Best printer that use less ink?

In-search for the best printer that I can print from a iphone, ipad, Mac pro, and a PC laptop (wireless for all computer feeding data to the printer). The most important part of the printer it must use LESS INK and still print high quality photo's. It must have copy as well as fax function. I have had other printers in the passed and they all failed in high ink cartridge replacement. One was so terrible that if you printed 25 copies it was time for a cartridge to be replaced.
Also If I run out of the color cartridge i should keep going with the black and white cartridge for text printing. There are some printer will not allow to print anything until the color cartridge is replaced. Not good.

Any laser printer will last Really long. Good HP laser printers typically have a life span of 1000 pages.

First, it's impossible to give you an absolute answer to your question because that depends how often you will be printing which can drain your ink cartridges faster than if you once in a while print.

For ink-jet printers, to save ink you must always print continuously pages until all documents are done. If you print a page or two in minutes intervals or hour intervals than your ink cartridges will dwindle far faster than if you printed 1000 pages continually. This is due to the fact that ink-jet printers always waste ink when it sits for a while and starts up by performing unnecessary print head cleaning which cuts your ink cartridges life by half.

As for laser jet printers they have a longer life span because their cartridges are huge and hold enough ink to print tons of pages, but their cost is so expensive, especially color. If you own a business and you need to print hundreds of documents every day, then your best bet is to look for a laser type printer. What type of laser printer to get does not matter since they all come in various sizes and cost. Else, use an ink-jet printer and save ink by taking my advice.

P.S
As for some printers not printing when your color ink is out, never heard of that unless your are talking about an old color printer dated years ago. To print black and white only when your color cartridge is out of ink, simply change your printer preferences from color to black and white which can be found in your printer preferences software that came with your printer.