from driver issues, it works like a charm. The best part is it doesn't do genuine ink checks.
I bought a Samsung black & white laser printer/scanner about 6 years ago for occasional printing toner cartridge doesn’t dry out or run out of date. Love it.
10:15 Not Linus coming out as vasectomized in the video lol
He mentioned it several times already, even days after the procedure, on the WAN show, I believe. But yeah, this joke was definitely not expected.
He did this long ago
I worked at an Office Depot for several years. Learned a lot. Unless you’re printing photos, (don’t lie, you’re never going to) never buy an inkjet! Lasers are king when it comes to quality, reliability, and overall running costs. They’re practically bulletproof. We’re all familiar with the razor blade model. That garbage $99 inkjet is cheap because the ink is expensive. So I’ll just buy the ones with an ink tank right? Wrong! The inkjets with those tanks are just the same cheap quality printers except the pricing model has been reversed. Instead of paying $99 you’re paying $250+. The ink will still dry out and that print head will inevitably clog/fail.
Edit: Fun tidbit, laser printer technology has gone virtually unchanged since it was invented over 50 years ago. Inkjets came out in like, the mid 80’s and they still suck.
"But what if I _want_ to print in color?"
Then bring it to a print shop!
"Hrmm, I don't know..."
Trust me, paying a shop 10 dollars for 10 pages beats paying 60 bucks for 20 pages and then not using it for months until the ink cartridges dry up.
@@fluidthought42 What they also don't understand is the quality of paper isn't the the same, which plays just a big a part in the quality of the prints. The photo paper you buy at Best Buy etc? It's toilet paper compared to what a quality print shop has.
Epson is great. Bought a WF-110W for 200 bucks. Small, compact, portable. Packs down tight, doesn't stop you from using your own ink and all I need to do when I print once in a blue moon is run a few cleaning cycles
Can't let the printing blanks joke go unnoticed! 😂
I bought the Epson ink tank printer a few years ago and it's been working perfect. Did get gummy ink, but so far it's been fixing itself pretty well, and it runs maintenance cycles automatically
2:25 that's Epson. HP is scam and still sells empty cartridges that depletes before 30 pages for $90 a pop.
Regarding the Eco-Tack printer, there is a non-serviceable sponge that sucks up excess ink (presumably from the tubes after printing) and once it reaches max capacity the printer is basically dead. There is no way to change the sponge or the sensor that locks out the printer. I would go with a laser printer personally.
There are videos on UA-cam showing how to replace the sponge with something else in addition to increasing the number of copies on the printer. My printer is already making almost double the original copies and has a small container to put the ink that went into the sponge.
The latest generation of EcoTanks do not use the sponge anymore… or at least the EcoTank Pros don’t. Mine (ET-16650) uses what they call a “maintenance box” instead, which is easily replaceable.
No, there is a SERVICABLE sponge inside them. Source: I own two ecotank printers. the sponge is easily replacable.
Not quite right.
The waste ink tank is a thing in epsons inkjet design. It probably needs dismantling to get to it, and running the epson factory service software to reset it.
I bought the entirely legit and totally not using black sails cd rom woth it for £5, and a replacement sponge/tank is also cheap. Hell, you can strip the printer, rinse ir with isopropyl alcohol and attempt to reuse it.
@@wmd8840the print head sits on a sponge over the tank, to reduce the chance of the miroscopic nozzles.drying out.
Important to note, for viewers we will not see the same colors as they do in the video, CMYK color gamut is much narrower compared to RGB's color gamut range. In the printing industry when we are sent RGB files we are required to convert them to CMYK which will in turn dull the colors compared to what the original RGB image is. This is why the pantone standard exists, I am sure if linus had the pantone books, or chips they own next to him when working on this project he could compare the color test page to the Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black pantone swatches.
@GingerJLD oh boy I found that out the hard way. We wanted to support local businesses and went to a local printshop to print hundreds of pieces. I gave them the file, they printed three hole order in one day and the colours were off. "Yeah, I had to convert the files you gave me. Can change the colour" .......
YOU COULD HAVE TOLD ME
And yes, I was young and learned a lot about how to order stuff like this
I own one Samsung monochrome laser printer with wi-fi, and one older HP colour laser printer that I got for free, repaired and hooked up to my home network, and since I don't print stuff daily it's very nice to have something that doesn't dry out basically ever. Also, learning to repair printers feels like a superpower.
Those tank printers aren't as great as you might think. The biggest problem is that all the ink used during head cleaning is dumped into a simple sponge located in the back of the printer. When the printer assumes the sponge is full, it will lock itself up. Depending on the model and brand of your printer, you may be able to clean and reset it-or you may not, and then you're out of luck. It's a big drawback, and you have to print very frequently to avoid this issue.
1 test page per month isn't terribly frequent.
Can we do a follow up on using second hand larger commercial printers, that market is very price competitive and the laser toners of yesteryears model are often still readily available as well as spare parts?
Secondhand enterprise laser printers are a GREAT buy. The toners are often so large that you can go YEARS without needed a replacement.
Chad Linux fixing printers with actual magic and no explanation
pro tip: just print at the library
it may cost a bit more per page, but at least you don't have to pay for a printer and ink
For anybody having issue installing drivers of old printers. Always look for PCL5 drivers, and for HP/Xerox Universal drivers.
Also don't buy ink jet printers if you plan to print only occasionally, a way better deal is BW laser 2nd hand stuff. If you want super cheap and non destructive printer, buy any old HP from early 2000.
I'm noticing a trend - printing is just way easier on Linux. This correlates with my own experience where the HP multifunction drivers for Windows are 700mb and hplip on Linux is about 10mb with full functionality and ends up functioning far better.
It's a problem that is well-suited to Linux.
And even easier still on Mac if the printer supports AirPrint. Then you just connect to the same network as it and use it.
linux uses CUPS though, made by apple.
Always remember kids, never print sensible information in a major brand printer, they have printer tracking dots
I think I noticed cyan dots on my Konica Minolta color laser printer. Search from net and "ok. tracking dots". At that time it was only color laser feature to track who tried to print money or that was explanation.
Edit: I think that pattern was directly on drum so you can hack that off by software.
10:01 Did Linus crack a vasectomy joke?!
Omg he did 😂
Came here to say the same thing lmao
About three years ago I bought an HP LaserJet M29. I replaced the toner cartridge like a month ago because it ran out not because it dried out. Third-party toner can be found on Amazon for like 20 bucks. It’s got Wi-Fi printing and I can print from my Windows computer or my Mac or my iPad or my iPhone. I always love how warm the paper is when I’m done printing.
It's fascinating to see how technology evolves and adapts to user demands over time.
After fighting printers everytime I need to print something. I now just instantly boot my laptop to a linux usb and just print from that.
Did you scratch your balls in the middle of the recording? (5:29)? 😂😂😂😂
Linus, you've often said you read many comments so I really hope you read mine, or someone involved in your QA process at least. I've spent decades working with printers commercially, with most of the brands, this is an atrociously researched video.
Did you really just suggest that Pantlum also goes by the names of Xerox and Fujifilm? Seriously? That's like saying NCIX goes by the names of Apple and Microsoft, I'm sure Fujifilm will love having their trademarks associated with the likes of the completely unassociated NineStar, and it's owned properties, in such a libelous manner.
Also, why did you pick inkjet printers for 2 of 3 of the printers you looked at? You really didn't discuss properly why you would pick inkjet over laser/LED which is ridiculous given that 90% of people watching this would be best served by a laser or LED based consumer Brother printer or something. It's bizarre you'd give any consideration to an ancient inkjet in 2024 over, say, another laser or even an LED printer.
Frankly, there's enough bad information and misinformation for this video to be pulled and your QA processes to be reevaluated, again. These are really basic errors that should have been found by anyone who has spent more than 5 minutes working in, or around, the print sector.
The ecotanks are fantastic printers though and epson doesn't have nearly as many issues as other brands. If you print with any regularity and want photo prints as well it's definitely the way to go.
@@draginator6 I can generally agree with that but I would argue the vast majority of people are better served by a laser or LED because most people aren't printing with regularity nor doing that many photo prints. I also think the other printer choices were strange and unhelpful, also, the Xerox/Fujifilm thing I mentioned really demonstrated a weird lack of knowledge about the brands and the printer industry.
do you claim that pantum has not manufactured printers for those companies? It may be a little misleading but so is your nonsense
@@slayer2022 Which Xerox/Fujifilm branded models are rebadged Pantlum printers?
@@user-xo8yi4rc3n uhh, probably the ones posted in the video, big guy
I have an HP laser printer from the pentium 4 era, and it STILL works today, still using the same cartridge that has been in it for 8 years. Toner in dry parts of the US can last decades, your more likely to loose driver support (but then you can just put it on a linux machine to be your print server anyway). Thing works like a champ.
I actually learned a good bit from this - didn't know tank printers were a thing or that the minimum viable product for the "once per month" uses were totally viable.
Printers are the one thing that feels like it hasn't evolved since they started to use ink. They're deplorable to work on and I feel like everyone releases their violent side when one needs fixing/don't work
Nah, you're just getting annoyed when they don't work - you show up your violent side and really have to hold back if you're working in anything somewhat IT related and people come up to you "Well you work in IT, could you fix my printer?" fully expecting you to know how they're built and work just because you're a programmer, or even better, work on excel sheets.
12:17 Umm, "Only" 170 pages? I wouldn't be shocked if I've printed less papers than that in my entire 25 year life, so that is plenty
Individual use cases can vary. On that end of the spectrum, I'd seriously look into copy shops and libraries as a low fuss, cost effective solution. They often let you print direct from a USB stick.
Well then you don't need a printer with the frequency of your printing.
my home b/w laser printer from 2017 has a pagecount around 40k.
~600 dollars for the printer and toner so far.
12:47 yeah, hell will freeze over before I'll buy anything made by apple
I am still running a Brother laser printer from 2009. Replaced the drum once. Still works wirelessly on all the new operating systems.
Had Pantum P2200W for like 10 years and still works like a treat.
8:33 Unless you care about like not supporting slave labor…
You own a smartphone?
I don't.
@@onebacon_ if they’re getting sanctioned, it must be _egregiously_ bad
girl..
Not everyone can afford 100% morally sound products, assuming those products are even available
Edit: I typed all this before Linus actually mentioned literally everything I say below, so yeah, take this as a serious sidenote to these types of printers.
You're new to tank style printers, so let me tell you something from experience... They seem nice on paper. Companies like HP often give you 2 years worth of ink* included out of the box (*2 bottles of XL black and a bottle of each of the colours, based on a calculation made by HP of you printing a specific amount of pages per day) The price of the inks is dirt cheap, and last for thousands of pages potentially... and the print quality is really good... but that's where the good ends.
You have to print regularly to keep them working. If you go a month or two without printing (maybe even a week or more), the print heads ARE going to get clogged up, and they are not easy to unclog. In fact, running the printhead clean programs can not only waste a huge chunk of your ink, but also damage the printheads themselves. Even worse: the print heads are not as readily available on the market as inks themselves. You go into an electronics store and see aisles full of inks, but no printheads. This is by design. This makes tank printers not realistically designed for most home users, and primarily aimed at small offices who don't need to print thousands of pages a day, but need to print enough that huge cost savings can be made vs. toners or cartridges.
Companies like HP want you to have to either print so much they keep the money coming in for as little work as possible (designing a bottle to hold ink literally requires no work and they can get the money for nothing essentially), or have you getting so frustrated you'll buy yet another printer outright and go back to the expensive cartridge model, throwing away the several hundred dollar tank printer just because you can't find a new printhead for it. If they wanted the printers to survive long term, the market would be full of replacement printheads. This clearly isn't a priority for them, and neither is device longevity.
I personally ended up giving up and going back to laser. At least laser printers can't dry up since it's literally plastic particles which get melted and fused to the page acting as ink. Only reason a laser printer that I had previously stopped working, is because the paper feed mechanism stopped working and there were paper jams relentlessly. Replacement parts obviously became unobtainable after Samsung was acquired, by again, HP.
Some occupations do need to print at least once per week. And if you have holidays or something, there are simple test print pages with spots of BYMC on one quarter of the page you can just print once a week to prevent if from clogging. Flip it to use said page up to four times to note waste too much paper.
You can technically trust a fart 😏
Only if you accept the consequences!
@@Crawdeddys_kitchendoesn't that work with all trust? 🤔
never relax around 🐈⬛ 🐵@@DanKaschel
setting up a raspberry pi as a CUPS print server on my old printer was one of the most useful projects for my old Pi sitting in my drawer. USB to the pi, and pi on the network. worked perfectly!
The introduction of the Canon with the squeaking was perfect :D
7:40 I dont really understand what you mean by this. Do you suggest that Pantum manufactures printers for Xerox, Fujifilm, ... and they just print their logo on the printer? Or do you mean that Pantum owns Xerox and all the other brands? Because the latter is definitly not correct
@@maxmuller7669 Yeah I was thinking the same thing, definitely seemed to be insinuating Xerox is a subsidiary or them, which is obviously not the case