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Is Your Printer Ripping You Off?
An anonymous reader writes "Are original inkjet cartridges really worth the high cost? Do third party refill inks do as good a job? This article looks at printers from Epson, HP, Canon and Lexmark, with a combination of original inks and the top selling third-party options, using a whole host of different papers. A panel of printer users judged the output in a blind test — the printer manufacturers may not be happy with the results!"
I've had to service printers where people had used non-OEM ink and it can get ugly, at best just the printhead clogs up and needs to be replaced, at other times ink is just everywhere and inkjet ink stains everything.
For Lasers it is not as bad, but i've found the refilled cartridges to be more leaky and I had to clean out the printers on a regular basis. Also about 1/10 refills was DoA or otherwise defective.
On the other hand what HP charges for ink you would think they had to mine in on the moon. Canon printers with seperate printheads from ink resevoirs bring down the price of ink considerably.
Parent is on to something.
The mechanisms in ink cartridges are a lot more complicated nowadays than they used to be. HP, for example, has the print heads built into the ink cartridges. There are also other features built into their ink cartridges that help prolong the life of their printers. You know when you start up your printer and it takes a while to clean the print heads? Almost all inkjets just spray ink out and wipe the print heads to get rid of any solid/dried debris. HP designed their ink cartridges to use up less ink when they clean the print heads (it takes noticably less time to start up an HP printer than another printer).
My concern with third party ink is that, if I wanted to top of my HP cartridges with it, will it mess up the mechanisms in the print cartridge? Will that cause further damage to the printer itself? And as the parent mentioned, the first few pages might be fine, but what about later on? Will the ink clean the print heads well enough to keep them from clogging (incidentally, this has a larger impact on printers with print heads that are built in to the printer rather than the cartridges)?
If you have a $70 printer, I guess you're not too worried about these questions. But personally, I have a relatively good quality printer that I wouldn't want to jeopardize with third party ink (cartridges).
Consumer Reports doesn't come to quite the same conclusion.
m puters/printers/printer-inks-7-06/off-brand-inks/0 607_printer-inks_off-brand-inks.htm?resultPageInde x=1&resultIndex=2&searchTerm=printer%20cartridge
m puters/printers/printer-inks-7-06/overview/0607_pr inter-inks_ov.htm
First off, they've received a lot of unusable 3rd party cartridges:
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/electronics-co
And here, their recommendation is that the replacement inks are not quite as thrifty as they appear:
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/electronics-co
My experience is that I bought cheap replacement ink for a Canon printer, and it clogged the print heads, didn't last as long, and produced poor quality color. I ended up throwing them out. Instead, I shop at the warehouse clubs where you can typically save 33-50% on name brand inks.
I prefer Canon because it allows you to replace individual ink tanks (which can be slightly thrifter). HP tends to do all-in-ones, which is bad if they mix Black, since you'll go through black 2-3x as fast. Overall, HP's tend to be expensive to run for that reason. In fact, with HP's your best bet is to wait until the computer stores sell new HP printers for $15 after rebate, use up the ink and then throw away the printer. It feels terribly wasteful to do that, but the ink is so expensive for HP's that it's really the most economical way to own them.
Epson is worse, mainly because the ones I've owned tended to clog their print heads if you let them sit for more than a week or two. Then you run 2-3 cleaning cycles which used up the ink even faster. Back in the day of tractor feeds and impact printers, the joke was "Epson" was a Japanese word that meant "Paper Jam". I hope they've fixed that.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Then they should be using Snapfish or one of the other photo printing services. Why pay for expensive ink, a temperamental printer, and sub-par quality photo prints when you can get real photos for $0.12 each.
Disclaimer: I am not a Snapfish or HP employee, just a happy customer.
OTOH the HP cartridges I used with one of the early B&W deskjets (DJ500 I think, was a long time ago) most certainly clogged it.
Now I only use a B&W laser at home since I have no real need for colour and have the few photos I want on paper printed by a lab (almost always cheaper than printing them yourself anyway). All in all I've always found the laser to be cheaper (despite the higher initial investment), more reliable and less hassle than ink jets. For B&W of course. If you actually need colour then YMMV.
Oh and Linux compatibility is an issue for me as well. And sadly laser is often better supported nowadays.
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If there was a cheap laser that was small and had duplex, I'd consider it. But last time I had one I found that the current it drew when it started was outrageous (my monitor and all my CFL's dimmed) and that it's sleep current was significantly higher than my ink jet. So, I returned it.
I had a similar issue, back when I had a POS (and I don't mean "point of sale," either) Lexmark inkjet. I only really used it about once every few months, and about one in three times I'd go to use it, it would be clogged. I ended up using most of my ink printing "de-clogging" test pages, and I was burning through ink -- both OEM and remans -- at a rate that could have bought me a pile of new printers.
Eventually I got myself an inexpensive laser (Samsung ML-1740, but there are better/cheaper ones out there now) and I've never, ever looked back. For occasional or low-volume printing it's just no contest. The toner doesn't go bad, it doesn't draw much power at idle, and it's at least as fast as my old Lexmark (feels much faster, particularly on multipage documents). It even does envelopes and sheet labels just fine (it has a "through and through" mode where it doesn't spit out on top, so it doesn't bend the labels and make them peel off).
I recouped the cost of the laser printer and the toner cartridge (factor in a toner cart with the printer purchase since they give you underloaded "starter" carts when you buy it new) probably within a year to 18 months, certainly under two years.
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