I recently had a chance to take part in a webinar put on by HP. The focus of the webinar was to compare the page yield of HP brand printer cartridges against refilled printer cartridges. Of course, it was obviously slanted toward HP being far superior to refilled cartridges, but the information presented was pretty interesting. Let me share what I learned.

I will use the term ‘refilled’ or ‘refills’ to mean any cartridge that is not manufactured by HP. You should also be aware that there are two types of refilled cartridges. There are branded refilled cartridges (cartridges you buy already refilled and packaged) and ink cartridges refilled by refill service providers (empty cartridges you take to a store or kiosk to have refilled).

Now that we have defined our points of comparison, we can continue on. HP compared the page yield of their cartridges to refilled cartridges. A third party test (Quality Logic, 2009) served as the basis for the evidence presented.  The study showed that HP brand cartridges printed up to 65% more pages than the equivalent refilled cartridge. Quite a difference! As everyone now knows I am all about the cost per page printed, so even though a refilled cartridge costs less you may actually be paying more – per page printed – than you would with an HP manufactured cartridge.

Right off the bat we are going to save 30% on the cost of the cartridge if we use a branded refill cartridge (retail $16.99 for HP 56) instead of the HP brand ($23.99 for HP 56). If we decide to use a refill service (retail $9.99 for HP 56) we will save 59%. If we just look at these numbers we will realize a pretty significant savings. But what if we look a little further, look at my favorite figure, the cost per page printed.

If we assume all cartridges are equal, this is a no brainer. Go with the refill service cartridges! But, if we assume they are not equal and HP’s “65% more pages” claim is accurate. We see that:

• Printing with an HP 56 cartridge (yields up to 450 pages) will cost us 5.3 cents per page.
• Printing with a branded refill 56 cartridge (yields up to 157.5 pages) will cost us 10.8 cents per page.
• Printing with a refill service 56 cartridge (yields up to 157.5 pages) will cost us 6.3 cents per page.

To match the 5.3 cents per page printed of the HP cartridge our branded refill would have to yield 315 pages (twice as many as the HP study showed it would) and the refill service cartridge would have to yield 187 pages (29.5 more pages that HP showed it would).

Cartridge refillers will tell you that their cartridges print just as many pages as an HP cartridge. I’d be lying if I told you they did not, so I will tell it to you like this. CONSISTENTLY they do not. You are going to get refilled cartridges that will yield the same number of pages as the HP brand cartridges. You are going to get some that come close. You are going to get some that don’t come close at all. Bottom line is that refilled cartridges will not consistently provide you with the same page yield that an HP cartridge will. In end you will get a higher page yield from HP brand cartridges.

Don’t take this as a glowing endorsement for HP brand cartridges. I just want to give you a little something to think about before you decide which type of cartridge to buy.

What do you think of HP brand cartridges? What do you think of refilled cartridges? Please take a minute and let me know. Thanks!