

Yeah, there is that downside.
I just bought an ancient enterprise color printer from auction for a song. It came with an additional full set of unopened toner, all for less than half the cost of the toner.
The upside is that I will have a color printer I can manage and use for printing books.
If you are lucky, you may be able to reclaim the ink with rubbing alcohol, but I always spent forever on that and rarely had good results.
https://www.wikihow.com/Clean-Ink-Cartridges
If that doesn’t work, I’m a fan of blotting the cartridge on an alcohol-soaked paper towel and then dragging the cart along a piece of paper to scrub the nozzle.
I have gotten ink working that way, personally and professionally.