In 2023 I bought a HP inkjet printer. It came with 2 sets of ink cartridges. It also offered a "Subscription" for ink in the future of which I declined.
It was a little over a year when I needed to replace the first cartridges but because I declined the "Subscription" the 2an set would not work. I don't use the printer much.
Bought some off brand ink that worked well until I foolishly updated the drivers for my printer.
I have some new off brand coming today, claims it has new up dated chips in them.
Looking around the net it looks like most printer companies are in to the "Subscription" scam.

Ink cartridges are a racket, all right, bordering on criminal collusion. I had an all-in-one printer once that would, like yours, shut down all functions when it "thought" a cartridge was empty. This seriously pissed me off when I wanted to print an all-black-text page but the color was empty.

Ditch that thing and get something like an Epson Eco-Tank. You fill reservoirs (black, cyan, magenta & yellow) from bottles. These aren't cheap either, but last much longer. Aftermarket ink is available; the ink itself is fine, but the bottle dispensers are iffy. If you don't need all-in-one, you can get these for about the same price as 3-4 cartridges.

A major part of the reason I swore off inkjets entirely.

Give you a printer and then rob you blind on ink.

I have a pair of Brother printers. B&W laser for 99% of what I do and a modified version of a color laser for photos. It's not a "true" color laser as they are (or were, last time I looked) prohibitively expensive, but I don't recall the technical difference. It's a HL-L3230CDW "compact digital color printer"

All I know is it reproduces good images and the toner doesn't dry up or quit working.

I went to a brother laser printer and never looked back.

My work has a subscription and it is handy to have it mailed to you when you need it. They dont send it until the printer tells them it is close to being empty!!!

According to hp I average 7 pages a month.
My first cartridge should only have 300 pages printed since I got it. Should just now be running out, been through 2.

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Originally posted by gjgalligan:
According to hp I average 7 pages a month.
My first cartridge should only have 300 pages printed since I got it. Should just now be running out, been through 2.

Get a brother or epson laserprinter and dump HP!!!!

My wife has the HP subscription and has had no trouble with it or them.

Me, on the other hand, had a subscription to HP Ink and they sent me an email saying I would be better off transferring to an annual plan since I printed so few pages.

I did that and it stunk. A week or so ago, my printer started printing very lightly. Called HP and they said the ink showed half full. I went to my friends at Amazon and got a new cartridge over night and it worked fine. I sent the HP cartridges back to HP and called and fired them.

A CS Rep called the next day and tried to get me back. He said it appeared the cartridge had dried up and that's why it didn't print and showed half full. He said if that happened again, I could just send the cartridge back to HP and they'd refresh it. Of course I'd be without the ability to print while this was going on.

No deal, they stayed fired and I'll use this ink I bought till it runs out, then maybe check out the Brother system.

Bob

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I went to a brother laser printer and never looked back.

I gave up on Inkjets years ago. Never use cheap Chinese toner. It ruined one laser printer and the cartridges are not full.

We hardly print anymore, but I bought another inkjet last fall. It takes ink from bottles; no cartridges.

I will never buy another HP printer for this reason. Once you subscribe to their "deal", they lock down the printer so you can ONLY use their cartridges and no others.

FUCK HP.

I bought an Epson inkjet almost 4 years ago when I moved, and it's been great. The ink never dries up (and I don't print very much, maybe a few pages a month). I get OEM replacement cartridges at Walmart.