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The inky truth
For some time, we’ve been hearing from readers that they were getting a lot less mileage out of their printers' inkjet cartridges than they expected—less than even our rigorous printer tests showed they should get. The ink usage tests we have conducted in recent years, which are similar to the standard industry tests that printer manufacturers rely on to measure ink usage, consist of printing pages continuously in big batches.
The fact that our readers were able to print far fewer pages than we did in our tests suggested that, for some consumers, those tests were not appropriate. One reason for this shortfall, our engineers believed, was that those readers were printing intermittently, perhaps a handful of pages a few times per week, rather than continuously.
To determine whether intermittent use would cause such a shortfall, we devised a new test, in which we printed 30 pages, in batches of two or three pages, once or twice every day or two (skipping weekends) for three weeks. And we shut off the printer between sessions, as we believe many consumers do.
The results, based on tests of dozens of current all-in-one inkjets representing the leading brands, confirmed our suspicions: In intermittent use, plenty of models delivered half or less of their ink to the page, and a few managed no more than 20 to 30 percent.
True, most models wound up using the majority of their ink to actually print, though only a few came within striking distance of using it all. (Our intermittent tests included text and graphics, but not photos because we’ve found that most people print those relatively infrequently).
'Diapers' and 'spittoons': Where the ink goes
Manufacturers say it's par for printers to consume ink in ways that don't wind up on the page. For example, HP referred us to its website, which said, "Some ink . . . must be used to maintain the health of the print head; some ink is residual; and some ink evaporates." [edited 7/2/2013]
But when we contacted them, manufacturers were mum on just how much ink consumers should expect to be consumed in such ways, though they did volunteer that the ink spent in cleaning may actually end up in a reservoir inside the printer that one manufacturer calls a "diaper" and other manufacturers call a "spittoon."
In our tests so far, only Brother printers were consistently frugal with ink when used intermittently. Other brands varied widely depending on the brand line. For example, with HP, the Envy series of printers used relatively little ink for maintenance, while the Photosmart series used a lot more.
We also found that you don’t need to sacrifice performance in order to save on ink. Several models that were fine performers were also among the stingiest with ink used for maintenance.
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] Foram só uns segundos debaixo de água, espero bem que fique mesmo tudo a 100%.
