The OEM’s DCP-T500W allows for easy refilling from “squeeze bottles”.
Brother’s DCP-T500W
Asian Age reported on the launch of the DCP-T500W, which it called a “’fill-up and go’ printer” that is “economical and that you “can refill at will”. The machine is said by the news outlet to be “trying to improve the user experience of filling four ink tanks from separate bottles”, with “some thoughtful design features” aiding this. The wireless MFP features speeds of six and 27ppm in black and colour respectively, alongside Google Cloud Print compatibility, though it is the refilling that is the most interesting element.
The news outlet commented that “when you’re number two, you try harder”, which was a tagline from the second largest car rental company in the 1960s, Avis, and noted that it senses a “similar sentiment in the printer business”, with the slightly different “mantra” of “if you launch later, you try to be better”. This is due to Epson having been “the first […] to bring refillable ink tanks” with its RIPS system last year, but Brother has now “followed suit”.
Asian Age comments that Brother “has made a virtue of its later entry […] by carefully studying its competition and trying to improve the user experience” of filling four ink tanks with different bottles. The DCP-T500W features “thoughtful design” in that embedded tanks “have been accommodated in the overall printer body, rather than sticking out on one side”, and they can be tilted by 45 degrees “so that you can pour fresh ink without spilling”.
The “ability to refill any or all of the four print tanks” comes from using “squeeze bottles” bought separately from Brother, which adds that page yields in monochrome and colour from one set of bottles reaches around 6,000 pages and 5,000 pages respectively in A4. The news outlet states this is a “considerable saving over competing ink cartridge systems and even a small improvement over Brother’s own cartridge printers”.
In turn, the DCP-T500W is said to offer cost per page of 10 paise ($0.002/€0.001) in monochrome and 24 paise ($0.004/€0.003) in colour, which “represents a significantly lower cost of ownership for users”. The machine is available for Rs 12,150 ($189/€170), while a similar machine without wireless – the DCP-T300 – is available for Rs 11,100 ($173/€155).