Anyone use it? Pros & Cons? Thinking seriously about swapping to HP for their Instant Ink program when I get a new printer. I am familiar with HP generally as my current and at least my last laptop are/was HP. I’ve always been a Canon gal for printers but availability of Canon printers with individual ink cartridges in my price range has become almost impossible to find.
We have an HP printer but haven't used the instant ink program. We sometimes have a hard time finding ink, and it's so darn expensive that I hate to buy it. Going to follow this post...
From what I've read it all depends on how much you print/use your printer. I don't use mine on a regular basis but may print a lot one day then not print again for several weeks or even months. Since it is a monthly fee and you are limited as to how many pages your can roll-over, I doubt it would work for me. Also, you need the printer connected to the internet at all times. I will say I know someone that has it and really likes it but she prints a lot of stuff every month. I still prefer my Canon printers with individual ink cartridges so I only change out the one I need. I have found for me this works best. Hope you figure out if it will work for you!
I'm a big fan of HP printers and the Instant Ink program! You can change the level of your plan at any time very easily, and the overall cost actually comes out to much less for us than when we were buying the cartridges ourselves. I'm not sure how different the prices are for you but we are on the 50 page plan for $2.99/mo. + tax, so $38.88/year for us. The cartridges are larger capacity than the ones we would buy in the store, so they last longer. We've been on the plan for 4 years, and we average about one black and one tricolor cartridge per year. I just checked Amazon, and the XL cartridges for our printer (HP Envy 5660) are running about $44 for the tricolor and $40 for black. And you'd have to add tax to that as well, for a total of about $90. Big savings! Since our plan is 50 pages/month, we can roll over up to 150 additional pages at no extra cost. The rollover pages don't expire, just max out at the cap. We tend to print in bursts... a few pages here and there, and then a whole bunch for a project. We have never gone over our rollover allotment. It's nice to not have to worry about running out of ink or trying to find it in the store. Since our printer is wireless and everyone in our house uses it, we do leave it connected to the internet all of the time, but you don't have to; it will just update your account whenever it next connects.
Same here, @KimJ ! Used it for 6 years now, 2 printers last two years. One at home and one at school. We have changed our plan to meet the demands of school time prep and summer slack. We can change it as often as we like. Ink is stinking expensive!!! We NEVER have to be without ink, nor go shopping for it!!
I had it. I didn't mind the program, although I found myself struggling with using enough. The 100 page plan was too few, especially since we homeschooled, and the 300 page too many. Really, I needed 200 pages/month. The ink they sent needed to be refilled more often than when I bought ink at the store, which was frustrating but it didn't matter too much since they would send more. Then, I had a bad experience with their ink damaging our printer. I called HP directly, and went through troubleshooting. The HP Tech said it sounded like the ink leaked and broke it, so it was my fault. Then, I pointed out that it was HP Instant Ink and suddenly "We have no idea why that happened, it's not our fault". We had to replace the printer entirely after 1 year. (Luckily, Costco's warranty was in effect!!) So, I switched to our Brother printer. I love it. I've had no issues with it, it keeps the WiFi connection beautifully, and scans without having to constantly reset everything. We moved with it, and unlike every other HP printer I've had, it didn't break. We bought the Inkvestment so it stores the ink in wells in the printer. It's supposed to be 2 years worth, and so far - we will get a little over 2 years it looks like.
Thanks everyone, I'm still very much at the deciding point of things. I may still find a printer I like that uses 4-5 cartridges rather than 2. I'm trying very hard to stay away from the tricolor ink cartridges for color as I don't find them great value but they tend to be in the printers I can afford if I stick with Canon.
@littlekiwi Mine is a Canon MG7720 and has 6 cartridges. It isn't the cheapest in the MG series but not the most expensive either. I chose it because of the 6 cartridges and that was a good decision for me. I replace the 2 black cartridges more often than the 4 color ones (cyan, magenta, blue and grey). There are others in the MG series that have 4 separate cartridges that are cheaper. That is if you do want to go with Canon. I've been using printers with separate cartridges for many years and for me the best way to go. Like you I hated having to get rid of a tricolor ink cartridge because of one color being out.
@bestcee Sorry to hear you had such a terrible experience with HP. It sounds like pretty much the opposite of mine. I can see why that soured you on them. I think this is our 3rd HP printer. We've had it 4 years, and I'm guessing we got 10-ish years each out of the previous two. We had one very expensive large format Epson that we hated (the colors were AWFUL no matter what we tried) and gave up on and donated. It's the only other printer we've had since the days of the old dot matrix printers with the continuous feed paper with the holes on the sides! I couldn't tell you what brand that one was. @littlekiwi Our previous HP had the individual color cartridges. It felt like a waste to me too to have to replace the entire cartridge when only one of the colors ran out, but when it came time to replace the printer, the pricing just made more sense to go with the tricolor. They do have free recycling that we send the used cartridges in for, which makes me feel a little better about it. I hope you end up loving whatever you decide to get!
I have a current Canon printer with I think 5 cartridges but hasn't been used in 5 years I think. When I moved back home, it made sense for only one of our printers to be operational and mine was the slightly more expensive one to run so I'm debating whether its worth it to get new ink for my printer in the hopes it might work again and I can still find ink for it or start over again. It may end up being too big and bulky for the space I'll ultimately end up most likely having (I probably won't have a full desk set up and my printer is huge in comparison to some). This is my current printer Canon MAXIFY MB2060
@HavaDrPepper I'm not brand loyal if it ends up meeting my needs best if that makes sense. I've just used Canon for probably the last 10-15 years for printers so thats what I'm used to.
I have a frustrating canon, it's fine printing from the phone app but is less useful for remote printing & this model of canon ( TR7560) doesn't have the 'just plug in via USB cable instead of wi-fi' option - they took that physical connectivity away. I don't like tricolour either but I get 'refilled' ink from Cartridge World, it has separate C,M, Y & 2 sizes of black & I bought it mainly for that reason but would not recommend this model to anyone
I got my first Canon printer in the 90's. It was a Bubble Jet. I used it for color printing and used my actual laser printer for documents. The laser printer was a small HP and it was a workhorse for many years. It replaced a dot matrix printer. But once I got a Canon printer, I never looked elsewhere. Guess you can say that I am brand loyal to Canon since that is the brand of camera I always buy. I've looked at others but just keep going back to Canon. Your printer is much bigger than mine. I've gotten to the point since I don't print a lot that I prefer a smaller printer. It does have a scanner and I probably use it for that more than I do printing.
@HavaDrPepper I am brand loyal to a point as well. The printer is only that big as it was bought while I was doing full time study as it was more cost effective/more convenient to print at home. This printer worked out about the same price per copy as doing it offsite and I didn't need to constantly prove copyright to the printers for every single journal article etc
I have a Canon printer right now and have had it for a long time... probably at least 10 years and it's been a good printer. It has 6 cartridges which I love because I only have to replace the color that has run out. I also started using generic cartridges a long time ago because they were so much cheaper (from Amazon). I looked into replacements about a year ago when our wi-fi was going wonky and my printer was having trouble connecting, but I couldn't figure out the instant ink program. Lol.
Yay, someone else who has a printer in double digits....we've been transitioning my grandma into care the past little while (long long story there) and I'm the tech expert in my family and she has a very old Canon printer that's not used a tonne but its a) becoming very hard to find ink for it now and b) she doesn't use it anymore and I've basically said to the family, the only place that printer goes when we finally do a sort through of what she's keeping, what the family is being given/taking, what's being donated to charity shops and what's being thrown out is that the printer is going to E-recycling if I have anything to do with the decision!
Within the last year we replaced our old (9-10 years old) HP with a new Canon printer. We went with the Canon Pixma G6020 MegaTank All-in-One. Rather than cartridges, it has wells that you refill from a bottle. Bulk printers are a little more expensive up front, but the ink costs are much lower than for the traditional cartridge style. So far I love ours! We mostly do school-quality printing as opposed to photos or layouts that I want to have long term, so I can't vouch for how it is for scrappy printing. The one thing to know is that some people say the ink can dry in the print heads if you go too long without printing. Not an issue for us, since I print multiple times a week, but it could be for people who print less.
