While HP uses standard shipping and warns it could take up to 10 days for your cartridges to arrive, my shipment arrived ahead of schedule, which other reviewers have mentioned as well. HP sends out a new shipment of ink when you’ve got double your monthly allotment of pages left (in my case, 20), which should give you plenty of time to receive your ink before you run out—as long as you don’t go rogue like me.
You Can Roll Over Unused Pages
Remember rollover minutes with cell phone plans? This feels similar. You can accrue up to three months’ worth of unused pages as “rollover pages,” so in my case, if I used five pages this month and three pages next month, those 12 unused pages would roll over to the following month, giving me up to 22 pages to print.
But What If You Want To Cancel?
You can log into your Instant Ink account and cancel directly from there—just follow this five-step process (complete with screenshots!). That’s a relief, because part of my hesitance with any subscription service is when they make it nearly impossible to cancel.
So, Is It Worth It?
For me, yes. While I enjoyed my trips to FedEx as an excuse to get my #HotGirlWalk on, the convenience is fantastic. No more scouring shelves to find the right ink cartridge match, or even thinking about ordering ‘em. I like that the Instant Ink cartridges are a bit bigger—which they say cuts down on packaging and shipping costs. They cite that as the rationale behind their claim that using Instant Ink can save you up to 50 percent on ink overall.
Comparing the costs, black and color ink cartridges for the DeskJet would cost me $41, and while HP says they’ll last up to 200 pages, I must really go for full-bleed, full-color pages, because my cartridges always seem to run out sooner. Still, that page count is equal to 20 months of HP Instant Ink, which would cost me $20.
As long as you don’t go to the extremes—printing well beyond your page allotment or printing five pages or less per month—it’s a worthwhile deal, especially given its convenience.
