The Lowdown on the Printer Ink Showdown

There’s a popular adage that says something like “Printer ink is the most expensive liquid on earth.” Go ahead, Google it.

The return shows pages of results proving the theory, including one article from the Financial Times that says that HP ink cost $8000 per gallon (published in 2004). While in truth, most high-end designer perfumes actually cost more,  that’s still a lot of money for a fluid that’s relatively inexpensive to manufacture and hasn’t changed much from what the Chinese invented thousands of years ago.

The good news is that most consumers are not buying ink by the gallon. In fact, most cartridges only contain from 5 to 20 milliliters of the black stuff we rely on to feed our machines. Working backwards from $8000 per gallon, a high-yield black ink cartridge that promises 800 copies contains about $40 worth of ink. The smallest ones contain less than $10 worth of ink.

The bad news is that most ink cartridges do not tell you on the packaging how much ink is actually inside the cartridge: instead they offer suggested page output. Basically, you’re paying for a product, but there is no way to know how much you’re actually getting until you open the box and look inside, where the volume is sometimes printed on the foil wrapper

So, when you’re shopping for cereal or soda, don’t you want to compare the value of your purchase in a way that tells you if the more expensive package is actually a better value? What if you paid more for a box of cereal only to open it and find it contained less product than a similar sized box of a competitive brand? What if your toasty oats came in similar-sized boxes, and you had no way of knowing how many bowls of cereal either box provided? How could you comparison shop one brand of toasty oats between Cereal Company A and Cereal Company B without knowing what’s actually inside the box?

Printer refill cartridges are like that. I happen to own two printers: One is an HP black laser printer, which I use for day-today-printing. The other is an HP color inkjet that I use for my kid’s school projects, maps, printing web pages, and occasional photo printing. Each recommends a specific HP replacement cartridge.

I am holding a brand-new original equipment (OEM) HP Q2612A black toner box: There is nothing on the outside of this box that tells me how much I can expect this cartridge to yield, except for some small type hidden under a label (which I had to tear off) that says “For declared yield see … www.hp.com/go/pageyield.”  Because I am sitting at home while I write this, I can click on the link to discover a long ISO testing page with lots of technical language that basically says they’ve tested the cartridge according to ISO scientific methods and according to those tests, they believe the cartridge will return a specific and consistent yield. But nothing on this box allowed me to comparison-shop it against the remanufactured toner cartridges offered in the store and online.

However, far more consumers purchase color inkjet cartridges, so check out these examples for pricing and yield from color inkjet cartridges: My HP 7410 color inkjet requires black 96 and color 97 cartridges. My local office supply store sells an OEM pack with one of each cartridge for $62 and a remanufactured set for $46. According to an online comparison, both offer similar page yield of about 860 black sheets and 560 color sheets. A careful inspection of the foil wrapper that protects the OEM tricolor cartridge inside the box reveals a miniscule marking that says “14 ml” – and I only found it because I was specifically looking for it.

Actually, HP offers an entire collection of cartridges that could fit my color inkjet printer,  identified as 94, 96, and 98 for black, and 95, 97, and 99 for color refills. The only difference between these cartridges is the price – and, supposedly, the amount of ink each contains. When browsing the official HP site for OEM units, I discovered they even offer “10% more” packs, which disguise the price/yield comparisons even further by packing slightly more ink into the same product number cartridge, and of course, charging more.

But if the mark that indicates the actual volume of ink in the cartridge is hidden inside the box, how can I fairly compare their contents? It’s intentional and meant to confuse consumers.

Cartridge 94 costs $24 for 480 black sheets (5 cents per sheet) from HP or $13.25 for 450 sheets from the eCycleInk remanufactured cartridge (2.9 cents per page).  You can almost double that output with HP Cartridge 96,  which offers 860 black sheets for $34 (4 cents per page) – or 800 sheets $9.75 from the eCycleInk remanufactured cartridge (1.2 cents per page).  Okay, let’s just stop right there!

I can spend less than $10 for 800 sheets, instead of $24 for 480! Why pay twice as much for the OEM product when I can save money with the remanufactured choice and get more sheets? Not to mention that, aside from the obvious financial savings, buying remanufactured cartridges also keeps toxic waste out of our landfills.

And if the lack of labeling isn’t confusing enough, sometimes the printer company manufactures a low-yield cartridge that appears cheaper. Don’t be tricked by low manufacturer prices: ensure that the yield of the cartridge is comparable with others in the same price range. You might otherwise find you’re getting a smaller output from an OEM cartridge for the same price as a remanufactured one with a higher output.

An article at PCWorld identifies this tricky tactic, saying “High-yield tanks sell for around $35, while the lower-yield cartridges go for nearly half that. For instance, the HP 88XL Black Officejet ink cartridge costs $35 and prints an estimated 2450 pages, which works out to a price per page of roughly 1.43 cents. The lower-capacity HP 88 cartridge sells for $20 but prints only 850 pages, or about 2.35 cents per page. So despite their higher cost per page, printer manufacturers’ cartridges that carry relatively modest sticker prices can lure consumers away from third-party inks.” eCycleInk.com clearly states their cartridges are not OEM, but they guarantee they will perform every bit as well, backing all their ink cartridges with a full 100% satisfaction guarantee.

Okay, so what’s my point? That this kind of comparison-shopping is only available online and only to the very patient who are willing to search and compare. I have spent hours researching cartridge prices and yields, both online and in the stores (and trust me, the guy guarding the ink at my local office supply store was not patient as I reviewed box after box to check each package for stated page yields). I only happened to buy a full-price OEM package because my cartridge was empty and I was in the middle of a high-volume job and needed toner RIGHT NOW, and my local store did not have a remanufactured cartridge in stock. In fact, my local office supply does not stock ANY remanufactured inkjet cartridges in the store. Next time my printer starts to run low, I’ll shop online ahead of time and get the internet bargain on a remanufactured cartridge.

PCworld confirms my opinion that buying remanufactured cartridges is a definite money saver, saying “over the lifetime of your printer, cost savings from buying third-party inks can be considerable.”

When a consumer is shopping between ink from the original manufacturer (OEM) and comparing it against remanufactured cartridges from an aftermarket provider, it’s best to get all the information you can find before you walk into the store. The manufacturers don’t provide much information on the package to assist you when you’re comparing products there on the shelf. eCycleInk.com clearly shows the price, page yield, and volume of ink in milliliters for every cartridge, making it very easy to compare prices and yields.

Plain and simple: It doesn’t matter how smart a shopper you are if you can’t make a fair comparison because the packaging doesn’t tell you what’s inside.

If printer’s ink is the most expensive liquid on earth, why not save money by buying recycled printer cartridges at eCycleInk.com.

Tags: Recycling, Sustainability, Sustainability and Responsible Use