Are Cheap Printers… Cheap?

Today, while I was printing out some pictures, I ran out of color ink.  I replaced the ink and continued to print out some pictures.  All of a sudden, the paper coming out of the printer was crooked.  Canceling my print job, I tried to reload the paper.  The printer started making banging noises.  To cut a long story short, I determined that the printer reached it’s end of life.

It was not too upsetting.  It was an HP f2200 series that I bought at Target for $20.  Getting a black and a color cartridge is about $30 dollars.  I would have been better off throwing the printer away and getting a new one instead of replacing the ink in it all the time because new ones come with ink cartridges.

So, making a trip to Walmart (I am cheap ,) I decided on a HP f2400 series.  I did not have much choice, because HP f2200 series is probably obsolete.  Didn’t matter, because Walmart didn’t have it, anyways.

The HP f2400 series was about $50 bucks.   It uses different ink cartridges.  The f2200 series used 21 black and 22 color.  The f2400 series uses 60 black and 60 color.  It also takes the 60XL series cartridges as well.  Looking at HP’s website, it looks like the 60XL series costs twice as much, but holds about three times as much ink.

Curiously, I decided to look at the differences between the 21 black, 22 color vs. the 60 black and 60 color.  The 21 black and the 60 black are marked at the same price on HP’s website.  However, the 21 black prints approx. 190 pages while the 60 black prints at about 200 pages.  Doing the math, the 60 black has about 5% more ink than the 21 black.  So, for every 19 60 black cartridges, you would have to buy 20 21 black ink cartridges.   The 22 color ink cartridge and 60 color ink cartridge are marked at the same price and rated at the same amount of pages (165.)

Even though the 60 black ink cartridge lasts a tad bit longer, I have not used my f2200 series enough for it to be a difference.  Obviously, buying the 60XL black rated at 600 pages and color rated at 440 pages would be the most economical way.  It looks like there used to be a 21XL, however HP does not sell it anymore.

I always heard that buying a cheaper printer means that you will pay more in the ink.  So, here is a chart below about what I found on HP’s website.  I will only do black ink.  Color ink may be a little more difficult since some printers use tri-color cartridges while others have their colors separate. Also, we will be looking at officejets without the bells and whistles (no wireless editions.)

So, does it save you money buying a more expensive printer that uses less ink cartridges? Again, we did not look a the color cartridges. I understand that color plays a huge role in cost of ownership. I skipped over some of the printers that are more expensive and use the same ink cartridges as some of the inexpensive ones. The differences are in their features. The Officejet Pro K8600dn is expensive and does not get as many pages out of its ink cartridges compared to the 8500. The difference is the speed: the K8600dn prints at a speed of a laser printer.