
Ask HN: Life hack for printing costs? Ink is eating my budget - elamje
Hey everyone, I&#x27;m curious if anyone has been able to find a sustainable strategy&#x2F;hack to minimize ink costs over the long term.<p>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&#x27;t very important, it just needs to be readable for documents and no high quality needs for the images.<p>We end up spending nearly $30 a month on ink, and I&#x27;m trying to find a way to get that cost down as much as possible.<p>What is your printer&#x2F;ink combo that keeps costs to a minimum for similar printing needs? Are there notably more efficient printers?
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tjr
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.

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elamje
Do you know the model? And is it monochrome or color?

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idDriven
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).

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elamje
Thanks will do

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detaro
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.

