
Refill bottles sell for about $13 for color and $20 for black. And when you run out of the original ink, it gets even cheaper to print massive amounts of pages. A set of bottles is included with the printer and should give you up to 4,500 black pages and 7,500 in color. The real attraction is that one bottle of ink goes a long way. That was solved a while ago, and today’s EcoTank Supertank models are as easy to use as printers that use cartridges. The original iteration didn’t use keyed bottles, and it wasn’t always easy to judge how much ink you were topping off.

When the ink level drops to near empty, you twist off the cap of a bottle of ink, open the cap covering the ink tank, and then upend the bottle to refill the tank. These printers and All-in-One models incorporate refillable ink tanks into the body of the machine. It’s now on the third generation of its EcoTank models. EpsonĮpson was the first vendor to bring a refillable ink tank printer to the U.S. Still, not having to change cartridges as often is nice, and the extra-large capacity ink cartridges provide a lower cost-per-page than standard capacity inks.Ĭheck out INKvestment at Brother Epson EcoTank: Lots of Ink Means Lots of Prints Keyed bottles and tanks make it impossible to put the wrong ink in the wrong tank. That’s a bit more than the basic INKvantage cartridge yield so, in essence, Brother’s giving you a set of their regular cartridges, rather than the low-yield starter set. The company claims these will give you up to a year’s worth of printing-that is if you print up to 150 pages per month (1,800 for the year). To make the offer even more enticing, Brother includes a set of cartridges in the box. It’s not, however, quite as economical as the refillable tank models from Canon and Epson. If you purchase the 6,000 page-yield black cartridge, which costs about $56, the per-page cost drops to just under 1 cent for black-and-white and about 5 cents for color, which is a pretty good deal. For the Ultra High-Yield, it’s 5,000 pages for the color cartridge and 6,000 for the black. For the base capacity cartridges, the stated page yield is 1,500 for the color and 3,000 for the black. While most inkjet printer vendors offer extra-large capacity cartridges as an option, the INKvestment cartridges are even larger than most. That bulge accommodates slightly-wider-than-usual ink cartridges. The company’s INKvestment printers and All-in-Ones present a silhouette that’s not much different from an ink tank model, with a slight bulge on the right side. While some vendors in this roundup have developed refillable ink tanks, Brother has taken the somewhat different path of supersizing its ink cartridges for specific models. Brother International INKvestment: Go Big or Go Home Bigger ink cartridges mean fewer refills. Vendors are changing their approach to make printing more pages more attractive. These days, an average page yield of 650-700 pages per cartridge just doesn’t cut it anymore. Just as your gas mileage varies depending on how you drive, your ink yields vary depending on the kinds of things you print. Published page yields-whether for ink or laser toner-only exist so you can compare printers. In the U.S., the organization that distributes this protocol is the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). Yields are calculated using a test procedure developed by the International Standards Organization (ISO). That figure is predicated on an “official” yield per cartridge, and the cost of any replacement cartridges.


Printer vendors are quick to quote an impressive per-page print and (on all-in-ones) copy cost. In response to growing customer concerns, printer vendors have come up with ink purchase plans they claim can save you money. Many inkjet printer vendors boast about how low their per-page print cost is, and it’s usually untrue.
