Refill cartridges cost more than a new (fully loaded) printer | Hacker News Reader

Refill cartridges cost more than a new (fully loaded) printer

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46 pointsbfrs46 comments

I looked up the model number, and two interesting facts are not pointed out (as Sebastian probably did not expect this to appear all over the internet).

The first fact is that HP offers the printer and cartridges at similar prices on their web site. This means the discrepancy is not due to a crazy sale on Amazon. Even according to the HP web site, the price of four replacement cartridges is $822, while the price of the printer (which includes the cartridges) is $699. Though Amazon reports that at some point, the printer may have been sold for up to $885 since it was launched in October, that's still almost identical to the cost of the cartridges.)

Second, also by design, the printer comes with the full cartridges, not starter ones...

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF28a/18972-18972-33...

I can only imagine that:

1) HP makes a profit when people buy this $699 printer (though not as large as when they sell four ink tanks without a printer for $822);

2) Every printer re-purchase helps maintain their 40% marketshare in the printer business, if it's measured by printers sold rather than cartridges sold;

3) Every printer re-purchase keeps a sale away from Brother or another competitor;

4) HP's printing division has now been merged into the declining PC division, so nobody would notice the declining printer margins amongst lower-margin PC's anyway.

"HP's new CEO Meg Whitman, who calls the printing division "the lifeblood of HP," responded to the decline by folding it into the PC division, which saw a 15% drop in revenue last quarter. That will solve one problem: concealing the extent of the decline in HP's printer margins by blending it with lower-margin PCs. More practically, it could give HP greater leverage in negotiating prices with component suppliers."

From: http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/03/29/hps-printer-problem/

The printer usually comes with less ink per cartridge than the refills. So buying a new printer every time you run out of ink is not cheaper than buying the refills.

Nor practical.

You beat me to it.

There used to be a time when the printer manufacturers did bundle full-sized cartridges with new printers. Back when I worked retail ~15 years ago, this was definitely the case with some Lexmark inkjets. We used to sell people a new printer, open up the box, give them the cartridge(s), and then offer to recycle/trash everything else. Eventually printer manufacturers caught on.

Several comments in the thread point that out, but he replied: "It seems the cartridges are all full size. So it's really cheaper to buy a new printer."

Maybe cartridges are full size physically, but are not filled with the same amount of ink.

When my $50 laserjet runs out of ink (going on 3 years now; I don't print much), I may just leave it at the end of the driveway and get another $50 printer, even if the > $50 cartridge would last longer than the starter cartridge.

You should check check the prices first. I know I looked into Brother lasers, and the preinstalled cartridge is only rated for 600 pages. A high-yield black toner cartridge is only $47 and prints 2600 pages. And $50 doesn't get you much of a laser printer.

And the rating of 600 pages is low, it is determined in software on the starter toner. On my brother, there is a small hole on the cartridge that light is passed through to detect the toner level.

My printer is at 3200 pages on the starter toner because I put a piece of tape over the sensor which makes it believe it is always full of toner.

New printers from Brother which I bought the same model for my in-laws, have solved this hack. But you can buy a replacement gear online for a few bucks, it pops on, and then you have access to the same method I used to trick the printer.

Once the stater runs out, I will get a toner replacement and also tape the sensor. Even if it prints a little light, all it takes it taking the cartridge out and shaking it a little. This will buy you another month.

If you are on Mac OS X or Linux and access the printer through CUPS, ( not sure about Windows and how to access these settings ) and you can set the DPI to a lower rate and put it in toner saver mode. I can't tell a difference unless I have a side by side to compare. Plus, this is just black and white so invoices, driving directions, stuff like that. I don't care about the quality of a halftone image.

Should note that doing this can damage the printer. The toner particles that don't stick keep getting recycled back into the cartridge until eventually clumps of that crud are most of what's in it, and you're still trying to use more and more voltage to pull it out onto the paper... possibly getting it stuck somewhere else in the printer, damaging the drum, clogging a fan, or any number of risks.

If you're 5 times past the rated capacity of the cartridge and it's printing light, instead of shaking the crud around and putting it back in, just buy another cartridge... unless you WANT to destroy your in-laws' printer and burn their house down.

Citation needed. I have never heard of a house being burned down by this means.

I hadn't heard of the change with the newer models. I've helped someone do the tape hack with the starter cartridge in a 2170W -- worked just fine.

Can you elaborate a bit on this "gear" hack for the newer models, so that I know what I'm looking for? Thanks.

You can buy a decent Brother monochrome laser printer (auto duplex, wireless, and wired networking) for ~$60-80 on sale and the generic toner for $10-20 for 2,600 pages.

For most people this is a far better option than buying the Brother brand toner. Worst case, it ruins the printer and you buy another one for that $50! I have had great success with the generic toner so far, nothing ruined or leaky yet.

Every so often, Amazon drops the price of the 2270W to $79.99 -- the model that currently fits your description.

camelcamelcamel will email you when this happens.

http://camelcamelcamel.com/

I bought an HP LaserJet 2100 for $5 and it still going fine.

I wonder if in a few years a totally disposable colour laser scanner copier will appear. It's almost at that point now.

Let's say you can resell that printer for half the price, without cartridges, and buy a new one. How about then?

Ug:

> "Sounds like a market begging for disruption." (in comments)

There have been 'disrupters' at work for many years now. I wish people wouldn't assume that (a) this sort of market distortion hasn't been noticed for years, (b) leveraged for almost as many, and (c) that there are actually reasons why the market delivers these prices.

It is interesting to note that Brother and Kodak didn't even seem to put a dent in the market leaders with their "rational" business model.

That's why I installed and use BULK INK refillable instead of the original cartridges in all my printers. Costas are 97% less than original ink. This is my printer with the external bulk ink: http://bit.do/bulkink

Did you do it yourself or can this be bought ?

One solution is to not print, except when absolutely necessary for legal/financial events. Go to UPS or Staples to do the few printings per year that you absolutely must do.

My printer hasn't printed for at least a year. The scanner still works, and UPS/Staples is just down the street. Not for everyone, works for me. HP can die in a fire.

A lot of folks point toward much-less expensive third party toner cartridges and refill kits. I tried that route with my two Konica Minolta color laser printers and had horrible experience with cartridges/kits from several vendors: toner leaking in the printer, streaks, squeaking, colors that were off, etc.

YMMV but for know I'm sticking with OEM toner. And yes, the toner 4-pack is more expensive than a new printer. So much so that when I used up the toner on my printer I bought a new one since I wasn't all that satisfied with the printer I had.

Same here, with a recent HP color laser printer. It's not worth the hassle for me to use the third-party cartridges.

I picked up a HP LaserJet 4000 for $10 at a thrift store a few years ago. $40 for some RAM, a NIC, new toner cart, and a duplexer and I've enjoyed one hell of a great printer.

The 3rd party black toner carts have never given me issues. Is there something different about color toner? Has the fact that my printer is 15 years old allowed 3rd party toner/cart makers time to "get it right"? Or are new printers just crap in comparison to older models?

That's how it's been for years (always). Also, that's the reason why they put authentication chips in those cartridges to try to stop you from refilling them or putting in cheap alternatives. However, this doesn't stop the counterfeiters and you can get the cartridges for tenth of the price. http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/569376994/CE400_1_2_3A_Las...

That's a "bait and hook" business model, just like Nespresso's: http://www.businessmodelinspiration.com/?p=55 and Gillette's: http://www.boardofinnovation.com/business-revenue-model-exam...

This. And try downloading a driver to run a HP printer and you will be forced to download a 750 MB "HP Digital Solution" crapware.

Thats why I avoid HP printers.

My favourite feature of Mac OS X is one ruthlessly stolen from Windows 98: most contemporary printers will just "work" when you connect them up. No need to install any drivers. And you don't just get a basic driver, you get a full-featured driver that can operate all the printer's features, tell you the ink levels, and not fill your computer up with garbage.

That's why PostScript was invented. All you need is the PPD (if that).

Hasn't it been long established that printers are a loss leader? I have a HP printer that cost me peanuts and at every opportunity the printer pushes me to purchase HP printer cartridges. Yes you can game the system but most people don't understand that and it never crosses their mind because of how absurd it is.

This isn't the case for consumer printers anymore, though. Ink isn't as expensive as it once was (HP/Lexmark/Epson/Canon all have $10-15 black inkjet cartridges), and printers don't ship with so much ink that it's cheaper to buy the printer. It's the same with low-end laser printers too; a $99 Brother comes with a 600 page cartridge, where a $50 replacement prints 2600 pages.

I guess the situation is different for business-grade stuff where the toner costs $800 a pop.

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/printers

I remember getting a new printer and extra ink for less than a refill:

http://ask.slashdot.org/story/09/12/03/211250/what-do-you-do...

The original printer claims it comes with 6000 page yield color cartridges but a 5500 page yield starter cartridge for the black.

There are also 2000 page low yield color and 11000 page high yield black cartridges available.

The replacement cartridges he is looking at are 6000 page yield for color and 11000 for black. So the black is twice the capacity of the original.

You can also find aftermarket compatible toner, the high yield version 10,000 black and 6,000 for each color, for $330 for a complete set of cartridges for this machine - http://www.lenscomputers.com/hp-m551-vp.html.

Some websites allow you to sort printers by price. They then list the cartridges that you can use with those printers.

But some people would want to sort the carts by price, and then see the printers that accept those carts. These people can't (for whatever reason) use toner refills or third-party carts. (There is a complication with number of sheets printer per cart, but that's easy enough to fix.)

And if you're a toner refill company some people will buy printers based on how much they'll have to spend to get new toner, so listing your cheapest print-per-page refill kit would be useful.

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He states in a comment that the ink cartridges that come with the printer are indeed full size.

Epson went even further: http://pryf.livejournal.com/1829152.html

It's in Russian, but look at the pics: it's the same cartridges made in 2010, 2011 and 2012.

Epson is never mentioned in the linked blog post, it says those are HP ink cartridges.

Also according to original story those are only from 2010 and 2012 + another model added for comparison: HP 350/2010 (left), HP 350/2012 (center), HP 301/2012 (right).

Original non-blogspam article in English: http://www.hpinkcartridges.co.uk/technology-blog/2012/05/hp-...

You can get really cheap refill cartridges on Amazon. I paid maybe 8 bucks for C Y M and x3 B. They're not 'official' but they work just fine, in my case better even than the normal ones.

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It's a color printer, so there are 4 different cartridges being used at once - cyan, yellow, magenta, and black.

Is there a good reason why someone hasn't done a Dollar Shave Club business model for printers + inks? I would think it would decimate the ink racket.

Granted, it may have been tried numerous times and failed due to the hardware dominance the major printer players enjoy (and throwing out an existing printer isn't the same as throwing out a razor from Gillette, so you have to capture transitional customers). And of course hair grows fairly consistently, whereas ink usage is less consistent - but offices can always stock back a couple cartridges if they're not using enough and downgrade their account with the click of a button until they burn through them.

Easier to stock 3 blade types and 3 handles than 500 diff ink types. That only obstacle I see. Also people don't buy ink so regularly I have no idea what intervals I buy ink at

I don't own a printer for home use and most likely never will.

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