Tired of blowing through pricey ink cartridges? These simple tips can help you conserve printer ink—especially if you’ve got kids who love to hit print. From smarter settings to cartridge-free options, here’s how to make your ink last.
If you’re feeling the pinch, you’re not alone.
With many Canadians struggling financially today, most of us are looking for deals at the supermarket, mortgage relief at the bank and ways to shave down energy bills in the home.
Even common consumables like printer ink are more expensive today, spike that is especially felt by home-based workers or perhaps those with school-age kids.
And let’s face it: Children rarely think twice about printing random things they may never even look at —as if a money tree was planted in the backyard, right?!
The good news is there are simple practices that could help you get more out of your printer ink, as well as a few other tips and tricks to consider when printing at home.
Practice “selective printing”
Can you sign that document digitally? Isn’t it smarter to buy an activity book from your local dollar store than printing out colouring pages for toddlers? Can you get away with a digital album of pics from your recent vacation instead of printing out dozens of photos? Could you bring your phone, tablet or laptop to the kitchen to follow along with a recipe rather than printing it out?
If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, you might agree it’s time to reduce how much you print by being more selective.
Be web-wise
If you really want or need to print something from the internet—such as a return label from Amazon, an important email or boarding pass—look for the “Print” button on the web page itself, as it’ll likely be somewhere near the top of the page.
Clicking this will ignore (or at least reduce) the unnecessary printing of images, ads and banners around the content itself, as opposed to using the Ctrl+P print shortcut (in Windows) or Command+P (on a Mac), which will print everything on the page.
See a preview first
Before you print a photo, article or document, be sure to select “Print Preview” from the File tab to see what it will look like when printed. You might notice there are photos in an article you’re about to print, or perhaps the recipe extends to three pages when you only want the ingredients on page one, or perhaps you want the option to switch from colour to greyscale.
Save some cash from unwanted print jobs by taking a few seconds to review what you’re about to print.
Stick with brand-name ink
While no-name inks might be less expensive, try to stick with brand-name inks from the same company as your printer as they’ve been tested to last a lot longer than generic inks.
In other words, brand-name inks will cost you less over time.
Plus, cheap ink cartridges are known to dry on the printer heads, which can cause performance issues.
On a related note, you might be tempted to use ink-refilling services, but it might not be worth the hassle—and be sure to do the math to see how much you’re really saving.
Seal up unfinished ink
It’s a good idea to have a replacement ink cartridge handy, in case you need to print something and the stores are closed, but be sure to keep the ink in the sealed container or the foil bag it was sold in. If you open it prematurely, oxygen will begin drying the ink up over time.
On that note, if you do have spare ink opened, seal it tightly in a ziptop bag to prevent it drying out.
Keep this in mind if you’re leaving your printer unused for a long while, too—like if you’re snowbirds who live elsewhere for half the year. Remove the cartridges from your printer and seal up while you're gone.
Go cartridge-free
Perhaps the best tip out of the bunch is to buy a printer that doesn’t take cartridges at all.
The Epson EcoTank family of “supertank” printers (from $249), for example, include a set of black and colour ink bottles that last up to 5,000 printed pages. This is the equivalent of about 80 ink cartridges, says Epson, with each replacement set of bottles saving you up to $1,000 each time. It also reduces the amount of plastic that goes into landfills.
Having so much ink also solves another pain point associated with printing: running out of ink at the most inopportune time.
This wireless printer/scanner/copier also lets you print from smartphones and tablets, plus you can use your voice via a smart speaker, too, such as asking “OK Google, print a crossword puzzle” or “Alexa, print my grocery list.”
Cool, no?
Free the font
This one is really neat. You can save money on ink with Ecofont (ecofont.com)—a collection of downloadable font styles that are “perforated.”
Though it may look the same to the naked eye, these fonts have tiny holes in the letters, numbers and symbols and, which means you can save up to 50 percent of your ink or toner, says Ecofont. An annual license costs about $11 per year for a home user (more for a business).
