Printers

wmrcomputers

Stafford PC & laptop repair specialist
Just wondered what anyone here thinks about the new HP "Instant Ink" scheme? For those who don't know, you basically buy the printer and then enrol in the Instant Ink scheme. £1.99 per month buys you 50 pages, £3.49 buys 100 pages or £7.99 buys you 300 pages. The printer orders your ink cartridges automatically before they run out.

At first, it sounds really good. However, you can only roll over 1 month of unused pages. Now, if you use your "quota" then it's not a bad deal at all. However, I think that HP rely on the fact that sometimes printers just sit unused for some time, and it's those customers that they make good profits from. I'm certain there will be people who pay for the £7.99 deal to make sure they've covered any eventuality, but sometimes use as little as 50 - 100 pages per month.

I'm thinking of offering something similar myself but whereby you'd pay around just 2p per page in the long run no matter how much (or little) you used the printer. The monthly payments wouldn't start until you've exhausted your first cartridges and monthly payments would then be set according to your usage. I'd then automatically reduce or increase payments as your usage required (depending on how often I was called out to replace them).

Or do people just prefer to go out and buy their own inks as and when required still? Is this "monthly approach" to printing costs just silly?
 

age'd parent

50,000th poster!
I have three printers, buy cheap carts for them all, even old car boot ones work, pay HP prices? Never!
I even refill some.
 

Alee

Well-Known Forumite
My printer is still unused for the past 6 months - year because I just never get round to buying ink . I would benefit from using printer but iys just lazyness I suppose !
 

wmrcomputers

Stafford PC & laptop repair specialist
I got a laser, use a printer that rarely I needed new carts for every job!
I switched to colour laser as I was fed up of ink cartridges drying out and on alot of printers like Epsons the ink dries in the print heads and they never work the same again.
Laser all the way for me now.
 

wmrcomputers

Stafford PC & laptop repair specialist
My printer is still unused for the past 6 months - year because I just never get round to buying ink . I would benefit from using printer but iys just lazyness I suppose !
Similarly to what I've just said above, depending on the make and model I wouldn't necessarily waste too much money on inks for it, as you may find it's become problematic after sitting unused for so long.
 

wmrcomputers

Stafford PC & laptop repair specialist
I have three printers, buy cheap carts for them all, even old car boot ones work, pay HP prices? Never!
I even refill some.
If it works for you, then fair play to you. Refilling and the associated mess isn't for most people though. I've done it myself many moons ago but I'd never go back to it now. I can almost guarantee that my colour laser is as cost effective as you refilling your own carts, and I'm not refilling toners I'm buying them in brand new.

The big downside to lasers is photographs. Whilst they print BETTER on plain papers, there's no real glossy photo option so then inkjets do win. However, the masses of ink that an inkjet uses printing photos, I find it's far cheaper to order prints from Asda online at around 20p a go and then just pop down there an hour later to pick them up.
 

proactive

Enjoying a drop of red.
Have a cheap Epson printer at home that I think was last used in May. The office colour laser is really only ever used now to generate invoices for those clients that are determined not to work electronically any more. If it does more than 100 pages per month I'd be amazed.

So these monthly schemes really wouldn't appeal to me as most stuff now is paperless.
 

number9

Well-Known Forumite
1st thing I do before i get a printer is check wether compats are available and what cost. I have 2 printers, one is £5/set of 6, canon. the other is £3/set of 6 Epson. I use the Epson once a week for a page or 2 to keep heads wet, its about 12 years old, still going strong. the canon is about 3 years old, quicker and wifi, is why its used more often.
i run each printer until a cart runs out rather than change cart when it says to.

the hp printer set up would work out too much for me, i don't print enough
 

wmrcomputers

Stafford PC & laptop repair specialist
I always found Epsons were the worst with compats. Okay if used regularly, but forget to use them and you can waste through a full cartridge running cleaning cycles to get the bloody things going again.

I'm with TekMonkey. Lasers all the way for me now. I get 1400 iso pages in full colour for a £15 set of toners. It just works. There's never any banding, head cleaning or other messing about even if you don't use them for months on end.
 

number9

Well-Known Forumite
modern Epsons are probably the worst with compats, just getting them recognised at times.

if I had to replace now, it would be laser.
 

Lunar Scorpion

Anarchy in the UK
Cool, I'm looking at maybe getting a printer so this was useful. I wonder if the printers at the library are inkjet - occasionally I might actually need inkjet... :hmm:
 

wmrcomputers

Stafford PC & laptop repair specialist
For cheap toner on a full colour laser, look at the Dell lasers such as this one or with scanner this one
There are full toner cartridge sets on eBay for £15 that work perfectly every time.
 

wmrcomputers

Stafford PC & laptop repair specialist
I don't suppose anyone here has ever taken advantage of the HP Instant Ink thing? If so I'd love some feedback.

As I've said previously, I love me colour laser for day-to-day printing, but as I'm now getting into my aerial photography I'm thinking that I might prefer an inkjet again purely for the photographic work. The HP instant ink would work out at around 4p a print or less and far cheaper than buying original cartridges based on this. (Apparently it's the pure photo users that get hell of a bargain from this system). Fair enough I could reduce the cost by using compatibles etc etc. but then you start having all the problems.

I'm getting quite tempted!!
 

wmrcomputers

Stafford PC & laptop repair specialist
UPDATE.....

Just incase anybody was thinking of buying one of the HP printers and doing the instant ink thing, I'd possibly reconsider depending on your needs. I got one a few days ago which I didn't get around to signing up for the instant ink deal as I was trying it out with the enclosed cartridges first. You'll now see why I returned it a day later.

DSC_0406.JPG


Both of the above pictures (not edited) were printed on the exact same photo paper. The image on the left was printed with the HP Envy 4500 series (cost £49.99) and the colours are far from vibrant. The image to the right of it was printed just on an Epson XP-225 (cost £44.99). It is clear to see that the colours are more vibrant, the redish tones to the trees is clearly visible and the grass actually looks like grass!

I will also point out that there was an even bigger reason for my returning the HP printer. Look closely at the image below...

DSC_0409.JPG


Those vertical bands were visible on everything I printed on. Plain paper, photo paper, even the photo paper it came supplied with. Also, both printers WERE set on the best quality print settings and correct paper type. I tried several cleaning cycles etc to no avail, but even if it was just a faulty cartridge on this occasion the dull colours alone would still put me off using it for any serious photos.

MY CONCLUSION...
The instant ink deal from HP would be EXTREMELY cheap if you mainly printed photographs. However it was unworthy of such a task in my personal opinion. If you only used a printer for general printing and weren't too fussy then I'm sure it would be quite adequate, but then you'd possibly be better off just buying ink as & when you needed it. For me, the Epson printer won hands down

I hope this review is of help to anyone thinking of buying a printer in the near future. It is, of course, my own opinion but I think the top photo is enough to see the difference for yourselves.
 

photography_bloke

Well-Known Forumite
The difference there is pretty striking!

We've used HP printers at work for many years - I have noticed that vertical banding on them before, on the older inkjets we disposed of many years ago. We've not had any inkjets for a while so I would have hoped that they'd have fixed it

Apparently not...
 

Jonah

Spouting nonsense since the day I learned to talk
Using the same paper on different make inkjet printers is a recipe for trouble. Over the years, I have found that HP paper work best with HP machines, Epson paper works best with Epson machines, etc etc. Generic paper is a waste of time, money and ink in my opinion.

I only ever use the manufacturers own paper when printing photos - and I don't do that very often.
 

wmrcomputers

Stafford PC & laptop repair specialist
Also for the record, the right picture above (that the Epson produced) is on some Home Bargains "Kekai" branded photo paper at 79p for 15 A4 sheets 220gsm. I was gob smacked on how good quality it is. Very high gloss, very bright white and has no noticable texture to the surface at all when held in the light like cheapo photo papers usually have. My only big issue with it is that it seems to have a very soft surface and the epson puts a groove in it from the paper feeder. Quite a shame really :(
 
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