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Some printers can be incredibly thirsty and keeping them topped up with pricey manufacturer ink can add up to to hundreds of pounds a year.
It’s no secret that buying original-brand ink can be incredibly expensive. In fact, millilitre for millilitre, printer ink is one of the most expensive liquids on the planet - up to seven times more than Dom Pérignon Champagne.
Luckily there’s another option. Our most recent survey has revealed which cheap printer ink brands are the best - and it’s not the big names such as Canon, Brother, Epson, or HP. Which is why we're calling on the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to investigate whether branded ink costs are fair to consumers.
Read on to find out how to cut your printing costs and why we want the regulator to take action.
Sick of paying top dollar for your cartridges? Head to our expert guide to the best cheap printer ink .
We asked more than 9,000 inkjet and laser printer owners about their experiences with different printer ink brands, including third-party and original brands.
As has been the case for several years, third-party brands came out on top for both ink and toner. Owners valued their combination of decent print quality and fantastic prices.
The big brands were once again bottom of our table. Although they offer great print quality, the sky-high prices are hard to swallow, and our printer owners feel they’re not value for money.
Our table below shows the customer scores of the big brands - they take the bottom four places out of the 20 ink brands in our survey. The third-party brand with the highest customer score was 87%, so the 56% achieved by printer and ink giant HP pales in comparison.
Table notes: Survey conducted in April 2022 with 9,522 Which? Connect panel members. Ink cartridge sample size 7,524. We needed at least 30 responses for a brand to be included. Individual sample sizes shown in brackets. Customer score based on satisfaction and likelihood of recommending the ink brand if asked.
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There’s a misconception that original brand ink is miles better than third-party cartridges, but our best cheap printer ink survey results show there are plenty of great third-party alternatives. These also cost significantly less than original-brand cartridges.
For example, a set of replacement cartridges for the Epson Workforce Pro WF3820DWF costs almost as much as the printer itself. The cartridges cost a staggering £111.99*, which works out as £1.78 per millilitre of ink.
To put this in context, if you were paying that much per millilitre of milk, you'd need to stump up just over £2,000 for a two-pint bottle. Suddenly black tea or dry cereal doesn't sound so bad.
Head to our guide to the best printers to find out which models impressed us in our tests.
We know printer users are hesitant about switching to third-party inks because of a concern they won’t be as good or they’ll break your printer.
But we’ve found these concerns are unfounded. When we surveyed nearly 3,000 Which? members who use third-party inks, only 4% had experienced problems with compatibility and only 1% found their cartridges had leaked.
If this doesn’t reassure you, bear in mind that most third-party brands also offer guarantees if a cartridge doesn’t work. Some will even replace your printer in the unlikely event that their cartridges cause irreparable damage.
Looking for a budget printer with quality performance? We reveal the best cheap printers to buy and run .
If your current printer is on the blink and you want to make sure your next printer won’t cost a fortune to run, a tank printer might be the model for you. Tank printers have built-in ink reservoirs which are filled with bottles, rather than cartridges.
The bottles are much cheaper to buy and last a long time. We’ve tested some tank models which cost less than £4 a year in ink costs. To put this in perspective, some cartridge printers can cost more than £100 a year to run.
So although tank printers can be more expensive to buy, if you choose carefully a tank printer can pay for itself over its lifetime thanks to rock-bottom running costs.
Looking for a new printer? Head to our printer reviews to find the best model for your needs and budget.
Some HP printers are designed to prevent customers from using third-party ink by employing something it calls ‘dynamic security’, which recognises cartridges with a non-HP chip and stops them working. HP maintains that this protects customers and gives them the best printing experience, but our research regularly shows that some third-party inks offer great-value printing and are highly recommended by our members.
Other manufacturers promote the use of ‘approved’, ‘original’ or ‘guaranteed’ cartridges on their websites and in instruction manuals.
In the US in 2018, HP agreed to pay $1.5million (£1.1million) to customers, and the company is now facing a second class action from people claiming an authorised software update has made their printers incompatible with other brands’ ink cartridges. However, there has been no equivalent action taken in the UK.
While it is possible to remove the ‘dynamic security’ feature from some HP printers, the process is convoluted and can't be applied to all models. We believe choosing to use third-party cartridges, especially in a cost of living crisis, should not be dictated by a printer manufacturer and should instead be an individual’s choice.
This is why we are calling on the CMA to investigate whether branded printer ink costs and particularly ‘dynamic security’ are fair to consumers.
Lisa Barber, Which? Computing Editor, said: 'Our research shows third-party inks can offer good value and produce good-quality prints for a fraction of the cost of their premium counterparts, so it’s highly concerning that printer manufacturers are discouraging consumers from using them.
'We are calling on the competition regulator to investigate branded printer ink pricing, with a special focus on the manufacturers actively blocking customers from exerting their right to choose the cheapest ink and therefore get a better deal.'
A spokesperson for HP said: 'Dynamic security is a process that authenticates print supplies to prevent the use of cartridges without an original HP chip, or with modified or non-HP circuitry. HP includes dynamic security to protect the quality of our customer experience, protect HP’s intellectual property, as well as reduce illegal counterfeiting of HP cartridges and warranty fraud.
We contacted three other big printer manufacturers – Brother, Canon and Epson – to find out if any of their models also actively block third-party inks.
Canon acknowledged that some companies make ink that are compatible with its printers, but wouldn’t go further than that.
Epson warned against using third-party inks but said: ‘Epson does not prevent the use of third-party ink cartridges neither at the purchase of the hardware nor through firmware updates.’
Brother recommends using its own inks, but confirmed all its printers accept third-party inks.
Want to spend less money on printer ink? Go to the best cheap printer ink .
*Prices correct as of 6 September 2022.