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Printer ink costs more than vintage champagne
Ink for home printers is seven times more expensive than vintage champagne and many cartridges say they are empty long before they are, according to an investigation by Which? magazine.
A typical replacement cartridge for a Hewlett Packard inkjet printer with a capacity of 17ml costs about £29. This works out at about £1.70 per millilitre, compared with 1985 Dom Perignon at 23p per millilitre. An Epson cartridge costs £21 and holds approximately 12ml of ink, putting it in the same league.
Many of the printers tested gave warnings that they were about to run out of ink long before they did. The Epson AcuLaser and Minolta Magicolor lasers said that new toner was needed just halfway through the cartridge’s lifespan.
Embedded in Epson’s ink cartridges are microchips that stop the printer working when the ink runs out. Which? found that by using a £20 tool, it was possible to reset the chips that were reporting themselves empty and to print 38 per cent more pages.
“Vintage champagne is hardly comparable,” Jamie Gryce, of Hewlett Packard, said. “The consumer will have to consider quality, versatility and ease of use when buying our products.”
Iain Fryer, of Epson Europe, said: “Our new general-purpose printers will have separate cartridges for each colour – so you don’t throw away a colour when one has run out. We are also moving over to low-cost or bulk-capacity cartridges.”
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