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Ask HN: Life hack for printing costs? Ink is eating my budget

2 points by elamje 8y ago

Hey everyone, I'm curious if anyone has been able to find a sustainable strategy/hack to minimize ink costs over the long term. We use our printer HP OfficeJet for letter sized black and white document printing, and small to half page image printing(still on office paper). Quality isn't very important, it just needs to be readable for documents and no high quality needs for the images. We end up spending nearly $30 a month on ink, and I'm trying to find a way to get that cost down as much as possible. What is your printer/ink combo that keeps costs to a minimum for similar printing needs? Are there notably more efficient printers?

tjr 8y ago
I have a HP LaserJet printer than ran off the initial toner cartridge for something like ten years. I reckon I don't print as much as you do, but I was impressed.
- elamje 8y ago
  Do you know the model? And is it monochrome or color?
  - idDriven 8y ago
    Came here to say this, literally any Laserjet printer, I had to research it before for a business plan. Just do research on the best Color Laserjet printer (they come in both color and monochrome).
    - elamje 8y ago
      Thanks will do
detaro 8y ago
hard to tell without knowing how much pages your $30 a month actually is. There's a wide variety in ink costs. Larger laser printers are quite cheap (the small and cheap to buy models often are surprisingly expensive to run), but nowadays there's a bunch of competitive inkjets too (among others, ones with ink tanks you refill from bottles instead of cartridges are worth a look). Good reviews should cover the cost per ISO page printed, just look for that.