We had to buy a printer as rumours of school shutdown were looking very likely to come true. We’d managed a printer free existence for years. Bah. It was an el cheapo Canon bought from Tesco. It’s been fine for printing worksheets etc. I guess a few of you had to do the same thing.

Looks like I’ll be needing a third set of Black and Colour cartridges by the end of the week. While searching on Amazon etc, I came across kits for around £20 which would do approx 3 fills of ink. Has anyone tried them? Are they worth a shot or am I just going to end up covered in ink as I despairingly click “Add to basket” on a set of new cartridges?

A lot of new printers won’t accept non branded cartridges. I suspect they might also detect refilled ones

Like you I bought a cheapo Canon – MG2450

I doesnt like generic cartridges at all, I have ended up buying genuine canon ones and calling them a ‘work expense’

Have not seen those refill kits for years, as I recall they were a pain in the arse.

Genuine replacement cartridges are better, less frustrating and usually last longer (despite the extra cost)

It might be worth looking at a new printer.

HPs with instant ink subscription are superb.

Didn’t work for me, messy and ended buying cartridges anyway.
Printers are cheap so they make their money on the aftersales – good business plan.

Instant ink looks expensive. We bought a cheap Epson (all that was available quickly) which has somehow decided the 3 colour cartridges need replacing already. I’ve printed 2 sheets of colour, everything else had been set in black and white or grey scale. Although it detected a non OEM black cartridge it is working fine with it.

Cheers guys – I suspected it might have been messy. I’ll just buy the OEM ones – can’t be doing with the faff.

On a related topic:

Are there any printers that don’t rely on the ‘rip-off’ model? I.e. you get a subsidised printer, but then pay ridiculous amounts for the cartridges forever.
Surely by now there must be decent printers that cost a fair amount but then let you fill up the ink yourself.

Lasers don’t seem to use that model. Toner lasts me over a year and costs around £30 for all 4 (C,M,Y,K) for aftermaket stuff. A bit more expensive up front but well worth it for the lack of faff in use.

Laser +1

Just buy a laser +10,000

Well, I’m certainly not buying another bloody printer. 😀

This one will be going in the magic loft once summer holidays start. Hopefully, only a couple more cartridges needed between now and then.

Are there any printers that don’t rely on the ‘rip-off’ model?

Instant Ink is the answer. It’s such a small amount of money per month you don’t notice it and it definitely beats going out for cartridges at an inopportune moment and dropping £45.

You can also get Epson printers that have liquid ink tanks, but they tend to be higher end and cost more to start with.

@Easily – Epson Eco-tank dont follow the usual model. The printers cost more, but you just pour ink into refil tanks when needed. 3rd party ink works fine. Great printers and for large volumes, much more cost effective than others (including HP’s instant ink). The wife has one for her business and absolutely hammers it. One downside is that they are software time-bombed to stop working after I think 25k pages demanding a service, suprise suprise a service costs more than a new printer! However after some googling there is a downloadable hack available to reset the page count. Done this twice and its still running fine.

I’ve got a fairly new Canon and can use any cartridges in it. (IP8750 )

Year ago I setup one of the constant ink devices on an Epsom printer – it definitely worked! But, man it was a right faff, all these tubes coming out of the printer, and ink everywhere. Dunno if they’ve updated them?

If you go instant ink I have 2 month free promo code.

I’m now 1 month into 7 months of free instant ink. They had a supply blip a few weeks back but seems ok now (304 cartridges).

I agree re the Epson ink tank being for heavy users. That’s what I originally wanted to get on principle but our usage doesn’t justify it.

The nice thing about Instant Ink is that it counts per page, so it doesn’t matter if you print draft text or a max quality photo of the night sky.

My missis has been hammering the printer this last month, printing homeschooling worksheets out for local kids. Had to up the instant ink to the max 700 pages, (and she was close!) so we’ve had 2 colour cartridges delivered and a black for the princely sum of £18. Once that demand dries up we will drop back to the minimum £3/month rate and it might be 18 months (colour) or 2 years (black) until the next ink shipment, the volume of ink in them is massive. Previous to instant ink I reckon we got 6 to 8 months out of a set and £30 to £40 to replace them??

Instant ink looks expensive.

It’s really not! It’s flipping marvellous.

Laser all the way. They just work.

And in answer to the refills, no, v they don’t work. I tried once… The ink leaked straight out the cartridge in about 30 seconds. Good job I’d done the filling over the sink just in case.

You say

Instant ink looks expensive

But then you say

We bought a cheap Epson (all that was available quickly) which has somehow decided the 3 colour cartridges need replacing already.

We pay £3.50/mo for 100 pages and our printer just works perfectly all the time. No crap, no blocked cartridges, no faffing around with non OEM. We are printing a lot of text so it may not work out cheaper page, but it would if we were printing photos and images. The price we pay for ease of use is well worth it.

⬆ exactly this. There may be a way to do it slightly cheaper, but instant is is good value and bloody convenient.

How did you get that up arrow?

i have a colour laser, mainly because I print so infrequently that there’s no risk of any ink drying out. That was a problem before.

Printers have the same model as razors, cheap up front cost and sizeable ongoing cost

I have a lexmark laser, the originals are expensive – about £220 for 1000 pages. Are the generic ones OK then? Same price but 3x as many pages

How does Instant Ink work with very occasional use? The carts will still dry out and clog up, won’t they?

We bought a cheap Epson (all that was available quickly) which has somehow decided the 3 colour cartridges need replacing already.

Dunno if it’s still the case – sounds like it might be from your post – but it used to be commonplace to ship printers with “starter cartridges” that were only like a quarter full.

The one constant in IT for as long as I can remember is that printers are utter pricks. You’d think we’d have worked out how to get a paragraph onto a piece of paper in some sort of reliable manner by now, but no.

How did you get that up arrow?

Emoji keyboard, I’d hazard. ⬆ 👆 🔼

You can invoke it with Windows-[.] on W10. Other platforms are available.

How did you get that up arrow?

⬆️

I have used Internet ink for the last cartridge for a HP envy printer / copier.
Non OEM cartridge and supposedly greater level of ink inside too working fine and decent price and quick delivery and discount on subsequent purchases too.

Oh I know about starter cartridges however I’d expect them to have some ink.

I hate that with instant ink your cartridge is effectively locked in. If you cancel the trial iirc it kills the cartridge.

In normal times we use the printer once or twice a month. In this scenario all the instant ink subscriptions are expensive.

How does Instant Ink work with very occasional use? The carts will still dry out and clog up, won’t they?

No, that is exactly where it wins.  With standard ink jets they do a cleaning cycle if you don’t use them often to prevent clogging but that eats ink.  It’s why an ink jet really isn’t suitable for occasional use, you really need to print several pages at a time.  With instant ink you don’t care how many cleaning cycles it does, you pay per page.

Plus, if you care about recycling then rather than throwing the old cartridges in the bin you send them back to HP in the prepaid envelope for them to rip to bits and recycle the bits they can (and yes the best idea is to reduce rather than recycle etc)

How does Instant Ink work with very occasional use? The carts will still dry out and clog up, won’t they?

We’ve honestly never had that problem and ours goes many days between uses sometimes.

How did you get that up arrow?

Yep, emoji keyboard as Cougar said.

I hate that with instant ink your cartridge is effectively locked in. If you cancel the trial iirc it kills the cartridge.

I don’t think that’s unreasonable, otherwise people would just take out a 1 month subscription for two quid every time they needed new cartridges. You’re paying for a number of printed pages, the cartridges are incidental.

In normal times we use the printer once or twice a month. In this scenario all the instant ink subscriptions are expensive

You need to find a different answer to owning a printer then. That’s like owning a car for a once per month 2 mile supermarket trip, get a taxi!

I bought a Brother A3 all in thing back in 2010, i then bought a box of thirty pattern cartridges from Germany for about £17. The printer is still going strong, the cartridges expired in 2016 but are still working fine and I’ve got one full set left. Must be one of my best IT purchases!

In normal times we use the printer once or twice a month. In this scenario all the instant ink subscriptions are expensive.

I thought there was a free tier?

With instant ink you don’t care how many cleaning cycles it does, you pay per page.

Ah, right, understood. So that’s assuming it actually clears eventually then, which the last cartridge I had didn’t. Cheers.

Oh – is the ‘per page’ metric clever enough to ignore test prints?

Another vote for instant ink here.
We’re on the £7.99 / 300 pages plan.
3 primary age children at home and we nearly hit the limit last month but also had the full 300 page rollover in the bank to fall back on.
The printer cost £20 originally and came with 3 months free so paid for itself.
It’s a complete change of approach to printing and not having to worry about them running out on a Sunday evening or being dried up and lines all over the place as with ever previous printer we’ve ever owned.
If the children want to print a black line colouring sheet or a full page, full quality photo it doesn’t matter.

The HP cartridge includes the printhead, which is the clever bit. Even if it blocks, a new cartridge will work. But I’ve not hard a blockage in over a year of fairly occasional use and much cheaper paying monthly than the old way.

@DezB slightly off topic but how do you find the generic ink cartridges do with photo printing on the ip8750? I’ve recently got one and was wondering if they were worth a try over the canon inks given that it’s is almost exclusively being used for fancy photo prints at the minute.

YES THEY DO WORK!!!

I bought a HP printer intending to use the’instant ink’ thing but it wouldn’t connect to my wifi (despite being 70cm from the wifi device) so that doesn’t work.

If you have watched a few episodes of ER or Casualty and hence can use a syringe then you shouldn’t have any problems. Do it in the sink and wear your washing up gloves (or fancy latex/nitrile ones if you have any) to keep your hands clean.

One downside is that they are software time-bombed to stop working after I think 25k pages demanding a service,

That shouldn’t be legal.