HP Instant Ink

[Jerry Bruette]

Anyone here use HP Instant Ink service?

Just learned of it today after I spent $50+ on new ink cartridges for my printer.

[Myk Rian]

I get my ink on Ebay. Heck of a lot cheaper. You don't need to buy HP cartridges.

[Wade Lippman]

I gave it a lot of thought 2 years ago and decided I would just buy them locally.

Over the years I have tried OEM, but have had problems and don't print all that much.

[Bill Dufour]

If black and white only laser printer is better and cheaper.

[Van Huskey]

If black and white only laser printer is better and cheaper.

This 1000 time this. After a little research, I bought one of the cheap Brother laser printers (under $100) about 2 years ago and it has already saved me a couple of hundred bucks over its cost in ink cartridges compared to the much more economical toner cartridges. The one I have is the last version of what is the HL-L2350DW which can be bought on Amazon for $85 now. I think I broke even when I had just used the starter toner cartridge that was included. The high yield cartridge is about $50 and the last one I got a little over 3,000 pages of text from, I keep up with it by marking the reams of paper I use. The last one made it into the 7th ream.

[Larry Frank]

I got so sick of the HP software and ink prices. I have a Brother Laser that works great and cheaper with great print quality.

[Jerry Bruette]

We picked up a color and black cartridge for the printer over the weekend. Right next to the rack of cartridges were some new multi function machines. $59 for a print/scan/copy machine. So I make note of some model numbers and look them up after we get home. One of the features is what they call Instant Ink. The printer is hooked to the internet and HP monitors how many pages you print in a month, when the cartridges start to run low they send you a new one along with postage paid envelope to send the empty back for recycling. The plan has a few levels of usage, the 50 page per month plan would cost $2.99 per month. I know I don't print 50 pages a month, so the plan would cost $36 a year.

I like the idea of having a multi function machine and we do some color printing, usually around the holidays. Amazon had a print/scan/fax/copy machine for $49 (might be higher now) and it qualified for the Instant Ink plan. How good are the quality of the copies that come off one of these machines? I'm not expecting photo quality but if they're not at least readable it's not worth it.

[Lee Schierer]

We got tired of ink cartridges that would either quit working all together or part of the jets would quit that we dumped our printer about 8 years ago for a brother laser printer. We are on our second toner cartridge and I think we paid $50 for the current cartridge. The laser printer prints first time every time even when it is weeks between printing.

[Curt Harms]

For those that do quite a bit of color printing, color lasers can be pretty cost effective. The cost per page might be close to inkjet but as Lee notes, laser toner doesn't dry out and clog the print heads like ink jets. I got a Brother color laser refurb for $159 and it just chugs along. It'll be interesting to see how durable the built-in tank inkjet printers like the Epson ecotank printer print heads prove to be. If the print heads last, those 'expensive' printers may prove pretty economical.

[Dave Lehnert]

Count me in as another Brother laser printer user. I WILL NEVER BUY ANOTHER INK JET PRINTER.
I do black and white only and my cartage is two years old and still going.
Just a note about Brother laser cartage. At the time of my last purchase, A cartage in store was around $50. I could order on line for same day pick-up for $35. Big savings.

[Jerome Stanek]

I got tired of HP chipping there cartridges and after a certain time they won't print even if they have plenty of toner