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Epson To End the Sale and Distribution of Laser Printer (theregister.com) 191

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
Japanese electronics and printer maker Epson announced this month that it will end the sale and distribution of laser printer hardware by 2026, citing sustainability issues. From a report: According to the company, inkjets have a "greater potential" than laser printers to make "meaningful advances" when it comes to the environment. The company already halted laser printer sales in many markets, but continued in Asia and Europe. Even though new hardware would be unavailable everywhere, Epson said it would continue to support consumers with consumables and spare parts.

"As a company we're totally committed to sustainable innovation and action, and inkjets simply use less energy and fewer consumable parts," explained Epson sales and marketing manager Koichi Kubota in canned statement. "While laser printers work by heating and fusing toner to a page, Epson's Heat-Free inkjet technology consumes less electricity by using mechanical energy to fire ink onto the page."
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Epson To End the Sale and Distribution of Laser Printer More

Epson To End the Sale and Distribution of Laser Printer

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  • The competition is better anyways (Score:3)

    by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Monday November 28, 2022 @12:45PM (#63085346)

    At least for b/w. I have made excellent experiences with OKI and Brother.

    • Re:The competition is better anyways (Score:5, Informative)

      by ichthus ( 72442 ) on Monday November 28, 2022 @01:24PM (#63085468) Homepage
      Totally. Brother is awesome. Their build quality is great, and their Linux support is excellent -- they provide an installer that works for .deb and .rpm systems, and handles all of the CUPS and SANE stuff to get printing and scanning working over the network. Huge fan.

      • It would be nice if the software they provide to respond to button presses worked on modern Linux, but it doesn't.

      • Brother printers have great features for the money and are relatively clean to install and use. Excellent point on Linux. They also seem to have good distribution in North America at least. But "great" build quality?

        I was astonished at how flimsy my new (2022) Brother printer was compared to my ~20 year old HP (from back when HPs were good). Poorly fitting parts, a lot of slop in mechanism movement. Unsurprisingly, labels all print crooked.

        If you need a quick cheap laser printer with impressive features for

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ichthus ( 72442 )
          Hmm. Maybe their newer stuff isn't as good. My years-old 2240D and MFC-5895CW have been great. Before these I had another MFC Laser that was so old, it was beige.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ukoda ( 537183 )
        I was a HP fanboy for many years, until they lost the plot and even stared selling Windows only crap. Now Brother is my first choice for new printers for exact the reasons you point out.

    • At least for b/w. I have made excellent experiences with OKI and Brother.

      I haven't followed printers for a while now, but Epson was a very good company in terms of inkjet photo printers. I rarely print photos so I never got one. In fact I can go months between printing, which was bad when you had an Epson because the ink would dry in the print head, which was part of the printer. I rarely bothered with color because I was printing manuals and an oddball text dump for Cisco sh tech.

      Considering how cheap it is per page for B&W laser overall, and the fact that I was able to

    • When I started going to college 5 years ago I picked up a Brother printer with toner. Saved any print credits at school for color printing and the rare time I had to print on campus. I've printed 2200 pages and have replaced the toner once. The drum still states it has 9800 pages left. It can print on both sides, and can scan from a feeder or the flatbed.

      It works out of the box with Ubuntu, and works with Windows. Best part, even if it sits for six months it can still print and the ink wells haven't gone dr

    • At least for b/w. I have made excellent experiences with OKI and Brother.

      I paid $55 for an entire set of toner cartridges for a Brother color laser printer. Total win.

  • Who cares...? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cayenne8 ( 626475 ) on Monday November 28, 2022 @12:47PM (#63085352) Homepage Journal
    Ok...who gives a fuck if a laser using slightly more energy, etc...if it gives a superior print?

    Is there actually anyone out there that is hinging their printer purchase based on energy usage vs quality and speed of print?!?

    It's a printer! It is not going to cause the glaciers to melt and cause Armageddon....

    • How about plastic waste? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by DeplorableCodeMonkey ( 4828467 ) on Monday November 28, 2022 @01:05PM (#63085408)

      Laser toner cartridges tend to be much more reliable for professional refilling operations to reuse and resell while also lasting substantially longer per run.

      This reeks of Starbucks style "environmentalism" which is all like "look ma, no straws anymore" while sweeping aside the fact that their cold cups probably have 50x more plastic than a straw and are almost never recycled.

      • That and your are much more likely to throw out the entire printer if its inkjet. The heads get blocked, especially if you don't print that often, and inkjets are much cheaper than laser.

    • Melting plastic onto the page also results in a print that is highly resistant to bleeding/running due to contact with liquid. There appear to be paper/ink technologies on the market that can prevent water damage (ignoring coatings/lamination), but I wouldn't expect them to hold up to alcohol or other solvents.

    • Re:Who cares...? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by paulpach ( 798828 ) on Monday November 28, 2022 @01:37PM (#63085528)

      I agree, laser printers have much superior quality when printing text and documents (what you will do 99% of the time)
      Moreover...

      Injket printers might be cheaper, but they really get you with the cartridges.
      Toner is so much cheaper per page and won't dry out like inkjet cartridges.

    • Re:Who cares...? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by NFN_NLN ( 633283 ) on Monday November 28, 2022 @01:39PM (#63085532)

      Option 1: "We suck at producing competitive laser printers and need to exit the market."
      Option 2: "We're doing this 1) for Climate Change or 2) COVID safety or 3) to support the Black or Trans community."

      Let's be honest, climate change was their best option here.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by GoJays ( 1793832 )
      Inkjets are worse for the environment based on the wasted paper due to test pages from print head cleaning and constant replacement of plastic ink cartridges. So what if Lasers use more energy than inkjets, especially if the energy source is from a renewable source. The likelihood the source is renewable will only increase by 2026 with all these government pushes for renewable energy.

    • Ok...who gives a fuck if a laser using slightly more energy, etc...if it gives a superior print? Is there actually anyone out there that is hinging their printer purchase based on energy usage vs quality and speed of print?!?

      It's a printer! It is not going to cause the glaciers to melt and cause Armageddon....

      It's just a lame excuse. The real reason why they prefer ink is the per page cost of ink vs toner is many times higher. Ink cartridges cost nothing to produce. It's pure profit.

  • Greener for Epson (Score:5, Informative)

    by davidwr ( 791652 ) on Monday November 28, 2022 @12:50PM (#63085356) Homepage Journal

    In the USA and other countries where currency is green(ish).

    It's not about the printers, it's about the con$umable$.

  • I know they offered them but in my, albeit limited, experience with commercial and residential printers Epson was always more the option for color and professional inkjet solutions wherewas the bulk laser units tended to be Brother, Xerox, HP, Canon and such.

    I don't think this is really a sign of the death of the laser printer but Epson focussing on it's core strength and exiting a market they more had to be in just to compete and now they feel like they can make the business case for their inkjets versus c

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Epson also has higher-end inkjet printers - wide format (from 24-240 inches), and proofing. Both of which they are market leaders in.

      The proofing printers (with the associated software) are pretty specialized beasts... tell it your press, plates, inks, paper, calibration & profile data, etc., give it the same paper stock and it will print out a press-proof, including dot placement, before you've gone to the expense of creating plates, and taking the press down for the necessary make ready for a short r

  • Translation.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by wiggles ( 30088 ) on Monday November 28, 2022 @12:51PM (#63085360)

    "We can't figure out how to make people go out and buy toner every month for $50 a crack like they do for inkjet printers, so we will just pull the lasers from the market to force people to buy more ink."

    • Exactly this. It's the marketing department running out of ideas. Don't "fire" printers, fire those people instead.

    • They seem very good at making smaller and smaller laser toners as well. At least in the home office / small business market segment.
      My Samsung ML-3050ND (from around 2006 I think) had 8000 pages toner, when you choose the high-capacity one which is the most cost effective. Most recent alternative printers I am looking at have 2000 pages toners (monochrome). They may be a little less expensive but never 1/4 the price, and need to be replaced more often.

      And also it is getting difficult to get an Ethernet port

    • The current EcoTank (Epson branded, but many other makes available) uses very very cheap ink bottles, that last a long time (still on my first CMYK set after a year and a half, with school-age people at home). Epson already produces ink tank business printers as well. However there are reports of Epson soft killing the printers due to the cleaning ink pad being full, but seems to be using a counter or timer for that. It is a part that should be easily replaceable as well!

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ukoda ( 537183 )
        Tank printers are a great idea if your business is printing things regularly, particularly large format. For typical office and home use a laser print is the way to go, way less hassle and almost always cheaper.

  • 20 year old HP LaserJet (Score:5, Informative)

    by alanw ( 1822 ) <alan@wylie.me.uk> on Monday November 28, 2022 @01:03PM (#63085402) Homepage

    (Reposted from my submission to the Register article)

    I bought a HP LaserJet 1200 in January 2002 (£235.45). It's still going strong, with just one replacement toner cartridge. I turn it off when not in use. The energy I use is miniscule compared to that needed to manufacture a new printer.

    I don't use it very often, but I've just printed out 97 caving rigging guides from the CNCC [cncc.org.uk] web site. It worked perfectly. No nozzles to clog. No yellow tracking dots [slashdot.org].

    • I'm in the same boat. I only print a couple of hundred pages per year, and I'm less than halfway through my second toner cartridge after 15 years.

      The last time I had an inkjet, the ink cartridges would dry up and become useless after about a year whether I used them or not. If I had bought 15 sets of ink cartridges instead, not only would that be less sustainable, but with the insane markups I'd be in the poor house by now.

    • Logged on to say: Exactly this, with my 19 year old LJ1200 :) The thing is a tank. I will be sad the day it finally dies... but it is not this day.

    • HP Laserjets were solid, high quality durable printers.

  • Printers will always have a reason for being, but the mountains of physical artifacts that have historically driven companies are simply vanishing. I recently went through the entire process of selling a condo and buying a house with the only physical paper involved being the signing of the final document. All else was docusigned.

    Inkjets can give you photos. That's still a valid use case. But I'm personally on year 4 with my original Brother toner cartridge, with no end in sight.

  • Check this out: https://www.onlineregister.com... [onlineregister.com] Epson is an ink delivery company. They happen to make printers as a helpful supplement to deliver the ink, but printer sales are non-recurring revenue, while ink sales recur with predictable frequency. If you buy enough original equipment manufacturer ink, they will literally give you a free printer. For anyone surprised by this, you should learn about recurring vs. nonrecurring revenue. This is a justification to shift production from less profitable laser sales to more profitable ink jet sales, with some calculated loss due to transition costs. The same with their bricking of older (less profitable) printers remotely. I like Epson and think they make awesome products. Despite that, anyone actually analyzing these articles needs to have a shred of economic knowledge to make sense of them. Or it's just the same as watching a pro sportsball match. Or American Idol. With my super dinky businesses, I calculate recurring vs. nonrecurring revenue separately, so I can focus on the recurring component. Epson has entire MBA types to do exactly this type of analysis on the data Epson Rewards provides, and similar sales data from their laser product lines, to make recommendations that result in these actions, and then greenwash them, since saying "we can make more money by doing less work by abandoning this entire product line" isn't as trendy as "the environment" right now.

  • will they let you refill inkjets / not have timeouts on the carts?

  • Wait . . . (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Crowded ( 6202674 ) on Monday November 28, 2022 @01:26PM (#63085472)

    Someone other than Brother makes printers? Who knew.

    Oh - never mind. The search came up with some brands that upon closer look, turned out to be boutique items. This HP company, looks like the "ink/toner" appear to be some kind of high-value NFTs . . . right?

    That doesn't sound right. Is it PHYSICAL crypto currency or something? I just can't get my head around the pricing scheme . . .

  • Dot matrix (Score:4, Funny)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Monday November 28, 2022 @01:26PM (#63085474)

    Bring back dot matrix. Nothing beats the look and sound of dot matrix. It's kind of like vinyl vs. mp3, you know what I am saying.

  • I'm not in the market for a print-head cleaning machine that uses a ridiculously expensive cleaning fluid.

  • If you print every day, the inkjet nozzles don't clog and you can use up the ink. If you only print once every few weeks, the nozzles clog and you have to buy new ones. Whether you're using up the ink or throwing it away, you buy the same amount just as often.

    When I say "you", I mean "I have a laser printer."

  • Complete Bulls*** (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Voyager529 ( 1363959 ) <voyager529@ya[ ].com ['hoo' in gap]> on Monday November 28, 2022 @01:33PM (#63085502)

    If Epson was even the slightest bit concerned about the environment, they'd move forward with laser printers and make them actually-sustainable.

    Unless you're dealing with the five-figure Ricoh / Kyocera / Canon / Sharp document centers, laser printers are treated as disposable items. I've replaced the fuser in printers maybe twice in my career, because the fusers for the old machine tended to be the same price as a new machine. I had a Samsung color laser printer in perfect working order, and I had to throw it away because HP stopped making toners for it, and even the knockoff toners cost more than a new color laser printer. Many printers don't even offer maintenance kits to replace the rollers or transfer belts.

    Consumers and manufacturers alike treat printers as disposable items. If Epson's concern was really about the environment, that is the situation to fix. Make a printer with a 10-year warranty, refillable toner cartridge, sub-$200 fuser, and something like the old JetDirect system that allows the I/O cards to be replaced with something else later on. If it supports PostScript and PCL, takes less than 15W to idle, and costs less $500 or less at point-of-sale for the B/W model, THAT will be a way to nudge the needle in terms of environmentally friendly printing.

    But no, we all know why Epson wants to focus on Inkjets. Now, in fairness to Epson, they've at least been innovating in the space with their bag-like ink and mega tanks that cost about the same per-page as laser printers do; I give them props for at least trying to do a better job of innovation than HP's printing-as-a-service.

    Ultimately though, others in the thread are correct; nobody who is shopping for a printer is doing so based on power usage.

    • Make a printer with a 10-year warranty, refillable toner cartridge, sub-$200 fuser, and something like the old JetDirect system that allows the I/O cards to be replaced with something else later on.

      Did you ever upgrade a jetdirect card? Neither did anyone else. HP came out with new standards for them before coming out with new features.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dargaud ( 518470 )

      I had a Samsung color laser printer in perfect working order, and I had to throw it away because HP stopped making toners for it

      Which brings to mind: why are there SO MANY models of printers ? When you look at the list of Cups printer drivers, there are thousands, and they are not even for specific models, but for series. It's insane. There can't be _that_ much difference between one printer and another. Is it just marketing ? Planned obsolescence ?

  • Stop fetishizing making marks on paper.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday November 28, 2022 @01:35PM (#63085514)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • The last time I was shopping for a printer, black and white lasers were reasonably priced but to get color you play a very high premium. I don't print a lot of color but I didn't want to give it up either. I ended up with a Canon MegaTank and love it. Pennies per page, and decent at color prints. There's always a recipe or something I'm printing so not really worried about clogs.

    • You're shopping wrong. I paid equivalent US$315 a year ago for a colour laser multifunction (scan/print/copy/duplex/fax) printer from HP. It sits in my office plugged into the power and the network and prints colour or B/W, two sided, whenever I want. I never have to clean the ink nozzles, buy cleaning pads, replace half full ink tanks, buy the right kind of paper to avoid ink bleeds, deal with random ink clogs, or any of the other things that happen to inkjets.

      It's done 600 pages and it is half way through

      • I'm not sure how one "shops" for a printer.. My printer died and I needed one so had no choice to buy what was available at the time. Right now if I go on Amazon the cheapest HP color laser is $489 CDN which is way above my budget. If I knew that HP printers came with 1200 pages worth of toner that may have tipped the scales but they often don't divulge that so I always find out what a cartridge costs and work out the price per page and go with the cheapest. I don't need 2 sided printing, I just need to

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by MeNeXT ( 200840 )

          look at Brother. The ink is less expensive and you can reset the number of prints on the cartridge. I have mine for 10 years now. I refilled the original cartridges once.

          Everyone talks about the environment but they are quick to jump to disposable for convenience sake. I once bought a Canon Pixma and it was clogged before I could empty the cartridges. I can't afford a free inkjet printer. The cost of maintenance exceeds the savings even if the color laser is over $1000.

          • The cheapest Brother color laser I can find anywhere is at Staples for $499 which I consider pricey. Actually there is no Bother printer in stock at my local store.. And the cheapest one on Amazon is $572 CDN. 4 cents a page isn't too bad, but it's not 0.3 cents a page.

            I'm surprised people have so much trouble with inkjet printers. I've only had trouble with Lexmarks.. I will never buy one of those again. But then I don't go more than a couple weeks without printing something.
      • So for what it's worth, your cart costs around 6 cents a page, and a canon megatank bottle costs around 0.3 cents a page.
  • It is more profitable to sell cheap inkjet printers, and then make ongoing money selling expensive replacement ink cartridges.

  • The Epson inkjet would sit for weeks at a time. If I wanted to print, there was long noisy cleaning/purging process that wasted a ton of ink. The first print was still pretty cruddy, then I'd have to clean/purge/waste again. Eventually buy new cartridges whose heads were not clogged with dried ink. Convincing it to use the aftermarket ink required some fiddling.

    Now I have a laser.
    It sits on a desk and also does nothing for weeks at a time. When I need to print, it prints. If I print a lot of stuff and

  • For business use, the last time I deployed an inkjet was maybe around 2005. For a light user who wanted a small form factor multipurpose. Including faxing. The fact they didn't regularly have print jobs coming out meant a routine of cleaning the clogged nozzles. While that was awhile ago, I'm not sure if newer inkjets offer better on-demand printing for that scenario, or if they can print a full color page without worrying about the damp paper and risk of a spill making the page run. Lasers have dropped in
  • No clogs, no $70 dollar ink on a $50 printer, no generic "print error" that really is just the result of planned obsolescence. Customers fix the paper jams themselves and uninstall the bloated adware software center

  • In an answer to a question posted on StackExchange:

    "...I probably shouldn't talk about how a laser printers use 100 times more power while they are printing, but allow me just to say that for the whole life cycle the most significant stage for both types is paper usage [stackexchange.com], followed by the manufacturing of the product and electricity consumption...

    "The part of the discussion that never seems to come up is something I've noticed from personal experience. Most people throw out the inkjets when they run out of ink

  • Inkjets die. The ink drys out. You need to replace an inkjet ink at least 10 X as often compared to toner. That includes production costs, shipping cost, and a lot more landfill waste. Who is their right mind would think inkjet is more eco friendly? This is a straight up lie and a money grab. Inkjets are the ones that need to go the way of the dinosaur.
  • Flew down the basement stairs, at about one year of age. 10 years ago. While it was in the air, I was in the car on the way to the office supply for a laser printer. Which I'm still using. Good Riddance to a BAD IDEA

  • I bought a new InkJet printer 2 yrs ago, and it simply stopped printing after a year. Bought brand new ink cartridges and nothing would print. And of course the ink is insanely expensive.

    Laser printers last for a long time, don't cause nearly the amount of problems inkjets do, and print much faster. It's clear that this whole thing is a scam to force people to use shitty inkjets as we will have to spend much more money to keep them working.

  • What dip$hit at Epson approved this message for release? All I got from it is, "we hate our customers". Thanks for the heads-up Epson.

  • The only technical downside of lasers is that many old ones, HP LaserJet4 or whatever, can't print full-page graphics. The entire page has to reside in memory, and there's not enough.

    Most people and small offices should have B&W laser and send out color.

    Instant film printers are popular some places, Canon and Fuji make them, some built into inexpensive cameras. No ink at all, just a Polaroid-type paper cartridge. Selfy stuff at the low-end, maybe better at the higher end.

  • "While laser printers work by heating and fusing toner to a page, Epson's Heat-Free inkjet technology consumes less electricity by using mechanical energy to fire ink onto the page."

    "We finally realized that HP makes a bazillion dollars selling ink."

  • I still have and use my first inkjet printer from ~ 25 years ago*; it's an Epson Stylus Color and think it was their first color inkjet. It has been the most reliable piece of electronics I've owned, only needing its first repair now, as the black prints have gotten wavy; I suspect a bad jet drive IC. I am stuck buying expired, new-old stock cartridges from eBay, but they still work well and are dirt cheap (a few dollars).

    People say not to buy the first version of something, but I've suspected that t

  • Epson is terrible on the laser front. That might actually be the reason.

    They have good ink. I give you that. When I was using Epson, I would actually buy the genuine one over the refills, due to quality difference. And given "tank" options, it was not expensive at all.

    However their laser offerings are probably not bringing enough money, even though they have about 10% global market share in laser, and about 11% in inkjet: https://www.tonerbuzz.com/blog... [tonerbuzz.com]

  • The headline should actually read "Epson to soon exit the printer market".

    Anyone who only prints occasionally soon learns that inkjet printers are the ultimate consumable product. The ink cartridges dry up and often it is cheaper to buy a whole new printer than new cartridges. Sure the cartridges with a new printer only contain a small amount of ink but if it is enough to get the job done then it may be cheaper.

    Smart people soon switch to laser printers as a decently designed one can sit for ages wi

  • When the cost per page is higher, that is paid for with money made predominantly with fossil fuels.

    They can't ignore the ecosystem and say they're for the environment.

    Besides, Brother is far better and they went DRM-evil.

  • People print out 10 pages per year, so, if you sell them a laser-printer, they won't buy toner EVER!

    If you sell them an inkie, the ink dries out every three months and you can sell them ink that's more expensive than the printer itself, 4 times per year.

  • I thought they just made inkjets.

    Never seen an epson laser in my life.

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