HP 45 - print cartridge > Reviews > HP45 Print Cartridge

Author's product rating:   

Reliability	Excellent
Ease of Use	Very Easy
Quality	Excellent
Durability	Excellent
Value for Money	Poor

Advantages:	Print quality, ease of use
Disadvantages:	Too expensive

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

This print cartridge is designed for use with the Hewlett Packard P 700, 800, 900 and 1100 series of Deskjet printers. We have a couple of 840C printers at my work place and we get through a fair amount of these HP45 cartridges!

The HP45 is a black ink cartridge with a 42ml capacity. The lifespan on this cartridge will vary greatly according to the printing mode and resolution used on the printer.

This toner will retail at around the £20-£22 mark depending on which supplier you use.

The cartridge comes in a small cardboard package. It is held in place by a cardboard surround that can sometimes be a bit of a battle to remove, depending on which way up you open the packaging!

In Use
To make the cartridge ready for fitting into the printer, you first need to remove a plastic strip from the bottom of the cartridge. This strip keeps the cartridge from leaking in transit and also from drying out. I do have a word of warning about these cartridges. Once this plastic strip is removed you must put the cartridge straight into the printer, if you leave it lying around for a couple of days it will dry out and be completely useless!

The cartridge fits into the printer quite easily, once you know what you are doing. These cartridges should slot into the appropriate holder inside the printer, making sure the cartridge is placed the correct way in, with the ink side facing downwards!

I can’t say that I have any particular problems with the reliability or life span of these print cartridges. They seem to last for a decent amount of time, providing you are not printing entire pages in blank ink or something like that! I have heard that sometimes these cartridges can malfunction and leak, but I have yet to experience this happening to any of the ones I have had.

With my recycling hat on, there is no mention on this cartridge of whether any parts have been used from recycled materials. I’m assuming then that HP are not trying to used recycled parts in this print cartridge, which seems a real waste considering the amount of these cartridges that must be used and thrown away on a daily basis worldwide!

Here comes my usual gripe with Hewlett Packard consumables, I feel that they are too expensive! OK £20 might not seem that excessive a price, but considering that you usually need a colour cartridge too for around the same price, you are talking about £40 just to replace the ink in a printer that probably only cost £80 to begin with! I don’t think that it is particularly fair to consumers!

Conclusion
If you are using a Hewlett Packard 700, 800, 900, 1100 series printer, then these print cartridges are probably the best option that you can choose to maximise your print quality. They are easy to use and I have not experienced any reliability problems with them.

As usual I feel that the asking price is too high, and it seems even more so when you are using these cheaper printers. Once you’ve been through a couple of sets of the cartridges you’ve nearly paid for original price of the printer!

Thanks for reading!