Printer ink pricier than champagne finds Which?

A study by consumer watchdog Which? has found that branded printer ink remains “staggeringly” more expensive than third-party alternatives. In some cases printer ink is pricier that some champagnes, its survey found.

Home printers have become an essential piece of kit in homes over the pandemic, crucial for both home-working and home-schooling.

The watchdog surveyed 10,000 consumers who own inkjet printers, half of whom said they used their printer at least once a week. It has done similar surveys in the past, and this year concluded that “staggering cost differences” still remain between own-brand and third-party ink suppliers.

Its findings include:

[LIST]
[]Ink bought from the manufacturer could be up to 286% more expensive
[
]A multipack of colour ink for the Epson WorkForce WF-7210DTW printer cost £75.49 (or £1,369 per pint)
[]A multipack of ink for the Brother MFCJ5730DW cost £98.39
[
]Cartridges for a Canon Pixma MX475 cost £80.98
[*]Cheaper alternatives can be as cheap as £12.95, saving thousands over a five-year period
[/LIST]

For most domestic printer users, the best third-party inks are an obvious choice … :023:

Must be a quiet time at Which?.
But it’s good to see that Which? and the BBC can eventually catch up with what has been widely-known and reported-on (sometimes even by themselves) for years already.
:roll:

Back in 2014 the Mail on Sunday (*1) said this:
A £650 bottle of Krug Clos du Mesnil 2000 is decadent, but compared with the cost of essential replacement ink for a home printer it looks cheap – at about 90p a millilitre for the 750ml bottle.
In contrast, the ink in a best-selling 6.5ml HP 300 Tri-colour ink cartridge – priced at £15 on the high street – comes to £2.30 a millilitre. If the champagne bottle was emptied and filled with cartridge ink it would cost £1,725.

Then in 2019, reported in the Mirror (*2) as researched by (guess who?) Which? came this:
Essential printer ink ordered directly from a leading printer brand’s website comes to £1.89 per millilitre.
In contrast, a bottle of Dom Perignon Vintage champagne at the same price as this would cost £1,417.50, according to consumer group Which?

This is then it would appear just another of those “old reliable” stories which can be rolled out and re-used whenever inreresting stuff is in short supply.
Oh and never before have these reports made any difference whatsoever to the price of printer ink BTW.
As the new “story” illustrates perfectly.
Quelle surprise.

*1 Which is cheaper - the most exclusive champagne in the world... or ordinary printer ink? | This is Money

*2 Printer ink probe reveals it's ten times more expensive than vintage champagne - Mirror Online

I used to have a Canon printer years ago and, once it was out of it’s warranty, I used compatibles - they wrecked it - have never used them since!

Was thinking of trying the Epson Ecotank - has anyone used one of those?

Which? say expensive to buy, cheap to run, inconsistent results (depending on the model) amongst other things … which model/price were you considering … ?

Can’t help with Epson Ecotank, sorry.

But I’m not sure how tou managed to wreck a printer?
:104:
I’ve used compatibles in two different Canon printers over the past ten years or so without any problems whatsoever and did so with Epson printers for decades before that.

Provided you research into the catridges first & provided you disble Canon’s persistant update system which can be capable of upgrading the chip requirements & thus make some compatible chips on cartidges unusable, using quality compatibles should be no different for your printer than using originals.

In fact some companies like the one linked below will go so far as to guarantee your ink cartridge and the printer you use the cartridge in.

These aren’t the people I use BTW, but even here a set of compatible carts. for my particular printer are one-third the price of originals.
There is absolutely no way would I ever use the manufacturers cartridges unless prices become comparable to decent compatibles.

As long as your Printer warranty does not exclude the use of 3rd Party Inks!

It is, of course, outrageous, but the manufacturers get away with it because they can. My last printer, an Epson XP750 I think it was, lasted for about five years and always printed well. I only ever used compatible inks. It eventually died because the waste ink pad was full and, tbh, it wasn’t worth paying out to have it replaced. Throughout its life I made a point of never downloading the software updates for fear that there would be something in them somewhere that blocked me using compatible inks!

I replaced it with an Epson Eco Tank, which has refillable ink tanks. I filled them when I bought the printer over 8 months ago, and they are all still over half full. Replacement bottles work out at around £8.50 each for the colour ones and £13.50 for the black. They claim to cut printing costs by up to 95%.

The reality is that if the manufacturers were somehow stopped from charging such extortionate prices for the ink, they would simply respond by putting the price of the printers up. It is the ink that they make their money from, not the printers.

Warranties don’t last forever … :wink:

Tabby, I hadn’t noticed your post when I posted just now. Yes, I have an Eco Tank. It is brilliant, so much cheaper to run than any I’ve used before. The print quality is excellent for everyday use, though I’ve never used it for printing photos and I wouldn’t really expect it to be up to the mark for that. If you just want it for basic printing, then you can’t really go wrong with one of these.

My main printer for letters etc. is a laser printer - the toner cartridges last for ages. My other printer that I use for printing photos is a Kodak. They no longer produce printers because that branch of the company was taken over. There’s also no support for consumables such as print cartridges - for that reason, I’ve been forced to use so-called compatibles and thus far, have had no problems with them. It helps when the companies producing them have a good reputation for the product they sell and a good returns policy if they don’t meet someone’s expectations.

I’ve has a couple of printheads blocked by the use of rubbish ink quality.

First was in a Kodak Printer & Kodak supplied a new Print Head during warranty. Not everyone might want to make the change?

Then similar, having used friend recommended cartridges on a Canon.

Have settled on a good supplier, now, for my current pair of Canons - but I’m not about to recommend it (there is a workaround, via online search, which allows users to bypass the programmed print blocking used in some of the latest printers)

.

Interesting … and is print quality consistently good … ?

I think it would be useful if potential buyers of printers put together a total price comparison list e.g.:-

Printer A - £ 300 to buy + X pounds for whatever amount of ink I think I might use, at the advertised ink prices.

Printer B- £50 to buy, Y pounds for whatever amount of ink I expect to use, at the advertised ink prices, for whatever I think is the lifetime of that printer. (example 3 years).

I think that we will all find that the lowest cost printers are burying their printer cost in the prices of their inks. (They might all cost much the same if we do the arithmetic)

We have to think about the total cost based on the amount of ink we use.

Hope I worded this well enough to be understood.

:smiley:

When my old Epson 810 went to the printer graveyard, I bought a Canon MP240 on Gumtree. only because it also came with an unopened set of Canon Colour & Black cartridges, beside the ones in the printer. Looking online at compatibles, I find for this printer, they are roughly £31 for both, hardly a bargain. On e-bay you can get the originals for about £18 to £20. Printer ink is always a rip off, but bugger all changes at all. Thankfully, I don’t do a lot of printing, so I treat the cartridges like a bottle of fine wine! :confused::confused::confused:

I’ve only ever bought HP cartridges direct from HP for our HP printer after being stung with a set of compatibles that didn’t work. However, I do have a set of Tesco re-manufactured cartridges ready to try when the current set gives up the ghost. Looking at them, they do look like the original HP ones in shape, size and colours used and the packaging does state the cartridges have been refilled. I assume from that, these are used HP cartridges that have been recycled.

HP Instant Ink at £2-00 a month regardless. I’m sure HP come out ahead but I don’t care. I hardly miss that amount and can just forget about ink usage and where the best place is to get it from.

Presumably, this is the scheme you are refering to:

HP Instant Ink

Never run out and save up to 70% on ink or 50% on toner
Your printing service includes:

Apparently for £1.99 the scheme provides enough ink for 50 pages a month, which for the casual user, is probably convenient.

For me, however, 100 pages a month for £3.49 would have to be the minimum, but, with additional pages costing £1 for 10, I would probably have to upgrade to 300 pages a month for £9.99 so the yearly cost would be £120.

For £120, I can buy 6 sets of compatible cartrdges and print 3,000 pages so the comparison is very favourable to HP … !

But … I abandoned HP printers a few years ago after their software inhibited compatible cartdidges and switched to Epson … :smiley:

Still, it’s a good deal for you … :023:

It is because we don’t need to print many pages a month. A good thing (for us) is that the cost is worked out on the page count. It doesn’t take into account how much ink pages might use.

Much of the printing we do is to do with printing downloaded craftwork examples and patterns and they are quite often very colourful, perhaps use up to 15 pages and probably use a fair amount of ink.

Excellent … :!:

That’s what I should have done when I bought my last HP printer.