Inkjet vs Laser: The Great Scam

Reading time: 6 min

I work IT in a medical center. On my daily rota: about 10 small printers, 5 mid-sized, and 1 enterprise beast. Out of the small ones, four were inkjets — and those four caused about 80% of my printer-related rage.

If you’ve ever tried to print a one-page form and ended up sacrificing a goat to the driver gods, you know exactly the vibe. These little boxes of plastic promise crisp color prints for cheap… and then spend the rest of their lifespan draining your wallet, patience, and will to live.

Ah yes, the magical world of inkjets — where printing is less about getting a document and more about testing your ability to stay calm while technology laughs at you.

• Ink streaks & nozzle roulette. One day, your print comes out fine. The next day, your text looks like it was dragged through a puddle of coffee by a drunk intern. Run a cleaning cycle? Congratulations, you just used more ink cleaning the nozzles than printing the actual document.
• Slow. like. syrup. You press “Print” and the machine starts a two-minute warm-up ritual. Clicks. Whirs. Sounds like a hamster on a treadmill. Then… one… slow… line… at… a… time. Meanwhile, a laser printer has already finished the job and is back in sleep mode.
• “Did you miss me?” drying drama. Take a vacation, don’t print for a week? Congrats, your expensive liquid has dried into a crusty mess. The solution? Run another cleaning cycle — which wastes even more of that liquid gold they call ink.
• Wet paper. You pick up a page, and it feels… damp. Why is my report moist? I wanted a document, not a facial treatment.
• Cartridge extortion. Just want black-and-white? Too bad. Cyan is “low,” so the printer refuses to work. You’re literally being held hostage by the color blue.
• Bloatware dump. Need a driver? Sure. Oh, but you’ll also get Photo Funhouse, Ink Subscription Reminder, Cloud Connect Assistant, and a cute little icon in your taskbar that pops up every five minutes to nag you.
• The “cotton cartridge” autopsy. Once, I cracked open a brand-new HP cartridge with a hammer and screwdriver. I was expecting some kind of liquid tank. Instead? A damp sponge in a plastic tuxedo. That’s what you’ve been paying $25+ for.
• Paper jams with no escape hatch. In a $30 inkjet, a bad jam means the paper is now part of the printer’s internal organs. You can’t reach it, can’t fix it — just toss the whole machine and move on with your life.

I’m using HP here because their numbers are easy to find — but don’t think for a second the other big printer brands are innocent little angels. They’re all sipping from the same “liquid gold” scam.

Let’s compare the precious fluid in your ink cartridge to something actually valuable.

• HP 63 Black (F6U62AN)
• Volume: ~3.5 mL (HP’s own spec)
• Price snapshot: $26.89 (Amazon US)
• Per liter: $26.89 × (1000 ÷ 3.5) roughly = $7,683/L
• Human blood (hospital acquisition cost, not “for sale”)
• $214 per 473 mL unit (U.S. average, 2021) roughly = $452/L
• $250 per whole-blood unit (St. Jude example) roughly = $528/L

Verdict: Inkjet ink is roughly 15× more expensive than human blood. Let that sink in. You could fill your cartridge with blood and it would be a financial upgrade.

Lasers are like that one reliable friend who shows up on time, helps you move furniture, and doesn’t charge you for the coffee afterwards.

• Instant wake-up. No “warming up” drama. Hit print, and the first page is already in the output tray before you’ve even sat down.
• Toner is powder. It doesn’t care if you print daily, weekly, or once every time a comet passes. It never dries out, never clogs, never needs “nozzle cleaning.”
• Bulk jobs? Bring it. Lasers shrug at 200-page print runs. Inkjets, on the other hand, start wheezing by page 10, and usually die mid-job.
• Lower cost per page. Even OEM toner is cheaper over time. Throw in reliable 3rd-party toner and you can slash costs to a fraction of inkjet prices.
• Serviceable. Paper jam? Just pop a panel, pull out the page, and move on. No surgery required.
• Consistent precision. Lasers nail text clarity every time — perfect for checks, barcodes, forms, and anything that needs to look professional.

You know what’s better than a black-and-white laser? One that can do color — without draining your bank account every time you want to add a chart to a report. Keep it in black-only by default, flip to color when needed, and you’ll forget what it feels like to buy toner.

Business graphics, labels, ID cards — all sharp, waterproof, and professional-looking. No streaks, no smears, no printer-induced emotional breakdowns.

Printer support in a medical center is like being an ER doctor in a ward full of feral animals — they bite when you try to help, they cost $80 in ink every time they sneeze, and half of them aren’t worth saving but you have to try anyway.

• Medical center stress test:
  Our enterprise laser? Runs 100-page scan-and-print jobs like it’s in a marathon — and wins.
  The inkjets? Collapse by page five, then complain they’re “out of ink” halfway through the next page.
  Glad I replaced every single one of those inkjets with fine laser printers and finished that nightmare for good.
• Throwaway economics:
  Sometimes, more often than not, it’s actually cheaper to buy a new inkjet printer (with starter cartridges) than to replace the ink.
  Imagine a business model so broken that landfill is the financially smart choice.
  Another neat trick for the travelers out there:
  If you are travelling (this works in some places, won’t generalize here), let’s say. You need a printer on the go for 100 colored prints. It is much cheaper to buy an inkjet, do your prints, and throw it away than actually go to a print store and pay them to do it for you. Most of the time, you get a cheap scanner included in the printer for free, so that means you won’t pay for scanning, just in case you need that too.
  You know why those numbers work?
  Simple, because the big corporations take a hit on the price of the printer, but make that 10 times over in selling overpriced ink cartridges.
• The wet cotton cartridge:
  The day I cracked open that cartridge with a hammer, you know what I found?
  I found the sad little sponge inside, and the ink is barely wetting that thing.
  That was the day I truly understood how deep the scam goes.

Thing	Price per Liter
HP 63 Ink	~$7,683
Human Blood	~$452–$528
Gasoline (US avg)	~$1.00
Champagne	~$40–$150

Inkjet printers are the gym memberships of tech: cheap to start, expensive to keep, and you regret them when you’re not even using them. Lasers? Pay more upfront, but they don’t waste your time, your money, or your sanity.

If you print anything regularly, go laser. If you must have inkjet, at least know you’re signing up for the world’s priciest liquid.

Hey! Wanna see me rant about different tech things? Or learn a few tips and tricks? Check this out: Tech Blogs