The HP Smart Tank 5003 all-in-one is listed at $169.99 at Amazon at the time of writing, down from a $189.99 list price. That is a $20.00 cut, so the interesting number here is not the discount but the ink HP packs in the box.
This is a cartridge-free printer that refills from bottles poured into four tanks on the front. HP says its Smart Tank models ship with up to three years of ink, or up to 6,000 black pages, which is the part that changes the running cost.
What the $20 discount is actually worth
Amazon shows a struck-through List Price of $189.99 directly above the $169.99 price, and rounds the saving to 11 percent on its own badge. The exact figure is 10.5 percent.
On a sub-$200 printer, $20.00 is real money but a modest cut. It is not the reason to buy this machine.
The listing is sold and shipped by Amazon.com rather than a marketplace seller, and the stock line reads In Stock. The price is not gated behind Prime either, since membership only changes the delivery date shown.
HP Smart Tank 5003 specifications
| Specification | HP Smart Tank 5003 |
|---|---|
| Functions | Print, copy, scan |
| Print speed, black | Up to 10 ppm (ISO) |
| Print speed, color | Up to 5 ppm (ISO) |
| Ink supply | Refillable tanks, HP 32XL black and HP 31 color bottles |
| Two-sided printing | Manual only |
| Document feeder | None, flatbed scanner only |
| Display | 33 segments plus 1.2-inch LCD |
| Connectivity | Hi-Speed USB 2.0, Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n, Wi-Fi Direct |
| Paper handling | 100-sheet input, 30-sheet output |
| Monthly duty cycle | Up to 3,000 pages |
| Recommended monthly volume | 400 to 800 pages |
Those figures come from HP's own spec page for the model. Two of them deserve attention before anyone treats this as an office machine.
There is no automatic document feeder, so multi-page scanning means lifting the lid for every sheet. Two-sided printing is manual, which means flipping the stack by hand and setting it up in the printer properties each time.
The ink is the real argument
HP's Smart Tank page claims up to three years of ink included, and ties that claim to a stated assumption of 167 pages a month. At 36 months that works out at 6,012 pages, so the three-year wording is consistent with the 6,000-page figure HP quotes.
Measured against the $169.99 price, 6,000 included black pages come to about 2.8 cents per page. That covers the printer and all of its starting black ink together, which is the comparison a cartridge all-in-one rarely survives.
Spread the same price across HP's three-year window and it lands at $4.72 a month. Print less than 167 pages a month and the ink simply lasts longer.
However, HP does not publish the figure that matters most after the box is empty. The 5003's spec page carries no per-bottle page yield, so the cost of a refilled page cannot be calculated from HP's own numbers.
HP's pages also disagree with each other on the bottles themselves. The 5003 spec sheet lists HP 31 color bottles at 50 ml, while HP's separate listings for the same HP 31 bottles are 70 ml.
How it compares with other tank all-in-ones
| Printer | Price at Amazon | List price | Ink claim |
|---|---|---|---|
| HP Smart Tank 5003 | $169.99 | $189.99 | 3 years included |
| HP Smart Tank 5000 | $189.99 | Not shown | 2 years included |
| Epson EcoTank ET-4800 | $199.99 | $299.99 | Not listed on the Amazon title |
The older HP Smart Tank 5000 costs $20.00 more at $189.99 and its listing claims two years of ink rather than three. Its stock line reads Only 1 left in stock, so that price may not hold.
The Epson EcoTank ET-4800 is $199.99, down from a $299.99 list price. It is $30.00 more than the 5003, and Epson's tank range is well travelled ground, as this review of the EcoTank L5190 all-in-one showed.
What the listing leaves out
Neither the Amazon page nor HP's spec sheet gives scan resolution, copy resolution or warranty length for this model. There is also no end date on the $169.99 price, and no indication of how long Amazon intends to hold it.
Setup is the usual Wi-Fi routine, and the printer is a standard Windows install once it joins the network, so adding it in Windows takes a couple of minutes. Prices listed here were accurate at the time of writing and can change without warning.
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