I am increasingly convinced that a great deal about inkjet pricing models results from an undeclared subsidy for the manufacture of print heads. I have two ink

I am increasingly convinced that a great deal about inkjet pricing models results from an undeclared subsidy for the manufacture of print heads. I have two inkjets. One is a base-tier HP AIO from about 2015. While I get the ink for ~free, if I paid MSRP for it, a full set of four replacement cartridges (including built-in, disposable heads) is $160. The other is a Canon Pixma Pro 100. A full replacement set of eight ink tanks for it costs $100. The print head is a separate part. It costs $350. I get the HP ink for ~free via "Instant Ink", whose wholly per-page subscription pricing model works out extremely well for me because I print photos on it - each sheet comes out full of ink, so the unit economics are as strongly in my favor as they would be in HP's if I used that printer for documents. The other side of the Instant Ink deal is, new cartridge sets come with packaging that you use to ship back the spent ones, which are refilled and shipped back out to other subscribers. Every time that happens, it's a set of print heads that doesn't have to be manufactured anew, and the wild variance in parts cost from the Canon suggests strongly to me that this is the hidden variable which makes the Instant Ink unit economics work out as well for HP as they do for me, even though they are giving me the ink. It makes sense that this should be the case, given the oft-repeated truism that printer consumables subsidize the loss leader of the printer itself. What I don't understand is why no one who actually participates in the "printer ink costs more than gold" discourse ever talks about this. Either I'm way off base here, or there's some folks out there who haven't noticed something that by now you'd think they would have - I mean yeah, this article mentions heads, but briefly, and seems not to notice the manufacturing cost that goes in the trash every time anyone throws out a cartridge with a built-in head. (If anyone's curious, I also have a cheap monochrome laser, which I use to print documents and book blocks - it's been very reliable so far, but isn't really designed for the heavy use I give it, and I suspect that when its fuser wears out I'm going to replace it and strip it down for parts because, just as with the $100 Canon and its $350 print head, buying a new loss-leader printer entirely will prove cheaper than buying that replacement part.)