I have been using HP printers for over 40 years, starting with laser printers and moving to ink jet printers for the last 25 years. I always felt the pricing of toner was appropriate for the amount of printing generated. However, ink for all the inkjet printers that I have used has been a horribly priced product. Not only that, with cartridges having a dated shelf life, and software encoding that prohibits using compatible ink cartridges, I have decided that it is time to change brands. HP printer are priced appropriately, in my opinion. However their price for ink is outrageous. I don't mind paying a reasonable amount for supplies, but HP is pricing itself out of the market. HP doesn't allow refilling of cartridges, and will not supply a more cost effective refill for its own cartridges. Another irritating "feature" is the fact that without serviceable cartridges, the printer, scanner, copier - all of it is just dead weight on my desktop. Too much to tolerate any further.
Before buying my HP Original Ink Cartridges, I used to stuff live squid into my printer. It was messy but got the job done. But squid are kind of pricey, and it pained me to hear their squeals of terror as the ink--and their lives--were being slowly squeezed out of them. It was a totally organic way to print great photos of my family, but it seemed kind of cruel. But suffer no more, you sweet little cephalopods! Now that I am using the HP 962 3-pack Cyan/Magenta/Yellow Original Ink Cartridges, you are free to swim about and squirt your inky joy unmolested by my printing needs!
The ink itself is fine. On my previous generation HP printer, when you ran out of a color it told you, and you replaced it. Easy enough. On the new printer, an OfficeJet Pro 9025, if you run out of a color, you are forced to replace all 3. Hard not to conclude that it's a greedy move by HP. So I am rating 'features' as 1 star even though the cartridge itself is not to blame. Guilt by association for sure. By the bye, my previous printer, an HP OfficeJet Pro 8600 Plus, was a better and higher quality printer than the new one, in my opinion. I would have it still, except that when I went to Windows 10, that software would not communicate with the 8600.