Six Tips to Save Money on Printer Ink

A cartridge’s ink is a valuable resource; it’s one of the most needed and expensive liquids In the world. 

A cartridge that is full of ink can be anywhere from $40 and up, which is why you must save money on printer ink because if you don’t, you’ll find yourself spending outrageous amounts of money on ink.

Therefore, today we will give you some excellent tips that’ll surely prevent you from spending excessive amounts of money on ink.

1. Refilling

You would be surprised to know that many people don’t refill their empty cartridges and just buy new ones instead. This is extremely costly, especially if you print regularly, you might end up finding yourself purchasing a new cartridge every couple of weeks. That’s where refilling comes into place. You can easily refill your cartridges and save the expense of having to buy a new one.

There are many other advantages to refilling cartridges besides cutting down costs. One of these advantages is that it is good for the environment. As when you refill your cartridge, you won’t throw it out, and thus you decrease the amount of waste that you produce -the ink cartridges thrown-out-.

2. Use a Different Font

One of the easiest ways that you can save up on ink and consequently save more money is to use ink-saving fonts. Fonts like Comic Sans and Verdana are known to be some of the most ink consuming fonts, so it would be wise to steer clear from them unless necessary.

One the other hand, Garamond and Times New Roman use much less ink than any other font. Additionally, Ryman’s Ryman Eco Font is a free font that uses 33% less ink while preserving the print-out’s quality and readability.

3. Third-Party Cartridges

Buying or refilling your ink cartridge from the OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) is expensive and quite costly. Your best solutions to save money on ink would be to refill your cartridges or even buy entirely new ones from third-party sellers.

These third-party sellers sell and refill cartridges at a fraction of what OEMs do, and of course, they provide you with the same quality as well. For instance, an OEM’s ink cartridge might be 40 or 50 dollars, while a third-party would sell it for 10 or even 7 dollars.

4. Draft Mode

Printing in draft mode saves humongous amounts of ink, but in exchange for quality. You can use Draft mode or Fast mode in some cases, when you need to print a black and white paper that you don’t really care about its quality.

However, you can’t use it for colored print-outs or any high-quality printing.

5. Keep Your Printer Turned On

Printers use ink to clean the print heads that are equal in amounts to the ink used for printing. So, if you keep your printer turned on for most of the time, you’ll prevent it from doing maintenance each time it comes on. Therefore, by doing this, you’ll vastly decrease the amount of ink consumed and thus reduce your costs.

Moreover, if you are worried about additional energy costs resulting from you leaving your printer on, you shouldn’t worry, as printers consume minimal power when turned on and not in use.

6. Consider Reservoir Printers

Reservoir printers are a different type of printers; their cartridges are enormous and can withstand up to two years of usage according to the manufacturer’s claims. So, where is the catch?

The catch lies in two things, the first being that these two years of ink supply are claims and vary between one manufacturer and the other. However, we’re confident that the cartridges of reservoir printers will last for a much longer time than those of regular printers.

The second thing is that they cost significantly more than regular printers. They cost anywhere from $200 and up. But, they are cost-effective as you won’t have to worry about buying or refilling your cartridges for a long time. Nonetheless, as we previously discussed, always know that the ink cartridge’s lifespan stated by the manufacturers are estimations, which means that they might be off by a month or two.

Final Thoughts

To recap, your best solution would be to refill your cartridge instead of buying a new one. Also, you should try to use ink-saving fonts, and if you plan on buying cartridges instead of refilling them, you should check third-party sellers instead of OEMs.

Moreover, try to print in Draft or Fast mode as it saves ink and always keep your printer on to prevent it from performing maintenance cycles to save ink. If all else fails, consider investing in a reservoir printer.