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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!"
On one hand, saying 3rd party inks don't last a long is perfect FUD -- it's something the consumer can't judge for themselves (without extensive testing). OTOH, I know the durability if the ink is (or at least was) an issue for artists, and Epson sold a special ink that lasted 100 yrs. Also, that may be a corner that some 3rd party ink manufacturers cut to reduce their costs.
I do infrequent, low-volume printing, and my biggest problem isn't how the output looks or the reliability of the cartridges; it's how long the under-used ink takes to evaporate from the cartridge. Brand-X cartridges seem to come up "out of ink" months and months sooner than OEM ones do.
Have to agree. After going through two ink printers, I just bought a HP LaserJet printer. No problem at all.
Je ne parle pas francais.
"Yeah, but when the printer costs $50, and a new manufacturer ink cartridge costs $45, I'm willing to go with the $20 third-party cartridge and risk having to buy a new printer."
Depends on what kind of printer you have. The higher-quality printers you wouldn't do that.* Also the all-in-one jobs you wouldn't either (too much to lose, literally) Also one reason OEMs don't like them is that warrenty claims go through the roof, even if you void their warrenty (and we had to do that to a couple people).
*How many commercial printers use third-party ink?
I've done the "fill it yourself" and the "let our company fill it for you" and the "Recycled compatible".
At the end of the day, I use new, sealed 3rd party cartridges, but you have to do your research. I've had a Canon 4200, Epson 880 and now a Brother 420cn, All using these new, sealed cartridges bought off of ebay for around 2.00 each including shipping. They come sealed, they last years (found a canon one after 4 years, working without a hitch) and are at a price I find acceptable.
I print "photo quality" pictures often enough and they still hang on the wall behind glass and no-one knows they're printed. I think the REAL trick is to:
1. print off at least 1 page of color/b+w a week (I setup a macro where it will print 1 test page a week whether I'm there or not).
2. Don't use refillable cartridges, and
3. get printers that are having good use by people using these 3rd party cartridges. (research!)
I use the printers for business too, never a problem with print quality. And before someone says "it's because you use it all the time" those old canon and epson printers went to family (replacing lexmarks!) and they RARELY print anything, but that trick on printing a page a week does wonders.
Good luck!
Yo Grark
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
I have had a Canon i960 for several years. It was about 3 years before I even bought a new cart. I refill myself, have never had a problem, never get any kind of clog or even have to do an ink prime cycle other than the one the printer does itself when it first starts after a cart switch.
It has actual optical sensors so it doesn't complain about low ink until the ink is actually low.
After a few years (probably 30 refills) the felt sponge inside got kind of clogged up (I'd probably let it run too dry too many times and it got lots of dried ink in it) so I had to start actually replacing carts. But when one color would act up, I'd replace that cart once, and then get another 30 or so refills out of it.
I guess I can't say whether original Canon ink is better or worse, because it's been years since I had a printer full of Canon ink. I know there are some crappy ink suppliers out there, so I use one that I've had good luck with and which has special formulations for each manufacturer. I've tried putting that manufacturer's Epson ink in my Canon (I used to have an Epson and had some leftover ink) - it worked but the colors were way off. So I'd guess that any ink maker that has a "one size fits all" ink formulation is going to be universally mediocre.
I am sad that apparently Canon has gone to putting chips in their carts. I guess I'm going to have to keep my i960 running forever.
The only problem with color laser are all the parts, on the Xerox there is the OCP cartridge, Fuser, Charge Grid, Fuser Pad, each color toner etc. Some of the manufacturers hide the fact of all the bits by only offering say the toner and drum and the rest are a site maintenance stuff.
After the first color laser we are using a Xerox Solid Ink printer (I call it a "Crayon Jet" as the 'ink sticks' are very similar crayon material) It prints fast, the colors are as vibrant on a laser and it is darn fast (I think it has page-wide printheads) Besides the ink there is a maintenance kit (cleaning roller) which is replaces ever 30,000 copies (we're upto 69,000 on one of em). Cost per page (inks+maintenance kits) come to about 5.6 cents a page.
There is a downside though, given it is a wax based more then a toner based ink the ink is not as abrasion or heat resistant (I.e. if you use it for bus cards some color rubs off on the adjacent card, or if you heat-laminate it you get a really awful bleed from the ink liquefying during lamination.)
Most of what we do is short term signage, certificates, reports and brochures which is just fine.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
I had the same printer throughout college, the HP 5550. It cost me about $120 or so back in 2002. I've literally only bought two or three black cartridges for it in the last five years and have printed thousands of pages for papers, handouts, etc. Of course, I always print in "Fast Draft" mode, so the black ink is light, but it still looks great in my opinion. Oh yeah, it's also very fast when printing in Fast Draft, so there's another plus.
The best part is, the black cartridges cost $20, or at least they did last time I bought them. So I would guess I have spent less than $200 on my printer alone over the last five years, which sounds pretty darn good for all the printing I did in school. Best printer I will probably ever own.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
Inkjets are crap, you should always go for a laser. The initial outlay is more, but you'll buy consumables less frequently. As usual, people are idiots who only focus on the purchase price without thinking about long term TCO. If you need to do color printing often, then save your pennies and buy a decent color laser if you don't want to be running to Kinko's all the time or don't have access to a color printer at work.
I haven't used an inkjet since the early 90s. In January 1994 I plunked down ~$1400 for an Apple LaserWriter Select 360, and that's still my printer today. I'm only on my second ~$90 toner cartridge-- it took me YEARS to use up the one that was included in the box with the printer, not like the bullshit, half-full "starter" cartridges that come with inkjets.
In November of last year my Select 360 died, but I got my hands on another one (for free) that didn't print well and was headed to the dumpster, swapped out the mainboard and power supply from it into mine, and I'm back in business again. I'm gonna keep using this puppy until it is beyond repair.
~Philly
Keep in mind that the cartridges which come with new inkjets are almost always low capacity, about 1/3 to 1/4 the amount of ink that's in the manufacturers retail cartridges.
Yeah, but the other unseen charge here is the drivers. People that change printers like they change diapers, end up with crap sitting in HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Monito rs that will keep the next printer from installing properly. Next thing you know is that they have a $100 geek(quack)squad bill to fix something that takes less time to fix than it takes to fill out the paperwork.
I purchased 3 dead printers at a Goodwill outlet store: a HP laser II and 2 Apple Laserwriters. Take the logic board from one laserwriter, the frame and fuser from the other, take off ALL the rollers and soak them a while in rubbing alcohol then use just a swab of gasoline from the lawn mower to soften the hard rubber, then back in the alcohol bath. then dry for a couple of days. take the better of the 3 toner carts, and all the best parts and assemble 1 printer. Cost: 15 bucks...output: quite good. It has lasted 4 years now.... so much for feel-good recycle. I RECYCLE :)
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
Add my praise for laser printers. I was faced with the idea of paying $109 for a decent HP deskjet, then having to pay for another two ink cartridges when they ran out about 200 (!) pages later. $70 for black and color cartridges.
Or, I had the option of buying a $130 HP LaserJet 1280. All it took was one look at the statistics on the toner cartridge for that printer to buy it. Cost of a toner cartridge: $65, with number of pages rated at around 2000. Since the vast majority of things that I print at home (emails, driving directions and sheet music are probably the top three) are in black and white, I can just wait and print in color at work or something, or take it to Kinko's.
Can't stress how awesome having a laser printer at home is.
Paper lasts a lot longer and is a lot more reliable than hard drives.
I don't respond to AC's.
So...? York Color Labs will do 16x20 for $6 and 20x30 for $8, plus a buck-fifty S&H per order, and you get to not have a $1200 large-format photo printer sitting around.
At best, you're talking about a really niche market for machines like the Epson 3800 and its bigger brethren; you have to be very obsessed with quality and control (to not want to send your stuff to an inexpensive lab like York) and do a huge amount of work in very large formats (to make it uneconomical to just send it to a prolab for the occasional large print).
For anything smaller than that, like 12x18s, you'd be much better off going to a local place with a Frontier 500-series and having them do it. It's getting to the point where every drug store in the world has one of those, and as long as they're dumping Bottle A and Bottle B into the right amounts of water, there's not a whole lot left up to human error (particularly if you go to any of the ones where someone's produced a color profile for the printer).
I've been taking pictures and consider myself a respectable amateur photographer and a bit of a gear-head, but the idea of paying $1200 in order to run off the occasional 17x25 seems a bit ridiculous. I could see a good minilab keeping something like that around (and charging $25-50 per print, probably), but that's right up there with having an Imacon or drum scanner at home, because you think you might need it some day. I've only ever printed anything bigger than 12" (on its shortest dimension) once, and that was a 24x36 poster print which I had done by mail anyway. I just don't see the draw.
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