Testing Cheaper Printer Ink

Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "Computer users world-wide spend $22 billion a year on ink cartridges, and the big companies are getting stingier with the amount of ink they are putting into each cartridge, the Wall Street Journal reports. Entrepreneurs are seeking a slice of that market by undercutting HP and Lexmark with ink prices 20% to 50% lower. The Journal tested do-it-yourself refill kits, cartridge retail outlets and replacement cartridges from online stores to find the best way to save money on ink refills. One major finding: The quality often wasn't as good as with the name-brand cartridges."

Comments

Back in the day

[el_womble]

I worked as an office junior for a guy once who refused to by branded cartridges once he found out about them - in this case Epsom. The cartriges were about 2/3 of the price and when they worked were pretty close to the quality of the original... when they worked. Between increased maintenance, broken printers and destroyed print outs I can't see how the TCO was much less than double the price of the branded inks.

Re:Back in the day

[Technician]

Between increased maintenance, broken printers and destroyed print outs I can't see how the TCO was much less than double the price of the branded inks.


I bought small amounts. What worked I kept using. What didn't I junked.

Here is what works for me. My wife's re-branded Dell all in one - donated to goodwill. I couldn't see the thimble size carts priced the same as half full HP carts as a value. The carts could not be picked up down the street, so S & H from Dell was extra. I found no refilling instructions online. It never got it's first refill.

My HP laserjet III uses refilled carts. I would refill myself except it only needs a replacement once every couple years. Cost to operate is about $18/year in toner.

My HP950 The color carts were not reliable when refilled. Sometimes the printer simply stopped mid photograph. Black refills worked great. Bought black ink by the pint bottle. One time when one color died, I switched to B/W printing to get greyscale prints. Got a lovely purple picture. WTF? It uses color ink to print black and white. Printer now sits in a box on the shelf.
I liked the self alignment it does, so it would make a good networked printer, but cost of supplies retired it to spare status.

HP922c Color refills not reliable. Refills work if running a large batch of photos, but don't expect it to work the next day. Black refills work great. Uses the same black cart as the HP950. I am on my third re-order of ultra black pigmented ink. The twin pack of color carts are less than the price of a single color cart for the HP950. I buy the ocasional twin pack. I do photo printing through my local Costco at $0.19 per 4X6 and $1.99 per 8X10.

Most B/W printing gets done on the laser. Web pages go on the HP722c. I don't home print photos anymore.

All my printers are on network printservers (Hawking). At less than the price of one set of carts for the HP950, a printservers is a good investment. The inkjet printer sits on a shelf in the hall closet so the whole family can use it. This cuts down on problems of dried out carts and supporting a fleet of printers for each PC.

We have the 2 printers online and the HP950 sits as a spare.

wsj is aperently a bunch of morons

[enigmatichmachine]

I work in this business but the trick is really really really, i can't stress this enough, don't buy a cheap printer. I'm suprised how many geeks completely ignore this part of their system, they'd sooner put neon lights in the case than get a decent printing aperatus.

if you're looking to print anything, get a laser, they're built better, and cost less per page. if you must have ink jet, consider a draft printer or commercial quality high volume inkjet, i know HP sells an inkjet with a 60+ Ml black cartridge, that's a lot more than the 19 ml ones they give you in the cheapo consumer units. did a little research and here's a list of printers starting at 150 bucks that use 70 ML black cartridges.

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF02a/1897 2-236251-236261.html?jumpid=re_R295_prodexp/buspro ducts/printing/color-inkjet-printers

also worth noting, don't refill the cartridges for canon or epson printers unless you want to be replacing the printer shortly, it's like putting a bit of suger in the gas tank at every fill up.(hp's the print heads are disposable so it doesn't matter as much, and lexmarks aren't even worth mentioning)

Refill Kits & The Evil Of Chips

[hypnoticstoat]

I used to use refill kits for my old canon bubblejet. I then changed it for an Epson C62 because I needed a colour printer. Lo and behold they'd fitted "smart" cartridges with chips that knew when the where empty and resisted all efforts to refill them. After a quick trip to the shops to buy replacements and finding out that they were £40 for the colour one and £29 for the black one, I said "fck that" and and just went back to the shop where I bought the printer and bought another one as the printer itself (which came with a set of cartridges) was only £60. Fortunatly I've now got a friend who runs a cheap cartridge website who supplies me with a full set for £6. Probably not as good as the official ones but for a differance in price of £63, I dont give a damn.

Re:Hmm..

[Biomechanical]

Yeah but forget about Canon if you want to use Linux. As I've been told on the phone, their official stance is that they don't, and will not, support Linux in any way, shape, or form - no official drivers, no disclosure of how anything works, etc.

I've got a Canon PIXMA iP3000. Nice printer, nice functions, fucked support for Linux.

I can use Canon BJC-7004 drivers, or I can pay about AU$50 (nearly half the cost of the printer) to Turboprint.de for a driver they've cobbled together (amongst others) after they signed some sort of draconian NDA with Canon.

Using Windows? Nice printer. Using Mac OS X? Drivers are downloadable but I didn't see all the extra software that is available from Canon for Windows. Using Linux? Get a HP or Epson.

Caveat Emptor, as they say.

Re:Quality

[judmarc]

What is it exactly that makes the quality worse?

It's the little copper-colored thingy at the business end of the ink cartridge, which produces the electromagnetic field that shapes the ink jet into whatever you're printing - alphanumeric characters, photos, etc. There's wear to this part over time, so that's why a refilled cartridge's print output will deteriorate. And the remanufactured ones never quite get to the tolerances of the new.

Re:Hmm..

[smchris]

If your office is using inkjets, and you have more than 2 employees, then your IT or management are being extremely stupid.

I don't remember ever working in an office that had an ink jet printer. I remember employees _asking_ for one (and being told it was stupid). I've had a home laser since '92 -- and it weighed about 40 pounds.

You want to save money beyond switching to laser: tonerrefillkits.com.

You'll almost always get one good refill for around $20. You might get two refills from a catridge particularly if you have some .pdf manuals to print because the cylinders usually start to wear at the edges. I got a little wild with the soldering iron the first time, but it really does take about 5 minutes when you get the hang of it.

Prinkter ink by the gallon

[Alien54]

There was a story a while back about the cost of printer ink if figure out by the gallon.

It turned out to be in the 6 figure range per gallon. (Although this story says its up to 8 kbucks per gallon) and there was this story about a US woman suing Hewlett Packard, saying its printer ink cartridges are secretly programmed to expire on a certain date.

Also, some people will want to do their own thing on their homecomputer but often have to print two or three pictures in order to get a good one. Many people are not skilled at getting the color, contrast and cropping right and they don't want the hassle. So for them getting prints the traditional way may be the best option.

Printer ink can be purchased by the gallon starting at about 100 bucks per gallon, depending on the usual factors

Other Comparisons (shamelessly stolen)

• Diet Snapple
  16 oz $1.29 ....... $10.32 per gallon
• Lipton Ice Tea
  16 oz $1.19 ...........$9.52 per gallon
• Gatorade
  20 oz $1.59 ..... $10.17 per gallon
• Ocean Spray
  16 oz $1.25 . $10.00 per gallon
• Brake Fluid
  12 oz $3.15 . $33.60 per gallon
• Vick's Nyquil
  6 oz $8.35 ... $178.13 per gallon
• Pepto Bismol
  4 oz $3.85 .... $123.20 per gallon
• Whiteout
  7 oz $1.39 ........ .. $25.42 per gallon
• Scope
  1.5 oz $0.99 .$84.48 per gallon
• Evian water
  9 oz $1.49..........$21.19 per gallon?!

I've been looking at this system

[purduephotog]

http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZjlwsales

Its had one very good review (http://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=24 1206) and for awhile he was offering free profiling of an image- definately worth the cost...

BUT... if you want stuff to last, buy AgX prints. There's 100+ years of technology in that...

Consumer Reports found the same thing

[JUSTONEMORELATTE]

Consumer Reports did a side-by-side test, as well as simulated UV exposure age tests. They found the same story -- refill ink was OK for drafts, but name brand ink looked and lasted much better.
You get what you pay for, anyone?

Re:Consumer Reports found the same thing

[Jonsey]

I've worked in a print lab that test remanufactured cartridges & toner and the like. One of the largest three in the US, as a matter of fact.

Sure your refill/3rd party ink may look as vibrant, and some actually live up to UV very well, but you drop them into the O-Zone chamber, or mist water over them...

There's a big difference out there, if you have to use inkjet, and you want to keep your documents longer than a month, shell out full price, or move up to a large reliable printer.

Also note, for toner... buy OEM. Trust me... Especially for HP Color Lasers, as non-OEM cyan cartridges tend to explode (I loved that shirt, took me four good washes to save it)

Re:Hmm..

[wallykeyster]

If your office is using inkjets, and you have more than 2 employees, then your IT or management are being extremely stupid.

I am the IT Director for a small private university and I hate inkjets because of the enormous cost. However, I've been unable to get management's support to eliminate them because they don't want to deal with the convenience arguments from faculty and staff (mostly faculty). The employees have gotten used to having a printer on their desk and there is no way to replace inkjets with color laser on a one-to-one basis. I did the calculations last year and we would more than cover our investiment in the first year if we dropped inkjets for workgroup color lasers.

Laser printing is the absolute cheapest with the Xerox color laser printers being the cheapest per page with their solid toner printers.

Actually, we found that Kyocera offered the best price/performance numbers. We started out wanting the Xerox Phasers and hating the local Kyocera salesguy (he's just a pain in the ass) but in the end decided on Kyocera. Unfortunately, I could not get Cabinet support for the plan so no laser printers were purchased.

I did save over $10,000 in ink this year by simply not buying a single new inkjet all year. Any that died were replaced by connecting the user to an existing laser printer. There is more than one way to skin a cat :)

White ink?

[Dogtanian]

'tis the last hurdle of true WYSIWYG. why isn't there white printer ink?

Because (a) There isn't really a market for it, and (b) Printer ink works on the subtractive model, and to produce an ink that can print white on non-white paper would violate this model, and thus (more importantly) the ink itself would have to be substantially different in nature to the standard CMYK inks.

Think about printing white on black; the ink would have to be dense enough to *cover* the black up (something like 'Tipp-Ex'/'Liquid Paper'), and I'd guess we'd require a lot more of it on the paper. (Bear in mind that 'cover up' is the word here; this is neither subtractive nor additive- for the latter case, we can't add light. It also implies that the only way to get certain colours on certain non-white papers is to cover them with white ink, then use the CMYK inks on top of *that*).

All this implies new print-nozzle technologies would be required, and these would have to be separate from the current CMYK ones (there's *no* way they could design a nozzle that can handle 'normal' ink and the white ink *and* retain decent performance *and* sell it at a reasonable price).

Yeah, I realise you were possibly joking, but if it were trivial, I bet we'd have seen white ink by now.

Don't hold your breath waiting for it. Oh, and while I'm here.... In order to pre-empt any "white ink" jokes:-

"Uh, I can get you some white ink. Just wait till I get my pr0n collection, huh huh."

Pathetic. There goes the "insightful" mods...

Re:Hmm..

[Biomechanical]

I did try the free edition of the drivers, and the installation was relatively painless and the print quality did seem pretty good considering my limited testing.

That aside, Canon's support policy extends to all of their product range - camera's, scanners, printers, etc - as I've been told by two people at Canon, and I'm not willing to pay nearly 50% of the cost of a printer to get a single driver file for it to run on Linux.

It's not just bad support for OS's other than Linux which has me so pissed with Canon either. From what I've read online, and this is just an example of one particular Canon product, the Canon BJC-5000 was one printer which came out shortly before XP, but was made "obsolete" by a slightly later model of printer shortly after, so Canon decided not to produce 5000 drivers for XP.

HP and Epson may have problems with people using third-party ink and cartridges, but for what I use my computer and printer for, I'd rather buy hardware that I know is going to work properly - whether it's on Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux - with drivers that I've already implicity paid for in the purchase of the hardware then skimp a few bucks on ink.

I was told by the first person I spoke to at Canon that Mac OS X is only supported just recently - last two years - because it's getting to "5% usage in the market", and Canon is not a software company so they, get this, "cannot support all the different distributions of Linux".

That's a weak, lame excuse that points to one thing - they don't give a shit about supporting the customer any further than Canon's perception of what will make them more money for minimal effort.

That perception is flawed by the fact that even if they didn't write the drivers themselves, open access to the hardware specs would let more than a single, NDA-silenced third-party write drivers for their hardware, and more F/OSS people would buy their stuff and recommend it as an, if not good, acceptable purchase for the price to their friends and acquaintances.

We have reached a point today where you have to weigh up the bad points of buying a product from Company A or Company B. We are no longer going for "the good guys". We are buying from the lesser of "evils/stupids".

For me, HP or Epson is less "evil" than Canon, and my next purchase of a printer will likely be one from either of them.

My next camera? I don't know, but I will be reading a fuck-load of information and other buyers complaints on the net.

My next scanner? Same deal, I'll be looking to see who has the features I want, and the least complaints.

It's really fucking pathetic. I am no longer a "valued customer", I'm a potential nuisance and hindrance to "the bottom line".

Re:Hmm..

[compro01]

i've been using cheap replacement carterages in my cheap canon i320 for nearly 2 years now. no problems whatsoever. costs me $25 (CDN) for both of the cheapies, and the "real" ones are $40. $15 savings per set, and i run through a set about every other month and the printer only cost $95, so i've already saved nearly enough to buy 2 new printers ($15 savings every 2 months X 24 months = $185) i haven't had any problems, except needing to take out the print head and wipe it off whenever i replace the carterages, but then again, i did this when i used the offical carterages. print quality for me is just as good as the real carts, and none of the relitives that i copy pics can tell the differance between a real photo and the copy without looking on the back, so that's plenty good enough for me.