It is commonly thought that your ink cartridge you paid so much money for would be full of ink, but in reality the cartridges used to contain just 19ml of ink now contain just 2ml. 2ml of ink yields just 100 pages of paper when printing text and this cartridge, the 65 is the same as a 304 ink cartridge but with a different chip (so you can’t take a 65 cartridge and put it into a printer that takes 304 cartridges even though they are the same size.
Aggressive marketing
One of the big problems in the printing world is that in order to be competitive, printer manufacturers use methods that make it sound like you are getting a great deal from their relatively cheap printers they sell, when in reality you are getting a sore deal.
Instant Ink
One of the biggest marketing ploys is Instant Ink, this makes use of the fact HP can decide how much ink they will put in your cartridge and send you a larger capacity (they have plenty of empty space in the cartridge for the highest use plans and then some) but the cartridges are bound to the enrolled printer and your contract, so the moment you end the contract is the moment your printer stops working with them.
Inktank printers
Inktank printers are considerably more expensive than ink cartridge printers which makes them seem unappealling to the average consumer however, they have a distinct advantage – you can see how much ink is left in each tank and you can top then up as you use them.
The cheapest all-in-one ink tank printer will set you back £180 for an Epson EcoTank but considerably more for the HP Smart Tank version. The bottles of ink for the EcoTank cost just £10 each and contain 65ml of ink, which Epson claims is good enough for 4,500 pages of black and 7,500 pages of colour.
