My Journey with HP Instant Ink

My Journey with HP Instant Ink has started today, following the purchase of my HP OfficeJet Pro 6978 printer. After hearing a multitude of bad reviews (that almost deterred me from trying the subscription model), I went for it and decided to record my experience.

A bit of background information:

While I run a small home business, my work hardly depends on timely printing.

I am signed up with the $4.99 - 100 Pages a month plan.

The most I’ll print in a month is 100 pages and it’s mostly for record-keeping (paid invoices, instructions, receipts, etc.) The nature of my work doesn’t depend on how fast ink ships to my house so that was a big advantage when comparing pros and cons.

The 2-month trial is plenty generous to try out the service, allowing 700 pages a month. I'm nearly at the end of my trial and no monthly charges have been made as of yet.

Instructions are clear and concise and your usage (pages printed, ink shipments) is all outlined in your account.

Things to keep in mind:

There's no need to purchase an HP Instant Ink Prepaid Code with the printer. Just get the printer by itself and activate HP Instant Ink online so you can make full use of your two month trial.

The printer needs to be online at all times to be able to calculate your usage. I suggest connecting it directly to Ethernet for a more stable connection.

So far, the pages printed match what shows up as my usage.

You are charged for the pages printed, not for ink used.

Please note: A page printed is any amount of ink on the page. It can be as simple as two lines or a single dot. Canceled pages that didn't get to print are not counted.

Final Thoughts

The printer I got is meant to be used with the subscription model otherwise it's not worth the ink cost. If you don't plan to use HP Instant Ink, make sure to dive in-depth into the product you plan to buy or look for a more economic solution.

This  post will be updated as necessary or if anything changes.

If you want to try out the service, you can use my link [referral] to get 1 month free when you first enroll.