There’s nothing new about the fact that the price of printer ink is entirely out of proportion. One cartridge costs more than a luxury perfume flacon. Compared to a few decades ago, it’s no longer usual to print at home because, with a few exceptions, it’s not so necessary.
I’m one of those exceptions. My partner is a teacher who needs to print many documents and color cards for her class. So, we bought a color laser printer at home, which paid for itself. We’ve moved, and the new house has an inkjet printer. She also told me that she didn’t need to print as much this year, so I first looked at the price of the cartridges for this printer.
A Good Memory That’s No Longer True
People talked about this in my childhood, and it turned out well. I asked a friend of my parents who remembered talking about it. He told me it was like this: “In the low-cost printers, it was profitable compared to buying the official ink; in the costly printers, it wasn’t.”
Doing that today made all the sense in the world: The color and black ink cartridges cost about $50, and the new printer on sale was $45. I bought, set it up, and got ready to use it. I was happy. The range was like the one we had left in the apartment. Still, being more modern, it had Wi-Fi printing, which would come in handy for printing from three laptops, tablets, and smartphones.
All was going well until I noticed that the printer ink levels reported by the printer were relatively low. I hadn’t noticed this when I installed the cartridges. Still, I pulled them out and saw why they were so low: Next to the cartridge type, Canon, the printer’s brand name, had the suspicious word “Starter.”
The ink cartridges that come with new printers contain much less ink than the cartridges you buy separately.
While researching, I saw that the cartridges included in almost all printers come with 25% or less ink just for testing. So, the color cartridge gave us about 40 pages, compared to the 180 pages that Canon advertises for the cartridges sold separately (300 if you buy XL cartridges).
The cost strategy had gone down the drain in practically one printing session. All the fault of ignorance, the fact that things have changed in the printing market in 20-30 years, and the blissful word “Starter.” Still, buying a laser and toner wouldn’t have been worth it. At least not for the use we’ll make of it this year. To refill the little initial printer ink, we’ll opt for XL cartridges in some occasional offers, which are the most profitable in this model. Lesson learned for the future.
This article was written by Antonio Sabán and originally published in Spanish on Genbeta.
Images | Xataka On
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