Washington Post: Americans waste $10 billion each year on name-brand ink. So we tested low-cost options including remanufactured cartridges, ink injection kits — and even making our own.
My advice: get a mono laser printer. Printing is handy but relatively infrequent for a lot of people these days. If that’s your use case, mono laser is the way to go. Toner does not dry out or go bad.
If you have a small space and don’t print a lot, I love my thermal printer. It’s the size of a sturdy, old-fashioned 3-hole-punch. Portable and battery-operated. There is no ink. The special paper’s kind of expensive, but it doesn’t dry out or send you codes saying you can’t print when it obviously can. And they make BPA-free thermal paper now.