Given the price of individual cartridges and the fact that that XL truly does last longer than regular cartridges I'd recommend the package of 4. It is much more economical. Spendy yes but not any more so than other brands. I used to have an Epson printer and those XL cartridges did not last as long.
I have found that purchasing the cartridges in the multi-pack is more economical than purchasing the separate cartridges. This pack comes with the Cyan (blue) Yellow and Magenta plus the Black XL. It is nice being able to replace the individual cartridges when the ink supply is depleted on our printer. Our old printer used one black cartridge and only one color (as all of the colors were in one). Our teenagers print out a lot of papers for school projects so it makes it nice that we don't have to replace the cartridges that often.
I only use HP ink in my hp printer. they may cost a little bit more but it last so much more then others. And being a hp product I know hp will help with any issue. even if for some reason there is a defect. Which with this one I have not had any problems
This is a great product at a very comparable price. I appreciated the fact that I was asked several times if I could be helped. It was a pleasure doing business with a customer that I sensed actually cared.
It's hard to review ink cartridles. I will say that these seem to last as long as the ones I used when I had my HP printer from 2000 did. I was concerned that cartridges with individual colors of ink would use up more quickly especially since the printer's software make you change them the minute they start to fade. My old printer let you use up every drop of ink until you could barely read the print on the page. But these are ok. Or I've gotten used to it.