I read somewhere, and believe it, that inkjet printers work on the modified Gillette razor principal: sell the initial product cheap and profit by selling the always-needed refill that keeps it working.
Except that - and here's where "modified" comes in - while safety razors will take any blade of the correct shape, printers can be DRM-chipped (looking at you, HP) to ignore anything but the manufacturer's own refills. Those can then be priced as that manufacturer pleases, and discount sources can do only so much to ease the sting.
They can also be chipped to stop working when one colour runs low, no matter the state of the others. (Looking at you again, HP). This can be annoying enough with individual colour cartridges; it's bloody infuriating if the four colours are in a single unit that has to be replaced en bloc before the damned thing starts working again.
We had one of those (guess what brand) and it didn't take much simple arithmetic to realise that it would take very few refills before we reached the price of a more expensive but much better device.
So we sold the HP and got a Brother mono laser 3-function for heavy work, and a cheap-ish Canon colour inkjet 3-function for everything else.
It cost about β¬130 more than a printer-only inkjet, was bought in April 2018, is only on its second toner cartridge (generic, not branded), works reliably on the house network and so can print from any device from PC to phone.
For colour work @dduane has that non-network Canon, which continues to print well when required - cross fingers, spin three times and spit to foil the gremlins - probably because its 4 x individual-colour (we made sure of that) cartridge consumption is more balanced by doing only colour printing rather than heavy black-only use for docs.
The Brother we got was DCP-L2530DW...
...which may be available at discount since it's been discontinued and replaced by DCP-L2660DW...
...though IMO this other current model, DCP-L2620DW...
...is better for home use.
The specs suggest it's a more direct replacement for our device, and that flat top is far less intrusive than the angled feed hopper (which also prevents use as, inevitably, a part-time shelf).
DD's Canon is Pixma MG2550S...
...and AFAIK is still current.
This info is provided for reference; we're not shilling for Brother or Canon, just passing on satisfied-customer opinions, so all of the above is IMO and YMMV
romaincrisis
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