A Cost Comparison Between HP and Epson (and other printers)
Since I started this page I bought an Epson Stylus Photo 750 printer. It printed almost as well as one could wish but it was rather slow. It took around 20 minutes to print a full A4 photo picture. I did a lot of A4 photo quality prints for a particular job and found that I could do around 25 prints before a change of one of the cartridges was needed. From this I concluded that it took around 2ml of ink (from both cartridges combined) to print each picture. The Epson compatible cartridges equivalent to the SO20110 or SO20193 contain 42ml of ink. The compatible equivalent to the SO20187 contains 17ml as does the SO20093.
Three colour plus black Epson printers use cartridges like the SO20089 or SO20191 that contain 38ml. The SO20108 and SO20189 black cartridges both contain 27ml. I sold a pair of Epson compatible black and colour cartridges (irrespective of type) for £6.00 when I worked at computer fairs. Compare this with the HP 1823A cartridge with a print head that contains 38ml and costs around £45.00 RRP. The HP 51641A is a bit cheaper (but is also very similar to the 1823A) and contains 40.5ml at a price of around £28.00 RRP. HP black cartridges contain varying amounts of ink from 20.5ml to 40ml and cost around £25.00 RRP on average. There are no compatible cartridges for HP printers or those that use HP technology like Lexmark. The choice is between the originals or commercially refilled cartridges that tend to be less good than the new ones.
The ink use calculation assumes that equal quantities of all colours and black are used by all makes of printer in a picture. This is not what actually happens but it is a fair way to make comparisons. This is because both Epson and HP have equal quantities of ink in the three colours in their 3 colour cartridges. If an Epson ran out of magenta after doing a number of pictures, the HP would probably run out of magenta for the same amount of printing, if the cartridges held the same volumes of ink in total. When any one colour runs out, the cartridge has to be replaced anyway.
