Ink Math
I have now read 6,000,000 printer reviews. Some of them are mind-numbing in their intricacy of detail, with multiple page charts on colour gamut and depth of blacks. But they all have one remarkable thing in common - none of the reviewers, some of whom have 40 plus years of experience with printers and obviously know their stuff, have discovered ink math. At the end of their otherwise intelligent and insightful reviews, they inevitably suggest ‘more affordable’ and ‘bargain’ alternatives to the big printers. Am I imagining things? Let’s look again.
Once more into the breech;
Big (17” wide carriage), expensive printer - Canon P1000, cost $1400.
Cheap photo printer (but still a larger, 13” wide carriage for some bigger prints) - Canon P100, cost $300.
The P1000 includes 880ml of usable ink. To do the absolute simplest thing possible, let’s put that same amount of ink in with the cheaper printer, the P100. Excluding the cost of the ink it comes with, and buying the ink in the cartridges you must for that printer, the P100 now costs $1530. I’m not sure it’s possible to make it any simpler than that. Both printers will use the same amount of ink to print a picture. And every time I repeat that cycle of ink use, the big printer’s ink costs $500. less.
Could you use non-OEM ink (in this case, made by a company other than Canon)? Sure. It’s about ½ price. But how long will it last? And how accurate and bright will the colours be? I said the manufacturers rip us off with the cost of ink, but the technology going into those inks is pretty incredible. And the ultimate irony is, the price of the bargain inks for the bargain printers is essentially the same as the price of the OEM ink on the big printers. Which leads us to....
Tim’s ink math formula; cheap printer + cheap ink = expensive printer + expensive ink.
Pretty funny, right? As I said in the previous blog, it’s all about the ink. The ink cost savings that comes from the ink being supplied in much larger cartridges, over time, make a big, big difference. Then, if you like, stir in the savings that come with not having to send out to a lab for a $30. 17 x 24 print, that you can do for a little over $10.
And that’s just hard cost, without going into the other advantages of the higher end printer, not the least of which is build quality and longevity. Add in gallery level prints and art style paper handling and pigment inks that will last a century, and all of a sudden things look a bit different, don’t they? Of course the qualifier is, you have to print pictures. But this blog is for the photo enthusiast and I’ll bet most of you have some pictures hanging on a few walls. Really, you just need to ask yourself this one simple question - are you one of those people who feel that a good photo hasn’t really happened, isn’t complete, until it is printed? If your answer is yes, well, now you have some ink math to help you decide what it is you want to do about that.