Are printer ink contracts worth it?

Kit1

Hi we are looking to buy a printer and have been looking at different costs and see that you can now get so many prints per month instead of buying cartridges when the old runs out and were wondering it they were worth the cost.  It has been a while since we had a printer so not sure what is best.  We don't plan to use it lots but l enjoy crafting and know that having a printer may be useful and if so l may use it more.  I know it is all down to how much we will use it but l just wanted to find out how people get on with it and find it is value for money.  Many thanks

JJ_Egan

Value for money depends upon how often you print/ use ink .

Contracts are usually yearly pay as opposed to buying the odd cartridge if you are a light user .

tafelmoneysaver

Many views expressed here: https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5722087/hp-instant-ink-new-free-plan#latest

Sandtree

A lot depends on what type of printer it is, how much you are going to be printing, how regularly you will be printing, what you will be printing, how important colour accuracy is and availability of generics.

15 pages per month but £1 per additional 10 or part of would be great if you never go above 15... though the headline promotion raises a vast number of questions of the explicit T&Cs.

Subscriptions can be very good value for money if you need the volumes you sign up to, there arent penalties for going over it and the quality is at the level you want. They become very poor value if you don't print enough to use up the amounts you've bought into or if you go over and there are penalty clauses.

Personally we have two printers, the first is a b&w laser printer that after 4 years is still on the original toner cartridge and prints all our contracts, boarding passes, vouchers etc. The second is an A4 inkjet photo printer and its 6 cartridges have been replaced with a reservoir system... it looks a bit clunky, colour reproduction isnt perfect but is reasonable enough and it churns out a good number of photos for the Mrs to use but does seem to clog up more when unused for a couple of weeks.

If it weren't for the uneven pattern in use and not being too worried about colour accuracy we would look at a subscription for the photo printer.

[Deleted User]

For me it is, I have a HP printer with free 15 pages per month, a rarely print anything so it has worked out excellent value for me so far, I've only once gone over the 15 page limit and got charged £1 for the next 10 pages. I've been on this contract for 3 years now and had a full set of cartridges for basically £1.

Kit1

Deleted_User said:

For me it is, I have a HP printer with free 15 pages per month, a rarely print anything so it has worked out excellent value for me so far, I've only once gone over the 15 page limit and got charged £1 for the next 10 pages. I've been on this contract for 3 years now and had a full set of cartridges for basically £1.

Do they send you new cartridges or do you have to request them.  Sorry just trying to work out how they know how many pages you have printed and also when you need new cartridges.  Many thanks

[Deleted User]

Kit1 said:

Deleted_User said:

For me it is, I have a HP printer with free 15 pages per month, a rarely print anything so it has worked out excellent value for me so far, I've only once gone over the 15 page limit and got charged £1 for the next 10 pages. I've been on this contract for 3 years now and had a full set of cartridges for basically £1.

Do they send you new cartridges or do you have to request them.  Sorry just trying to work out how they know how many pages you have printed and also when you need new cartridges.  Many thanks

Yes, they send new cartridges automatically. The printer communicates with HP via the internet to tell them how many pages have been printed and also when the ink levels are getting low.