Tests show many printers waste $100 worth of ink yearly during maintenance cycles

Wondering why your inkjet printer’s cartridges aren’t lasting as long?

Tests by Consumer Reports show that some printers use much more ink than
others during their maintenance cycles. The extra cost of using those printers
can add up to $100 or more a year.

Instead of ink going onto pages, it’s used to clean print heads and for other
maintenance chores, usually when the printer is preparing to print after
sitting idle for some time.

Consumer Reports created a new test: 30 pages were printed, in batches of
two or three pages, once or twice every day or two, skipping weekends, for
three weeks. And testers shut off the printer between sessions – the way many
consumers do.

The testing organization found that in intermittent use, many of models delivered
half or less of their ink to the page and a few managed no more than 20 to 30
percent.

However, several models that were good performers also used the least ink
for maintenance. See the test results at ConsumerReports.org.

Consumer Reports test showed that Brother printers were the most
consistently frugal with ink when used intermittently. With other brands,
maintenance ink use varied widely depending on the brand line. For example,
with HP, the Envy series of printers used relatively little ink for maintenance
while HP’s Photosmart series used much more.

While consumers can’t directly control how often a printer maintenance cycle
occurs, Consumer Reports says consumers can reduce the number of cycles, and
ink consumption, in the following ways:

• Leave the power on. This avoids
  triggering a maintenance cycle each time you use the printer. Inkjets left on
  consume little power when not in use, so your ink savings should outweigh the
  energy cost.

• Print in draft mode for less critical
  work. This will reduce the amount of ink used in printing.

• Don’t change cartridges unless you have
  to. Whenever you take out an ink cartridge that still has plenty of
  ink left in it, for example, if you use a less-costly brand for less critical
  work, you trigger an ink-consuming initialization cycle.

• Consider buying a laser printer as a
  second printer for black-and-white, since they don’t use maintenance
  ink, and they print excellent text.

The intermittent printer ink test report is available in the August 2013
issue of Consumer Reports, available at libraries and bookstores, and online at
ConsumerReports.org.