We’d love to tell you that you could buy a brilliant printer for £100. One that would last for years, that would product great-quality prints for extraordinarily low prices, that would be so easy to use that you’d laugh with joy every time you pressed Print or Scan. But reality is a harsh mistress.
Things are improving. Mostly. The growing maturity of ink tank printers means that these are now strong contenders. And they also lift the mask on an ugly fact: that the cost of all those luxury features, such as colour touchscreens and automatic document feeders, is borne through the tax of ink cartridges.