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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!"
...and the top selling the top selling third party options Ok, Rainman.The worry with third-party ink is mainly that it will clog up your printer, not that the first few pages won't look good.
http://www.idg.se/ had an article last month or so, regarding this issue. According to the article only pure turkish heroin was more expensive than original printer-ink.
Original article: http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.103164 (swedish)
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.
Or instead of getting ripped off by buying ink after you run out, or it dries up you could just buy a laser printer instead. Toner is inexpensive per page, doesn't dry out, and laser printers produce excellent quality.
People think they need color for some reason. Why I'm not exactly sure. I bought a used HP LaserJet 4 several years ago off ebay, and have used the same toner cartridge since I bought it. The old HP laserjets are tanks that can spit 20,000 pages without a hitch. The components are all replaceable, and really quite easy to change the pickup rollers, etc.
AccountKiller
click [next] to find out !
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.
"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?
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.
...but I simply can't resist.
One should get the idea why ink is so expensive when you see the price tag on the printers. Did you see any modern printers recently that sell for more than 30 bucks? The material used alone costs many times more than that.
The ink actually pays for the printers.
And that kind of marketing is quite lucrative. It's a bit like the consoles that are paid for by the games rather than by the money you spend for the PS3 or X360 itself.
And thus ink manufacturers come up with newer and better "copy protection" with every batch of their printers. That's, btw, also why they are actually patenting a nose on some cartridge or why there is a chip on them. For the customer, this only means that it gets even MORE expensive.
Do I want to be part of that? Seriously, no. If a printer is not allowing me to use the ink I want to use by default, without me first trying to "patch" my printer, I don't want the printer. There's a copyshop around the corner that can print in really good quality for a fairly acceptable price. Keep your overpriced liquids.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Because you don't want snapfish employees seeing you naked?
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
Explain this to me!
Why doesn't the article have a 'print' or 'printer friendly' view?
I have a Canon Pixma 3000, and prices for ink are very reasonable (4-5 euro, 2-3 afer market). It's an awesome printer in general, if it was still on the market I would recommned it to anyone.
- Nice colour photo printer
- full duplexer for double sided printing
- Can print CD's and other unfoldable items.
- separate ink tanks for each colour.
- Quite small, about the size of 4 stacks of paper, or 3 flat-bed scanners. I often take it woth me.
- new price was about 100 euro, 2 years ago.
Cheap ink and general good experience with Canon products is what made me buy this printer. But i am especially happy with the double sided printing and great colour prints.
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
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.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
what is the quality of print on the email printouts?
how are we supposed to advise you if you don't even say what the brand of printer is, let alone whether or not you're buying 3rd party cartridges!
If they're printing photos at home then they must be made of money anyway.
It's quite a bit cheaper to just go down to Wal-Mart/Costco/Sam's Club with a camera card or USB stick and have the run off on a lightjet. And you get real photos (actually on photo paper, if their chemicals are okay 100-year archive life) instead of ink prints. Or wait a few days and have one of the many submit-electronically/receive-by-mail print houses do it; they're the 21st century equivalent of the old mail-in color labs.
I guess if they can't easily get out and about then they're stuck with ink, but for the vast majority of people I don't see home photo printing as a particularly economical endeavor. It's one of those things that is a lot easier and cheaper (not to mention better quality) when it's scaled up. Unless there's some real need to product photos right the hell now, like take-home photos at a party or event, it just seems like a waste.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
So when you're out of magenta, you can't print out that term paper that's due in 20 minutes, even though it's only in black.