This is the part where I get to point out that Brother inkjets do a little dance ~every day that keeps the heads fresh. They do this on their own as for long as they're powered up.
This allows them to work well even if years go by between prints. It's a very thoughtful design element.
(They don't survive sitting for months and months unpowered on a shelf very well, but... you'll have that.)
I never had that happen to me, in all the years I owned it. It also doesn’t randomly wake up and throw my ink away, and sometimes it sits weeks unused. It’s in my home office, so I would know if it randomly wakes up.
The only bad thing is that it can get messy if you select the wrong paper type and the ink will not be absorbed by the paper, making the rollers dirty. That’s annoying but fixable, and preventable by not selecting the wrong paper type.
Laser printers are great for documents, but not very good for photos.
I have an ink jet printer that I like. I don't print very often (average a couple pages per week) but when I do it's a mix of documents and photos. The ink isn't cheap, but the quality seems good and for the amount I print the expense is minor.
And I printed a lot of photos, notes, documents, etc