Why Printer Ink Costs More than Champagne, Drop for Drop

It may be one of those “facts” that often gets bandied around like an urban myth, but in this case it turns out to be absolutely true – drop for drop, you really can end up spending more on printer ink than the finest champagne.

Ink and Drink: Prices Compared

The black ink in standard ink cartridges for a home printer costs on average 51’p per milliliter from one leading brand, or 240% more than the 15’p per milliliter price tag on a bottle of Dom Perignon. For a bottle of vintage port, four decades old, that figure is 17 pence.

While it’s true that a regular set of replacement cartridges costs £45, less than half the price of that bottle of Dom Perignon, it’s when prices are compared drop for drop that the prices really become startling.

And if you think about color ink cartridges, the differences in price become even more marked. For colored ink, prices can soar to £1.05 per millilitre.

Consumer Survey Reveals Why Cartridges Are So Costly

These findings were made towards the end of last year at a survey by a leading UK consumer organisation, which warned that many printers are regularly using up a great deal of ink during the printer head cleaning process, which begins automatically whenever the power is switched on, or at set intervals.

With a cleaning cycle, ink is shot into an ink absorbed in the print in a bid to keep the nozzles clear and in good condition. But cleaning cycles can use up huge quantities of ink.

This means a printer can use 600% more ink to print 50 pages in stages than in a single session. Another reason behind the sky-high prices is that manufacturers tend to sell printers at comparatively low prices, but make most of their money by selling replacement cartridges.

The organisation found massive differences in the cost of printing 50 pages at once compared to over eight weeks. For their part, manufacturers would only say the cleaning cycles were needed to “provide the level of quality users expect” or that “there are many factors influencing a cartridge’s ink yield.”

In one example, 50 pages cost £2.50 to print in one go, but a whopping £17.48 when printed out over an eight-week period. That’s a mark-up of some 600%. The manufacturer involved would not comment to the consumer organisation.

The Solution

While many may feel like instituting a complete ban on printing out documents, the reality is that for most of us, that’s just not practical. So it seems that the answer is to use a third party ink that can bring the price of printing down with no compromise on print quality and often with an extended cartridge life into the bargain.

So look online for a good provider and, once you have your printer, say no to expensive own-brand cartridges and go for high quality, compatible replacements made from a high proportion of recycled plastic. There’s more online.