Which ink does the HP OfficeJet 6962 use?

The HP OfficeJet 6962 runs on the HP 902 family. Our record gives it a black in two sizes, the 902 and the 902XL, and three separate colour tanks that the catalogue carries in XL only. Nothing here is a tri-colour cartridge, so an empty magenta costs you a magenta rather than a full set.

The size decision is only live on the black, and the XL wins it. HP rates the 902XL at 825 pages for $38.00, which is 4.61 cents a page, while the standard 902 gives 300 pages for $18.00, or 6.00 cents. Buying the small one costs about 30 percent more for every page it prints.

The colours are cheaper to run than the black, which is the opposite of what most people budget for. Each 902XL colour prints the same 825 pages for $30.00, so a colour page is 3.64 cents and a black page is about 27 percent dearer. Stocking all four tanks comes to $128.00.

The 6962 is on our firmware lockout list. What our record shows against it is Dynamic Security rather than an HP+ enrolment, and that distinction matters: an HP+ printer is committed to Original HP ink for good, while this one can accept a compatible until an update teaches it not to. If you want third party tanks in it, turn automatic firmware updates off in the printer settings before the first one goes in.

On the separate tank HP designs the print head belongs to the printer, not to the cartridge, which changes two things. Text that prints faint or broken up after an idle spell is dried ink in that head, so a cleaning cycle and a nozzle check fix it and a new cartridge does not. And because the head draws a little from every tank when it services itself, running any one tank dry is worth avoiding even when the colour you need is full.