The Smart Tank alternative to buy is the Epson EcoTank ET-2800, for anyone who wants bottle-fed ink with a cost per page they can check: about 1.1 cents an ISO color page on published figures. The budget pick is the Canon MegaTank G3270 — the cheapest machine here and the cheapest to refill, at about 0.8 cents an ISO color page. For a home office that needs a document feeder, the EcoTank ET-4800 adds one. And the Smart Tank 7001 itself is ranked here, fairly, with the one thing wrong with it stated plainly.
What HP Smart Tank gets right
Smart Tank is HP taking the criticism seriously. It is bottle-fed, so there is no chipped cartridge in the machine for a firmware update to reject — which removes the mechanism behind the complaint HP is best known for. HP publishes large bottle yields, around 6,000 pages for the 32XL black and around 8,000 for each 31 color bottle, and the all-in-one models print, scan and copy like any household machine. If you own other HP equipment and want one supplier, this is a reasonable thing to want.
Two things send people looking anyway. The first is the software: Smart Tank sits inside HP’s app ecosystem, and an ink subscription is offered during setup. It is optional, and you can decline it, but it is there. Whether HP requires a subscription. The second is the one that affects this page directly.
Why we publish no cost per page for Smart Tank
A cost per page is supply price divided by rated yield, and we have the yield. We do not have a price we can stand behind. When we checked on 4 November 2026, HP’s own support page for the 7000 series timed out and HP’s US store refused our request, so the two authoritative sources for what a 32XL bottle costs were both unavailable. Rather than quote a retailer figure as though it were HP’s, or estimate from a competitor’s bottles, we publish nothing and say why.
That is a limitation of our research, not an accusation about the printer. It does have a practical consequence, though: a bottle-fed printer is bought for its refill economics, and if you cannot confirm the refill price before buying, you are buying the central claim on trust. Every alternative on this page has a bottle price we read from the manufacturer or a named retailer, with the date. How we calculate cost per page, and what we refuse to do.
| Printer | Supply | Rated yield | Per ISO color page |
|---|---|---|---|
| Epson EcoTank ET-2800 / ET-4800 | 522 bottles | 4,500 black / 7,500 each color | ~1.1¢ |
| Canon MegaTank G3270 | GI-21 bottles | 6,000 black / 7,700 each color | ~0.8¢ |
| Epson EcoTank ET-4950 | 502 bottles | 7,500 black / 6,000 each color | ~1.2¢ |
| HP Smart Tank 7001 | 32XL / 31 bottles | About 6,000 black / 8,000 each color (HP) | No price we can source |
Yields are each maker’s own ISO ratings. Prices read on 27 September 2026 from the sources at the foot of this page; the per-page figures are our arithmetic.
How we picked
Each alternative had to match Smart Tank on its genuine strengths, not just cost less.
- Is it bottle-fed? Every pick is, including the Smart Tank itself. This is the feature people are shopping for, so a cartridge printer would be the wrong answer.
- Can we publish the refill cost? The deciding criterion on this page, for the reasons above.
- Does it print, scan and copy in color? The Smart Tank all-in-ones do, so the alternatives had to.
- Is there a subscription in the box? None of the Epson or Canon models offers one during setup. That is a real difference, and for many readers it is the point.
If you already own a Smart Tank
Keep it. A working bottle-fed printer is not something to replace over a sourcing problem on our end: look up the current price of a 32XL bottle yourself, divide by 6,000, and you have your own cost per page in thirty seconds. If the number is good, you have a good printer. Our calculator does the arithmetic if you would rather not. The calculator.
The one thing worth doing on any printer you own outright, HP included, is turning automatic firmware updates off. It keeps the machine behaving the way it did when you bought it. What HP Dynamic Security does · the wider HP alternatives page.