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YOU’RE STILL PAYING TOO MUCH FOR PRINTER INK

21/09/2019

WHICH? AUGUST 2019

More than half of you are
paying over the odds for
printer ink. 4,710 of the
8,481 Which? members we asked
bought ink from one of the big
four: Brother, Canon, HP or Epson.

That’s despite this ‘original ink’ being incredibly pricey compared with third-party alternatives.
The real ‘black gold’ They call oil ‘black gold’, but the phrase could perhaps be better
applied to original printer ink. While Brent crude oil sells for $0.34 (27p) a litre,* the same
quantity of ink could set you back £1,890**. For that cost, you could buy 7,000 litres of oil,
enough to make roughly 926 gallons of petrol. That’s sufficient fuel to travel 21,298 miles,
halfway round the world, at 23 miles to the gallon. There are plenty of cheap,third-party alternative inks, but big
brands don’t want you to switch. they’ll often give scary-sounding warnings about quality and
compatibility, or even block you from using some cartridges altogether (as HP was found
to be doing in 2016). It’s like a car manufacturer selling you a vehicle and then saying that you can only
use its own-brand petrol to fuel it. Cheap compatibles The best third-party ink will produce good-quality prints for
the price and is likely to work with your printer, too. In fact, just one in ten of the Which? members we
surveyed who had tried a third-party brand found that it wasn’t recognised by their printer.
Of that group, 40% contacted the ink retailer and got the issue resolved, and 28% were able to
fix the problem themselves. Just 1% had a problem so severe that they had to buy a new printer.

* Oil price correct as of 12 June, 2019. Oil prices fluctuate regularly. ** Epson original ink at £1.89 per
ml. All prices taken on 24 May 2019. A Colour Direct only sells 33XL ink in minimum of dual packs so
you get two sets of ink. B Includes £2.99 charge for delivery. C Five ink (including photo black) set
bought direct from Epson.co.uk

Source: WHICH? AUGUST 2019