Why is printer ink so expensive?

My printer recently ran out of ink. I went to purchase more and noticed most of the printers for sale were cheaper than buying the ink cartridges. What gives?

Daniel, Kotara

Hi Daniel,

What you are seeing is the result of the business model that printer manufacturers have chosen to run with. They sell the printers at or below cost and make their money on selling the ink.

The printer manufacturers expect you to purchase several cartridges over the life of the printer and that is where they make up the difference of selling the actual printer at a low price.

You may be tempted to just throw your printer out each time it runs out of ink however new printers come with half-filled cartridges. This means that the initial cartridge that comes with a new printer is only half filled, giving you only half as many prints, so it works out cheaper in the long run to just purchase the cartridges.

If you do want to save money they you are better off spending a little bit more initially and purchasing a laser printer. Laser printers use toner and generally you will get a lot more pages out of them.