Working from home has been a growing trend for the past decade, spurring a renaissance for the home printer. The increasing demand for printing at home has seen HP's Instant Ink service win millions of customers around the world – and now the service is available to New Zealanders for the first time.
It's a HP print subscription service which tracks home printer ink consumption remotely, dispatching replacement cartridges to the printer's owner ahead of it running dry, and even retrieving used cartridges for recycling.
The concept sounds simple but for several reasons – up to 50 per cent cost savings is one – it's time is now, says HP's director of printing systems for Australia and New Zealand, Paul Gracey.
Relatively new in New Zealand, it has already attained 9.5 million customers globally, introduced in response to more people than ever working from home following lockdowns.
It turns out that an unintended consequence of the Covid-19 era is the re-emergence of home printing machines, many previously relegated to near disuse in the home office or full retirement in the wardrobe or garage.
"When lockdowns first hit, hundreds of millions of people round the world brought their laptops home in a bag but left their printer in the office or at school," says Gracey. "They soon found out they had been printing out far more than they realised on the office printer – bringing a surge in home printer sales globally."
A Deloitte report estimated sales of all-in-one printers – the kind that can scan and email – actually grew 15 per cent last year, to a gross figure of nearly US$29 billion.
But why do home workers want to print? Isn't it a lot cheaper and more environmentally friendly to make our work entirely digital?
"Possibly," Gracey says, although he points to HP's Forest First programme which helps promote closed loop cartridge recycling, with satchels delivered to the door when empty cartridges need to be disposed of and re-purposed to create new ones. "For the most part, many home workers want the security, convenience and options of having a printer at home."
He puts the enduring popularity and need for home printers down to a range of factors. A shortage of work space, sometimes referred to as "screen real estate", drives many to print important files out (for active scrutiny during work time) rather than just displaying them digitally.
"Whatever the size of our monitor, or monitors, it seems possible for a lot of us to run out of screen space. One screen might be in use for a Zoom call, another could be displaying emails, and a third – if there is a third -- could have several files open in windows.
"For many of us, it seems there's just never enough space, so we tend to prize the perceived stability and security of positioning a hard copy in front of us as we work, rather than seeing – for example – that important file jump to the back of all the windows open on screen."
Gracey also points to research he says indicates that retention of information may be enhanced by working part of the time on a hard copy, rather than entirely on a screen: "Not to mention the luxury of occasionally taking that report or file to a comfortable chair to read as a hard copy, or even to the park – away from your home office and its PC."
There's another practical aspect that has made home printers popular during and after lockdowns: "There's a lot more shopping online when you're confined to home and, for that, you tend to need to print out labels. Obviously not every item you purchase will perform properly and, when you need to return something, inevitably it involves printing out a label to put on the box."
Above all, Gracey says home workers want to be assured of convenience and cost savings: "I think that's why Instant Ink is taking off around the world." Paired with the HP Smart App, Instant Ink notifies HP when the HP printer is running low and automatically ships the ink needed to your door.
"We know cost is among the main reasons people sign up," says Gracey. "They are assured their ink or toner will cost less when we deliver it to them than if they were to go downtown and purchase the same cartridge from a store.
"We've designed the service so there's an option for everyone, with the ability to choose a plan to print small or large amounts. For example, you could scale your plan right down while you're away on holiday and scale it up again when you return home and need to print out your holiday photos."
As to cost, Gracey says customers are only ever charged per pages printed – not for the amount of ink purchased. If they do not use all their pages in any given month, these automatically roll over into the next month.
With cost savings virtually a given, the primary attraction of the Instant Ink service has become security, he says.
"We all know that printer ink tends to run out at the worst possible time. But with Instant Ink, when ink levels are getting low, we automatically ship you a new cartridge. Cartridges are shipped before you need them – so you never run out."
Watch Robett Hollis, Kiwi entrepreneur and business owner talk about the benefits of HP Instant Ink
*HP is offering all users a free two-month trial of Instant Ink upon sign up, as they consider moving onto a flexible monthly plan. Plans start at $1.99 a month, saving customers up to 50 per cent on costs. Visit hp.co.nz/instantink to sign up.