Photo printer reviews: Ways to save ink
Ink costs
Save money by buying ink cartridges in bulk
The biggest running cost for nearly all gadgets is power but with printers this pales into insignificance when you see how much the average user spends on paper and ink in a year.
It could cost you as much as £37 to print 100 photos on a small photo printer.
It makes sense to choose a printer that won't cost the earth to run, which is why our testing places a massive emphasis on working out the true cost of each print. The difference in running cost of the most costly printer we tested and the cheapest is 17p a print, which works out at a difference of £18 a year if you print 100 photos.
Buy in bulk
The prices given in our report are the lowest you can expect to pay if you buy ink cartridges and paper on the high street in large value packs. If you want to save more, consider buying consumables from an online retailer and purchase in bulk. Many online stores will give you a discount if you buy multiple value packs in one transaction.
High street deals
If online shopping isn't your cup of tea, look out for special deals on the high street in the summer months and those leading up to Christmas. It’s these times of year when most people are seeing family and friends and going on holiday so retailers sometimes try to cash in on the number of pictures we're taking resulting in big savings for consumers.
Greener ink
It can take over 450 years for a cartridge to biodegrade and there are 47 million of them going into landfill sites in the UK each year. But there are steps we can all take to be a little greener when disposing of old ink cartridges.
Lots of charities collect ink cartridges for remanufacturing and recycling. Action Aid Recycling and Oxfam are a couple of examples but websites such as Recycling Appeal and Cartridges 4 Causes collect on behalf of many more charitable organisations.
You can also take your used cartridges to branches of Cartridge World. If they can't refill the cartridges for resale they have a policy of recycling them into other items such as dustbins and drainpipes.