Honestly, if HP instant ink isn’t the best thing since printers were invented, then I don’t know what is. I’ve had a myriad of printers (all HP with one exception) in my home/home office since 1995. And in case you didn’t already know it, inkjet ink can be pricey. Over the years I’ve mostly used real HP cartridges but I’ve also often dabbled with refill kits. The refill kits are certainly much more cost efficient but also (usually) very messy and time consuming, especially if you need to refill in the middle of an important print job.
I recently migrated all my Windows computers to Win8. (Don’t hate.) I’m usually not an early adopter. But I recently retired (after over 43 years in the work force) & am doing some serious upgrading of our home office technology. So I figured…WTF. Point being that my HP 6940 which worked very well with XP and only marginally with Win7 was shown the door. I replaced it with an HP Envy 6520. One of the reasons I went with this printer is that it is HP Instant Ink compatible.
What is HP Instant Ink you ask…??? As I said in my opening statement, (IMO) it’s the best thing since printers were invented. Yeah, it’s a monthly subscription. But so what? I signed up for the $2.99/month plan. That’s $36 a year and keeps me in ink for a full year as long as I print an average of ~50 pages per month. There are other plans, if you normally print more or less than ~50 pages per month and you can carry over the pages you don’t use from one month to the next. And…you can increase/decrease your plan as needed. But the absolute, neatest thing about this is that your printer will automatically order ink for you, based upon your usage. Say what? Yeah. Your printer sends info to the HP Mothership & when you start to get low on ink, it auto sends cartridges to you. I mean…how cool is that? No more jerking around with refilling ink cartridges. No more running to Best Buy as soon as they open so I can finish a print job.
BUT WAIT…THERE’S MORE…
As I already mentioned, the plan I signed up for is $36 a year. $36/year. Repeat…$36/year. I mean…I can’t buy a black & tri color cartridge for ANY of my previous printers for even close to that. I might be able to get a black cartridge for that. So in addition to being “proactive” (auto sending refill cartridges) and my not having to jerk around with refill kits, this plan is…wait for it…drum roll… CHEAPER.
What’s not to love?
