A lot of ink has been spilled in recent months to discuss Kodak’s new ad campaign, which basically is shaming us into fiscal responsibility by buying their inkjet system, which they claim will save Americans $5 billion a year, collectively.
We’re not sure where they came up with that number (although we give them kudos for a very clever ad campaign), but we do know the ink set for Kodak’s Easyshare ESP line of all-in-one and standalone inkjet printers cost less than their competitors’ inks. Kodak says the savings is about 50%. Reviewers have said maybe not quite as much, but savings nonetheless in the 30-40% range, which can still be significant if you print a lot.
The Kodak system uses six inks—a cartridge for black ink that costs under $10, and a separate five-color ink cartridge, which can be bought for around $15. Six-color systems will produce a fairly wide range of tonality. If you’re using the same number of inks in your current system or less, you may want to consider switching to Kodak both for the savings and the quality upgrade. If you’re already invested in a seven or eight color system, you might not want to downgrade—unless you want to save quite a lot of money in replacement cartridges. (Some other brand cartridges can cost as much as $20 per color!)
The four all-in-one printers in the Kodak lineup range from the consumer-level ESP 3and ESP 5, both of which are in the $130-150 range, the WiFi-friendly ESP 7($200) and the top-line ESP 9($299).
The downside, according to many online reviewers, is that the printers tend to be somewhat slower than the specs claim, although image quality when using Kodak Photo paper has gotten very good reviews.
What do you think? Do you have a Kodak printer, and is it saving you money on ink? Leave a comment below…
