You may be surprised to learn this, but laser toner has a best before date. In a domestic environment it may go years without clumping but if the humidity varies then it can cluimp, which affects print quality. Ten years ago laser printers were mostly far more solidly made and also used a lot more power, so they tended to keep their insides dry by simple heat generation. Modern ones in the cheap price range may not perform as well.
Anybody doing so little printing that an inkjet head blocks up, should perhaps rethink what they are doing. If you buy an inkjet with a cartridge size between 2000 and 4000 pages - of which there are plenty nowadays - and print a Windows test page once a week, the whole thing should still be working just fine in ten years and will have cost a lot less than an equivalent colour laser. The important thing is to get a printer which isn’t a horrible GDI printer - if it has GCP or a CUPs profile you’re fine - and has decent ink tank sizes. Currently the Epson WorkForce Pro WF-5110DW is a real bargain, there are plenty of others. (I am not only retired, I have never worked for Epson.)
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