A price cap is only interesting if something falls the wrong side of it. On tank printers, $300 is a very well placed line: everything that makes the ink cheap sits below it, and everything that makes the printer convenient sits above.
How we picked
Every printer recommended here was under $300 at the manufacturer’s own list price, or at the retailer listing we cite where the manufacturer would not publish one. Those are checkable published figures rather than street prices, which move hourly in both directions — check the current price before you buy.
Within the cap we ranked on cost per page, because on a tank printer that is the number that compounds, and then on what the hardware does for the difference.
What $300 does not buy
| Printer | Price we read | Auto duplex | Feeder | Inside $300? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Epson EcoTank ET-2400 | $189.99 | No | No | Yes |
| Epson EcoTank ET-2800 | $239.99 | No | No | Yes |
| Canon MegaTank G3270 | $248.99 | Not stated | No | Yes |
| Epson EcoTank ET-2850 | $349.99 | Yes | No | No — $50 over |
| Epson EcoTank ET-4950 | $499.99 | Yes | Yes | No |
Epson prices from Epson US product pages; the Canon figure is an Office Depot listing because Canon's own store would not serve us a price. Not live prices.
There is the whole page in one table. Under $300 you can buy excellent ink and a scanner. You cannot buy automatic two-sided printing, and you cannot buy a document feeder. The first of those costs $50 more; the second costs $250 more.
The saving that is not a compromise
The unusual thing about cheap tank printers is that they are not cheaper to run than expensive ones. The ET-2400 and ET-2800 take identical 522 bottles at identical rated yields, so their cost per page is identical: about 0.4 of a cent black, 1.1 cents color.
That is not how printers normally work, and it is worth stating plainly, because the usual rule — cheap machine, expensive supplies — is exactly what the tank format breaks. Inside this budget you are choosing hardware, not economics.
Three years at the cap
At 100 pages a month, three years of black ink is about $14 on 522 and $11 on Canon’s GI-21. Both are small enough to be rounding errors against the purchase price, which is the entire point of buying a tank printer.
For contrast, the same pages on the cheapest laser toner we priced come to $118. That gap is what your $240 is buying, and it grows every year you keep the printer.
Cheapest under $300 is not the same as cheapest
This page answers a budget question: what is the best tank printer $300 buys. Our budget page answers a different one — which cheap tank printer is the best buy — and the cheapest printers to run ignores purchase price altogether.
All three pages happen to like the same machines, because the range is small and honest. They diverge on what they tell you to do with the last fifty dollars.