

A little work with a handsaw reveals that over the years, the amount of ink in a new, official HP refill cartridge has been in decline. Prices, of course, have not been in decline.

I then removed the top of the cartridge with a handsaw and as you can see from the picture below the hydrophobic sponge fills the cartridge totally, just as I would have expected for the best part of fifteen quid, I then took another HP 350, the same cartridge but this time the manufacturers date was 2012 on the cartridge, I removed the top in the same way as before and to be totally honest I could not believe what I was looking at, the hydrophobic sponge inside the 2012 cartridge is only half the size!!

Mmm, I was beginning to smell a rat; as the saying goes… this got me thinking even more and I started to wonder if all the newer cartridges are like this, so this time I chopped the top off of a new HP 301 cartridge to have a look at the sponge, surely it can't be any smaller…..or can it? Guess what! The sponge inside the HP301 is almost 40 percent smaller than the 2012 HP 350, which means that we are actually getting less ink for our money now than ever before. Why is that? The price isn't shrinking though, that's for sure!