The reduction factor you refer to appears to be for the Professional level only. I'm a Personal level subscriber.
I am aware of the limits of HTML. It doesn't seem like Evernote was HTML based a few years ago and it printed much better. To me, it has been a step backwards.
It seems they could have used a smaller font.
I do often use a word processor for better printing, but one (at least at Personal level) cannot export to a word processor; one has to copy and paste. (I have that export in as a separate feature request.) Typically when I copy/paste, I lose bold, etc., so it can take a lot of formatting work. Once I've copied a document out of Evernote, I often don't go back. The time-consuming work involved in making documents format well and print in a reasonable number of pages makes Evernote less than ideal and will be a big factor in whether I renew each year.