Printers are very "random" these days.
In the old days (20 years ago) an HP Laserjet would go for ever - until the developer drum wore out and then you binned it, but you would get years out of it.
I have run a Kyocera laser (something-1800) for maybe 10 years now, maybe 20k-30k pages, and it has been fine. The toner refills are cheap.
On inkjets, avoid Lexmark (ripoff ink) and I no longer use Epson. I use Canon and they seem to last well. Several i850s have run for 5-7 years, with one going in the bin recently.
BTW Canon cartridges are chipped nowadays. But the RSA private key was leaked and the Ebay ones are 1/4 of the price and work superbly, with great colours, in my new Pixma ip4950 duplexing inkjet. The Ebay # for the ink is 250965964429. This seems to be a very good inkjet.
If you look on Ebay you see the old Canon inkjets which take the 3E cartridges fetch more than new prices. For a good reason too. But the print heads eventually clog up and if the special reset sequence doesn't work (it rarely does) it has to go in the bin.
I also have a duplexing HP colour laser, 2605dtn, which is the biggest pile of crap ever. It never makes more than a few dozen pages before jamming, crashes on many "complex" pages (forcing a time wasting sequence of cancelling the job on the PC, waiting for the queue to empty, then power cycling the printer, and then reprinting the job on the Canon inkjet
). The printer was £450, the refills are £250! The Ebay ones are £90 but deliver rubbish colours (which is OK on a laser as the colours are rubbish anyway) and not many pages (probably not such good value then). The cost per colour page is outrageous.
Now I think a fast duplexing inkjet, and an old mono laser, is the best way to go if you want everything i.e. reliability, low b+w costs, and reasonable colour costs, and top notch quality for photo printing.
I am 100% sure the Canon 4950 costs much less per page than the HP laser - assuming Ebay inks for both.
I wonder if anybody can recommend a really solid mono
duplexing laser?