HP 902XL black · XL

The HP 902XL black fits five printers in our database: the OfficeJet 6958 and OfficeJet 6962, and the OfficeJet Pro 6968, OfficeJet Pro 6970 and OfficeJet Pro 6978. One number covers the whole generation, so a listing that names only one of those models is still the right part for the other four.

It is the size to buy. HP rates it at 825 pages against 300 for the standard 902 black, and at $38.00 against $18.00 that works out at 4.61 cents a page instead of 6.00, so the small cartridge costs about 23 percent more for every page it prints. The only case for the standard 902 is a printer that goes weeks without a job, where a cartridge sitting half used for a year is its own kind of waste.

Something odd shows up when you put the family side by side. Each 902XL colour is rated at the same 825 pages but lists at $30.00, which is 3.64 cents a page, so on this printer a page of plain black text costs about 27 percent more than a page of colour. That is the reverse of almost every other family in our catalog, and it is worth knowing before you decide to print everything in greyscale to save money here.

Our firmware lockout list has all five of these printers on it. HP shipped them with Dynamic Security, which can begin refusing cartridges without an HP chip after the printer installs a firmware update, and the refusal usually turns up long after a compatible has been printing fine. If you want third-party ink in one of these, switch automatic updates off in the printer settings before the first cartridge goes in, and buy from a seller who states current firmware compatibility.

The print head on this family lives in the printer rather than in the cartridge, and HP does not treat it as a customer replaceable part. That changes what a black failure means. Text that comes out patchy or missing after a spell of not printing is dried ink in the head, not an empty cartridge, and a cleaning cycle followed by a nozzle check is the fix. It also means running the tank bone dry is a bad habit, because the head is the expensive part and it does not like being pumped with air.