[rstuart4133]

Nah, Brother is the same now.

A more useful recommendation is: buy when they are making their money from the razor, not the blades.

Most (all?) printer companies now have a range printers models where that's true. HP calls theirs a "Smart Tank" printer, Brother names them INKvestment printers. Epson was first with their EcoTank printers. I have one of them, but I know other people with other brands, and we all swear by them.

That's possibly because they aren't cheap upfront, so they tend to load them with features so you feel like you are getting something for all that money aside from the privilege of getting ripped off on ink. For example they often come with 10's of thousands of pages of ink in the box and are typically warrantied for years and have a build quality to match.

In principle, I'm fine with them offering the razor model - even "you can't scan if you haven't paid the ink tax". In practice, they never spell out on the box the Faustian bargain you are signing entering into. So once again we have big corp exploiting the "oh you didn't read the fine print" power imbalance between them and the consumer.