Buyers and users of ink-jet printers deserve better information from manufacturers about how much their printers cost to run
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It's often described as the most expensive liquid money can buy; more expensive than the finest Parisian perfume, the oldest single malts or the most carefully laid down clarets and champagnes. Yes, I'm referring to ink-jet printer inks. But to describe ink-jet ink like this is a nonsense and I'd like explain why.
That's not to say the printer industry is innocent of misrepresentation and confusion. Too many people think, unreasonably in my mind, that the cost of using an ink-jet printer is a rip-off and a licence for the big players to print, yes print, money. But it's mostly the industry's fault.
People dread replacing their expensive ink jet cartridges and often think they are at the mercy of the printer manufacturers.
Impressive
The science and engineering that goes into an ink-jet printer and its consumables, both ink and papers, is truly remarkable. Several hundred thousand microscopic droplets of ink per second, of very consistent size or carefully varied sizes, are blasted out, with superb precision, through hundreds or thousands of tiny nozzles, each one firing thousands of times a second. The ink 'gun' is constantly moving and the paper below must be moved with similar precision to take the next stripe of ink.
Each tiny droplet of ink must resist the temptation to spread out on the surface of the paper or mix into an adjacent droplet. It has to dry quickly and maintain its colour for decades despite being attacked by airborne pollution and the energy of light, especially UV light. This takes some serious science to achieve.
An ink-jet printer is a convenient and sophisticated piece of equipment. These devices can let you produce photos at home at costs which can be comparable to commercial photo lab services and, in some cases, the results are subjectively superior. Whether the printed result be a letter, a colourful chart or a photographic print, the impressive task that an ink-jet printer performs is all too easy to overlook. We take them for granted.
What are you paying for?
So if we are agreed that ink-jet photo printers are a wonderful achievement in product engineering, why are ink-jet printer manufacturers vilified in some quarters? It all boils down to one's perception of what you’re paying for when you use an ink-jet printer.
The simplistic view is that you need more ink, you're forced to buy an over-priced liquid in a fancy container. There are just a few millilitres of ink inside that container and so, logic dictates, it must be a hugely expensive liquid. But from the printer manufacturers' point of view, this is not only unfair, but far from the truth.
Admittedly, printers are unusual as they depend entirely on a supply of specialised consumables; namely ink and paper. The specialisation of papers is less of an issue here. It's the ink that we need to focus on. How can printer manufacturers justify charging several dollars or pounds for a few teaspoons of ink?
The petrol (gasoline) comparison seems is a popular one; you can buy litres of the stuff, which is the product of an expensive and precise industrial process, for a few pence or cents and it must be of good quality to prevent your engine from malfunctioning. So why does ink have to cost so much?
Where the analogy falls down is that vehicle manufacturers design and make engines to work within the performance specification of the fuel they are presented with. With ink-jet printers, the performance and specification of inks is changing all the time. I sometimes think that if we could get the fuel industry to develop its products with the same rate of progress as the printer manufacturers' inks, we'd be well on the way to solving global warming by now.
But by turning the car analogy on its head, I believe that it's easy to illustrate the problem with the ink jet printer business: if you are researching the purchase of a car, major factor is its fuel consumption. This important data is available from a wide variety of sources. But it's practically impossible to get agreed figures for printer ink consumption. Manufacturers of other electrical goods like washing machines and refrigerators routinely supply information about the running costs of their products, so why not the ink jet printer industry?
Buying a service
Anyway, it's an undisputed fact that the liquid ink you buy in an ink cartridge, doesn't cost anywhere near as much to make, physically, as it costs to buy. But you aren't just buying ink and you aren't even just paying for ink plus a cartridge, plus packaging, distribution and the vendors' margins. For want of a better word, you are buying a service that is an extension of the printer. While many think ink cartridge prices are a rip-off, in the case of many a printer, unless you use a certain minimum number of cartridges during the life of that printer, the printer manufacturer will, in effect, lose money on that printer.
Look at the size, mechanical sophistication and precision of a typical consumer-specification ink-jet printer and compare it with, say, a digital camera that probably costs twice or three times as much in the shop. Which product actually costs more to make? If printer manufacturers decided to charge us what it costs to make the printer, plus the commercial retail margin, the cost could be shockingly high. Many of us might not be able to justify buying one. But, instead, the ink might be incredibly cheap to buy.
In fact, printers aimed at professional users, who are likely to consume large quantities of ink over the lifetime of the printer, tend to have to pay more for the printer in the first place and relatively less for ink when calculated as a cost for the area printed.
Cheap printers, expensive inks
Unfortunately, in the consumer market printer manufacturers have been forced into an retail model that requires them to realise a profit on the cheap and affordable original printer sale through follow-up sales of a minimum number of ink cartridges. This penalises users who print more than the manufacturer budgeted for. In recognition of this, some manufacturers do offer high capacity cartridges sold at a lower cost per ml, but the demand for cheaper alternative supplies of ink remains high.
The pros and cons of third party inks and cartridges is the subject for a different debate. But basically, unless you are using a specialised third party ink product with a proven track record, to go for a cheap third party ink is very risky. Colour accuracy, fade resistance and print quality are usually inferior and even the reliability of your printer can become an issue with some of these inks. The irony is that it's the vendors of third party inks that are, potentially, making most money per ml of ink sold, not the printer manufacturers.
Ink wastage
Ink-jet printers don't just use ink for printing. Ink is routinely used to keep the print head nozzles clear; a process euphemistically called 'maintenance'. Depending on your printer and its maintenance cycles, up to half the ink in a cartridge can quite normally be expended through the maintenance process. This may sound shocking, but remember, ink itself costs very little per ml. What really matters is how much your printer costs to print over its useful lifetime.
Cost of ownership
And as we have already explored, this is where the industry is woefully lacking. Until the printer manufacturers and, I suspect, independent product testers, provide ink-jet photo printer purchasers with digestible facts concerning how much their printers will cost to run, people will remain in the dark and many will find that their printers cost them much more to operate than they expected, perpetuating the avoidable notion that ink-jet ink cartridges are a rip-off.
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Manual Focus: Why ink-jet printer ink isn't a rip-off
DPNow Manual Focus: Why ink-jet printer ink isn't a rip-off
Do you really know how much your ink-jet printer costs to run? We bet you don't. And yet you probabl... (more)
Patrick Re: Manual Focus: Why ink-jet printer ink isn't a rip-off
Hi Ian
As you know I have strong feelings on this subject.
I will try not to go over old c... (more)
Ian Re: Manual Focus: Why ink-jet printer ink isn't a rip-off
Well that's certainly an interesting point of view. In many instances I'm sure you are right. Sadl... (more)
Patrick Re: Manual Focus: Why ink-jet printer ink isn't a rip-off
Of course manufacturers are going to say their inks are better than third party inks, that is to ... (more)
JSR Re: Manual Focus: Why ink-jet printer ink isn't a rip-off
Ultimately the old OEM vs 'compatible' debate could be solved by the manufacturers tomorrow if they ... (more)
Ian Re: Manual Focus: Why ink-jet printer ink isn't a rip-off
OK, let's take your argument: HP, Epson, Canon, Lexmark, etc., all halved their ink prices tomorro... (more)
lumix Re: Manual Focus: Why ink-jet printer ink isn't a rip-off
Did someone mention paper? Another ripoff by Epsom and the like. In a review in What Digital Camera ... (more)
JSR Re: Manual Focus: Why ink-jet printer ink isn't a rip-off
Okay, so let Epson keep their prices high. Let them rip-off customers based on where they happen... (more)
JSR Re: Manual Focus: Why ink-jet printer ink isn't a rip-off
I'd be interested to know which papers they rated so badly. It's fairly universally agreed that ... (more)
Ian Re: Manual Focus: Why ink-jet printer ink isn't a rip-off
Ron, this What Digital Camera article? Did you catch the name of the author by any chance?
It's ... (more)
Ian Re: Manual Focus: Why ink-jet printer ink isn't a rip-off
Wasn't that Ron's opinion rather than the article?
How was PC Pro HP-biased?
Ian... (more)
lumix Re: Manual Focus: Why ink-jet printer ink isn't a rip-off
OK the reviewer was Ian Burley. The review was for Fine Art inkjet paper. Papers tested da Vinci, Ep... (more)
Ian Re: Manual Focus: Why ink-jet printer ink isn't a rip-off
Just in case it isn't really obvious, I wrote that article :)
None of these papers were 'poor' -... (more)
lumix Re: Manual Focus: Why ink-jet printer ink isn't a rip-off
Ian I have read many articles by yourself, and enjoyed doing so. The fact that it was for Fine Art P... (more)
Patrick Re: Manual Focus: Why ink-jet printer ink isn't a rip-off
From my experience and experiments cheap paper is just that cheap paper can spot it a mile of... (more)
lumix Re: Manual Focus: Why ink-jet printer ink isn't a rip-off
Hi Patrick, This whole discussion started out re the high price of OEM ink, so I thought why not bri... (more)
Ian Re: Manual Focus: Why ink-jet printer ink isn't a rip-off
Hi Ron - I'm glad we sorted one thing out; wasn't sure if you realised it was me behind the articl... (more)
Ian Re: Manual Focus: Why ink-jet printer ink isn't a rip-off
Interesting - I will pass on your observation to Danny. He's now back in Hong Kong, his birthplace... (more)
lumix Re: Manual Focus: Why ink-jet printer ink isn't a rip-off
[I]DSG (Dixons/Currys/PC World) own brand PC Line photo paper used to be terrible too, but my inform... (more)
JSR Re: Manual Focus: Why ink-jet printer ink isn't a rip-off
I noticed it first when they did a printer review a few months back and got entirely different resu... (more)
JSR Re: Manual Focus: Why ink-jet printer ink isn't a rip-off
I haven't read the article, nor seen the magazine.
My only foray into third-party papers so ... (more)
Ian Re: Manual Focus: Why ink-jet printer ink isn't a rip-off
One of the biggest problems with the better third party photo papers is inadequate advice on print... (more)
JSR Re: Manual Focus: Why ink-jet printer ink isn't a rip-off
That's certainly true. I was a bit naive with my first test print on Olmec paper and just "printed s... (more)
Paul Here's the bit I took issue with.
"While many think ink cartridge prices are a rip-off, in the case of many a printer, unless you use ... (more)
