Which ink does the HP OfficeJet Pro 6230 use?

Searches for OfficeJet Pro 6230 toner land on this page regularly, and there is no toner anywhere in the machine. The 6230 is an inkjet. It takes liquid ink from four cartridges: the HP 934 black alongside HP 935 in cyan, magenta and yellow. Both lines come in XL sizes, and on this printer the XL is the only sensible buy.

The cost per page here points the opposite way to the usual advice about saving money on printing. The HP 934XL black prints 1000 pages for $38.00, which is 3.80c. Each HP 935XL colour prints 825 pages for $14.00, which is 1.70c. A black page on this printer costs about twice what a colour page costs, so switching a document to greyscale moves your printing onto the more expensive cartridge.

A full XL set is $80.00 and holds 1000 black pages plus 825 of each colour. The standard HP 934 black is 6.25c at 400 pages, so the XL black cuts the cost of a black page by about 39 percent and lasts more than twice as long between changes.

Do not read the 2014 launch date as safety. HP lists the OfficeJet Pro 6230 in its support document on the inkjets that received the cartridge blocking firmware, and the store page for the printer carries the line Dynamic security enabled printer. A compatible 934 or 935 can be refused here after an update. The same document carries the fix: HP publishes firmware that takes the block off this model whatever date the unit was built. If a compatible is printing for you now, hold automatic updates. If one has already been refused, that removal firmware is what to install.

A cartridge flagged as used or not recognised is usually a contact problem on a printer of this age. Take it out, wipe the gold contacts with a dry cloth, refit it, then switch the printer off and unplug it for a minute to clear the message. Faded or missing colour is a printhead job rather than a cartridge one, so run the cleaning cycle from the tools menu before replacing a cartridge that still shows ink in the gauge.