They should do this for enterprise and leave personal consumers alone. I've worked with enterprise HP printers for year - these cheap cartridges do more harm than good!

Why is the ink so expensive anyway? Is it made of leprechauns and little pink star dust? I know there must be a reason but, damn, give me a break...

^ it created by gold dust, developed by gold dust, and marketed by gold dust? they dont need to do stupid stuff like this, people rather buy new printer then buy the ink in first places, this will just give them excuse to abandon ink printers.

SweenJM:

All printers from all brands that cost less than 500 dollars are not great. One tends to get what one pays for. I have worked with printers of every shape, size, price, and use......all the cheap ones suck.

This. I hate printers. They are all horrid pieces of garbage that let us down more than any other PC tech.

Fix is available: http://borncity.com/win/2017/09/14/firmware-update-blocks-again-non-hp-printer-cartridges/ HP’s Dynamic Security Feature is causing this issue The US HP support page addresses the issue. HP’s new firmware update seems to force HP’s Dynamic Security Feature to block non HP cartridges. A description of this feature may be found here. But there is a fix. HP provides a new firmware update on its HP support page, that disables HP’s Dynamic Security Feature . Go to HP’s support page and search for a firmware update for your printer model. Download and install the new firmware. After deactivating the Dynamic Security Feature via firmware update, non HP ink cartridges should be accepted again.

StewieTech:

Why is the ink so expensive anyway? Is it made of leprechauns and little pink star dust? I know there must be a reason but, damn, give me a break...

It's how the manufacturer actually makes money out of the typical consumer printers. If the printer itself costs something like 50 euros and includes even a scanner, it doesn't leave a whole lot of profit for the manufacturer after the manufacturing costs and reseller margin, especially since the device itself should last for a bunch of years unless it's abused or used like crazy. So, they intend to get all the profit from the ink. I doubt an ink cartridge selling for 20 euros costs more than 1-2 euros to make in China in great quantities. If you want to see the other approach, look at the Epson Ecotank printers. The device itself costs quite a lot, but even the official ink is affordable. I don't know how well the Ecotank models are selling, though, because it seems like the cheap printers (with crazy expensive ink) are selling very well all the time. If you lose the 50 euros printer itself, it's not such a great loss, but if a 300 euros printer kicks the bucket out of warranty, it ought to be annoying, so there's always that aspect as well.

I bought a brother Ink jet that costed €100 and it takes compatibles, not rechargeable cartridges. They cost €6 each colour and they are size XXL more the double the amount of ink of a HP XL cartridge. Ad they best part i later found out it print A3 size but can only feed one page at a time.

Kaarme:

If you want to see the other approach, look at the Epson Ecotank printers. The device itself costs quite a lot, but even the official ink is affordable. I don't know how well the Ecotank models are selling, though, because it seems like the cheap printers (with crazy expensive ink) are selling very well all the time. If you lose the 50 euros printer itself, it's not such a great loss, but if a 300 euros printer kicks the bucket out of warranty, it ought to be annoying, so there's always that aspect as well.

Those EcoTank printers are terrible, the print quality is bad, it's slow and the ink used isn't even Epson ink it's much lower quality and thinner to prevent it drying out as quickly! I purchased an HP officejet printer and the duplexer on it was faulty HP made me jump through hoops on a brand new printer trying to RMA it in the end I told the shop I wanted a refund and purchased a Brother colour laser the compatible toners are a reasonable price as the toner doesn't include the drum. If I want to print photos I'll send them to a photo lab which will cost less and produce far higher quality prints.

Jayzow:

Those EcoTank printers are terrible, the print quality is bad, it's slow and the ink used isn't even Epson ink it's much lower quality and thinner to prevent it drying out as quickly!

Yeah, I once read a review, and it also said the quality is lower than people would normally expect from an inkjet these days. That's one of the reasons why I'm still struggling with my pos Canon, not making hasty decisions. However, because more than half of my printing is photos, a laser printer wouldn't really do me much good, so I'm still forced to look at the inkjet selection. HPs aren't what they used to be, Canon is a scammer... The list is growing shorter.

I shot my last HP printer about a year ago. It was a joyous experience. The thing actually held up pretty well to the shooting, too bad the firmware and ink consumption were atrocious. I'd like to get a laser printer since 95% of what we print is text, but we would still need that stray photo once every few months and there isn't space for 2 printers in our office right now.

Even my el cheapo ENVY 4500 has issues with third party cartridges. Lucky i print rarely, maybe once a month 6-8 pages. So getting originals is no big deal.

I had an Epson with 6 ink cartridges. When it was new, day one, I printed about 8-10 black text only (only a few paragraphs per page) pages and one of the cartridges (cyan? magenta?) reported empty. The printer refused to print anything with any one of the cartridges "empty". I figured probably the new included cartridges were just enough to get you going, to "demo" the printer. Bought a whole set of new cartridges. I forgot the exact price but it was straight up robbery. Printed about 8 more plain black text pages. Same color was empty again. Printer refused to print anything, even black only. No monochrome, nothing. There could not have been more than 2 drops of ink used from that cartridge. I threw the printer in the trash after printing less than 20 pages of text. It also exhibited the behavior of reporting about 15% less ink every time you checked, even though you haven't printed a damned thing. And when it got to "empty" it refused to print when you know damned well, 98% of the ink that was in that thing was never used. Now I have an HP all in one deal with scanner, etc. I don't print often, maybe once a month (2-4 pages). Every time I print, I have to either replace the "dried up/Plugged up cartridges" or take them and soak them in hot water and Q-Tip the hell out of them with rubbing alcohol to try to resurrect them. Printers are garbage. Junk. Worthless. Ripoff.