Your printer is fine. The question is whether the ink has a future why the printer's age tells you almost nothing, which number to check instead, and what an orphaned cartridge actually costs you

The printer's age is the wrong thing to check

Ask whether a cartridge is being discontinued and you will be told to look at how old the printer is. The reasoning sounds fine. Old machine, old supplies, and eventually the maker stops. It falls apart the moment you look at what makers actually do with cartridge numbers, which is reuse them across generations of hardware for as long as the design holds up.

Our catalogue lists 257 printers and the 248 distinct cartridge families they take. For 153 of those printers, the machine was the last one its maker ever built around that number. For another 8, the maker kept fitting the same number to new printers for four years or more after that machine launched, which means the supply chain behind it stayed alive long after the printer left the shops. Two buyers in the same year, buying at the same price, can end up on opposite sides of that.

So the printer's launch year is a weak proxy for something you can measure directly. The cartridge number has its own history, and the useful part of it is the most recent printer any maker put the number in. That year tells you when the manufacturer last committed tooling and a supply chain to the format.

The index: 43 of 248 cartridge families have gone quiet

We took every cartridge family in the catalogue and found the newest printer that uses it. Three groups fall out of that, and the boundaries are set by how long a format has been out of new designs rather than by anything a maker has announced.

The orphaned group is the one worth knowing about. 43 cartridge families have never appeared in a printer launched after 2014, which is twelve model years of silence. Sitting on top of them are 46 printers: 28 HP, 10 Brother, 5 Canon and 3 Epson. By machine type they split 26 cartridge inkjets and 20 lasers, and their median launch year is 2012.

No refillable tank machine appears in that group. All 24 of the tank printers we list take bottle numbers that are still going into current hardware, which is a real advantage of the format and one that rarely gets mentioned next to the cost per page.

The obvious guess is that narrow cartridges die first, on the reasoning that a number used by two printers is more exposed than one used by a dozen. The catalogue disagrees. The median orphaned family is shared by 4 printers and the median current family by 3, so how widely a number was used tells you nothing much about whether it is still in production. How recently it appeared in new hardware does.

Two printers from 2014, six years apart

Two machines in the catalogue make the point better than the aggregate does. A shopper in 2014 would have found them interchangeable. Both are home inkjets with a black and a tri-colour cartridge, they cost within a few dollars of each other to refill, and their cost per page is within 2.8 of a cent.

Canon kept fitting the MG2920's cartridge family into new printers until 2020. HP put HP 61 into nothing newer than 2014. That is a 6 year difference in how recently each maker committed to the format, sitting underneath two machines of identical age that look the same on every number a buyer can see in a shop.

Which is why we think the supply outlook belongs on the cartridge page rather than the printer page. It describes the number, and the number tends to be around longer than any one machine that takes it.

What HP says, and what HP's own forum says back

HP is the only maker of the four that publishes a consumer-facing explanation of why it retires cartridges, so it is worth reading closely. In an article dated 1 May 2026, HP says it discontinues older ink cartridges because older printer models gradually lose active users, because manufacturing smaller cartridge runs becomes inefficient, and because it focuses production on modern printer platforms. It adds that when a cartridge is discontinued, this usually means the associated printer series is aging out of active production support.

The advice that follows is what you would expect from a company that sells printers. HP lists searching remaining retail inventory as the first option and upgrading to a newer HP printer as the second, and notes that as inventory declines, prices may increase and long-term availability becomes less predictable. Read it for the mechanism, not for the recommendation.

The useful counterweight comes from HP's own support community. Asked in 2019 whether the HP 62 cartridges were at risk, a long-standing forum expert replied that while printers may be discontinued after a year or two, HP cartridges tend to have a very long production life, typically several or more decades from initial introduction, and offered the HP 45 as the example: introduced in the early 1990s and still available. Very few cartridges are discontinued, the reply said, and the ones that are tend to be very low volume products.

Both things can be true at once, and holding them together is roughly what an index like ours is for. Discontinuation happens, it is uncommon, and it is slow. When a customer asked HP support in 2020 how long toner would stay available for a discontinued LaserJet, the answer was that there is no exact date specified, and repeated attempts to get any range out of the company produced nothing. So treat a family that has been out of new designs for twelve years as the pool that eventual discontinuation notices get drawn from, rather than as a notice in itself.

What being orphaned actually costs you today

The obvious assumption is that scarce ink is expensive ink. We tested it, and at manufacturer list price it does not hold. Comparing like with like, cartridge inkjets only, so that cheap laser toner and tank bottles cannot distort the picture:

The three bands sit within 1.0 of a cent of each other. Whatever is happening to orphaned cartridge families, the makers are not marking them up on the list price. That fits the mechanism HP describes, which is a manufacturing decision about production runs rather than a pricing strategy for a captive base.

There are two things this measurement cannot see. It uses list price, so it misses the street price gap that opens once a cartridge is only available from marketplace sellers clearing old stock. It also says nothing about the compatible and remanufactured market, which is where most of the price relief on older numbers comes from and which behaves differently again. With those caveats, an orphaned family currently looks like a problem of availability rather than one of cost.

Stockpiling, and the date HP built into the cartridge

The instinct when you find out your number is going quiet is to buy five years of ink and stop worrying. On a laser printer that mostly works, because toner is a dry powder with a long shelf life. On an HP inkjet there is a trap, and it is documented by HP rather than alleged by anyone else.

HP publishes a support document titled Aging Ink Supplies Stop Working to Protect the Ink System. It carries a table of printers that stop printing when an aging ink supply reaches a date built into the cartridge, whether the user can override that and carry on, and how to find the date on cartridges where no override exists. The existence of that third column is the part to notice: on some models HP documents no way round it.

HP's own user guide language for the affected machines, quoted in its support community, explains the reasoning. Each ink cartridge has an expiration date, the purpose of expiration is to protect the printing system and to ensure ink quality, and HP recommends replacing expired cartridges. It also states that device service or repairs required as a result of using expired ink will not be covered under warranty. On machines where the override does exist, the same documentation is clear that it is not permanent and the cartridge will eventually stop working.

So the sensible version of stockpiling is smaller than the instinct. Buy what you will realistically print through, check your model against HP's table before buying more than that, and keep sealed cartridges cool and in the box. If your printer is a laser, the calculation is much more relaxed and buying ahead is reasonable.

Scarcity brings counterfeits, and old numbers attract them

When genuine stock runs low the listings do not disappear with it, they just change hands. That is the practical risk of shopping for a discontinued number on a marketplace, and it is well documented.

The UK Intellectual Property Office published a piece in March 2026 on counterfeit print consumables, noting that the printer makers run a joint body for exactly this problem: the Imaging Consumables Coalition of Europe, Middle East and Africa, whose members include Brother, Canon, Epson, HP, Xerox and Lexmark. The listed failure modes are leaking or clogging, colour inaccuracy, damage to printer components, and a voided warranty. Its checks are the ordinary ones: inspect the packaging for spelling errors and colour deviation, treat a price well below the usual as a warning, and buy from sellers the manufacturer lists as authorised.

Lookalike packaging is a separate problem from outright counterfeiting and is easier to run into. A 2024 review by The American Prospect found 131 ink cartridge listings for home printers whose packaging closely resembled HP, Epson, Canon and Brother products, and noted these were often not cheaper than the genuine article. Buying a discontinued number puts you in the part of the market where that is most common, because the authorised sellers have run out and the search results fill up with whoever is left.

Worth separating out: a legitimate compatible cartridge that says so on the box is a different product from a fake that pretends to be the original. Compatibles are a reasonable option on an old machine, and the counterfeit warnings above are about the cartridges that copy the branding.

Why compatibles usually outlast the original

An orphaned OEM family is rarely the end of supply, because the third-party market follows the installed base rather than the maker's product roadmap. A cartridge format with millions of working printers behind it stays worth tooling for long after the maker has moved on, and the tooling is already paid off.

Remanufactured cartridges are the exception to watch, because they depend on a supply of empty original shells to refill. As the installed base shrinks and fewer empties come back through collection schemes, that input gets scarce in a way that newly built compatibles do not. If your number is orphaned and you have a choice, a newly manufactured compatible has the steadier supply chain behind it.

The catch is that this route is only open if your printer accepts third-party ink. On machines with firmware that rejects it, an orphaned OEM family and a firmware lock together leave no sanctioned option at all. That combination is the genuinely bad case, and it is worth checking both before deciding what your machine is worth keeping.

Deciding what to do about it

If your number came back current, there is nothing to do. The maker was designing it into new hardware recently and the supply chain is running for reasons that have nothing to do with your printer.

If it came back legacy, buy normally and check again in a couple of years. Nothing in the data suggests a cliff, and HP's forum position that families often run for decades is most likely to be right about this group.

If it came back orphaned, the useful next steps are narrow. Find out whether your printer accepts third-party cartridges, because that determines whether the market can supply you once the maker will not. Buy a spare set now rather than a shelf of them, unless the printer is a laser. And if the machine also has a firmware lock, treat the next serious fault as the end of it, because the repair economics of a printer with no sanctioned ink supply do not work.

What we would not do is replace a working printer because a cartridge index looks unfavourable. A third of the search traffic reaching our printer pages last month went to machines in the orphaned band, and those owners are all still printing. The index tells you which way the supply is drifting, not that it has stopped.

Common questions

Keep reading

• OEM vs compatible vs remanufactured if the original is going quiet, this is the decision you make next.
• Do ink and toner cartridges expire? read this before you buy a year of ink in advance.
• Why did my printer stop accepting compatible ink? whether the third-party route is open to you at all.
• Which printers are cheapest to run? if you do end up replacing the machine, start here rather than with the sticker price.
• What to do with empty ink cartridges returning empties is what keeps remanufactured stock alive for old numbers.
• Your cartridge is being discontinued: what to do about it the decision costed out, including how much ink is worth buying ahead.

Sources

1. HP, Why HP Ink Cartridges Get Discontinued And What You Should Do Next, HP Tech Takes, dated 1 May 2026, for HP's stated reasons for discontinuing older ink cartridges (older models losing active users, small manufacturing runs becoming inefficient, focus on modern printer platforms), for the statement that a discontinued cartridge usually means the printer series is aging out of active production support, for the options HP gives owners of affected printers, for the note that as inventory declines prices may increase and long-term availability becomes less predictable, and for HP's answer that the printer will continue functioning as long as compatible cartridges remain available. hp.com
2. HP Support Community, Printer/ink cartridge obsolescence, thread 7086443, accepted solution dated 11 April 2019, for the statement that while printers may be discontinued after a year or two, HP cartridges tend to have a very long production life, typically several or more decades from initial introduction, for the HP 45 example of a cartridge introduced in the early 1990s and still available, and for the observation that very few cartridges are discontinued and those that are tend to be very low volume products. hp.com
3. HP Support Community, how long will HP toner be available for a discontinued printer, thread 7580337, 2020, for HP support's reply that there is no exact date specified for toner availability and for the customer's unanswered follow-up asking for any range at all. hp.com
4. HP, Aging Ink Supplies Stop Working to Protect the Ink System, support document c01764161, for the existence of a table of printers that stop printing when an aging ink supply reaches its built-in date, whether the user can override and continue printing, and how to determine the built-in date for cartridges with no override. hp.com
5. HP Support Community, Printer saying cartridges have expired, thread 7729870, 2020, quoting the HP user guide language that each ink cartridge has an expiration date, that the purpose of expiration is to protect the printing system and to ensure ink quality, that HP recommends replacing expired cartridges, and that device service or repairs required as a result of using expired ink will not be covered under warranty, together with the note that even where an override is allowed the cartridge will eventually stop working. hp.com
6. UK Intellectual Property Office, Fake toner, real trouble: protect your printers from counterfeits, 12 March 2026, for the Imaging Consumables Coalition of Europe, Middle East and Africa and its membership including Brother, Canon, Epson, HP, Xerox and Lexmark, for the listed consequences of counterfeit cartridges including leaking, clogging, colour inaccuracy, damage to printer components and voided warranty, and for the checks on packaging, price and authorised sellers. ipo.blog.gov.uk
7. The American Prospect, Amazon Still Has a Counterfeit Problem, 28 August 2024, for the review finding 131 ink cartridge listings for home printers whose packaging looked like brand name products from HP, Epson, Canon and Brother, and for the finding that these listings were often not cheaper than the genuine cartridges. prospect.org
8. Brother, Americas End of Life Replacement Parts and Support Policy for DTG Printers, for the commitment that replacement parts will be available for purchase for at least seven years from the applicable end of sales date, and for the statement that after the end of life date parts may not be available. This policy covers Brother's industrial direct to garment printers only and is cited here as the one published parts availability figure from any of these makers, not as a statement about home printers. brotherdtg.com
9. Epson, Printer Parts Service Required Message, for the statement that depending on the level of use a product may reach a condition where components have reached the end of their usable life, and for the note that when this message occurs other printer components may also be near the end of usable life, which is the other clock running on an older machine alongside its ink supply. epson.com
10. Cartridge family counts, the newest host printer behind each number, the printer counts in each supply band and every cost per page figure come from our own catalogue of printers and the OEM supplies they take, at manufacturer list prices. A cartridge family is a brand plus an OEM number, so standard and XL capacities are counted separately. Cost per page uses the best value cartridge in each colour slot and divides the cost of a full changeover by the shortest lived cartridge in that set. mycartridgefinder.com

Last updated 13 September 2026. This guide is general information, not a repair warranty. Printer menus and HP's model lists change, so confirm the exact steps for your model on the manufacturer's support site before you make changes.