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Is Your Printer Ripping You Off?

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the or-only-its-maker dept.

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!"

15 of 362 comments (clear)

  1. Definitely, definitely... by EveryNickIsTaken · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...and the top selling the top selling third party options Ok, Rainman.
  2. Reliability by MagPulse · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Reliability by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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. That said, the 30 or so third-party cartridges I've used with my HP printer have never clogged it.

    2. Re:Reliability by SpeedyDX · · Score: 5, Informative

      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).

    3. Re:Reliability by omeomi · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yeah, but when the printer costs $50, and a new manufacturer ink cartridge costs $45

      That's why I gave up on ink-jet printers and went with a laser. It's only b/w, but I've bought toner exactly once over the past three years. When I need a color print, I send it to Kinkos. It's not the most convenient thing in the world, but I print in color so infrequently that it really doesn't make any difference to me. If I needed to print in color frequently, I'd probably buy a color laser. Ink jet is just a huge ripoff as far as I'm concerned.

      --
      ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
    4. Re:Reliability by paeanblack · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yeah, but when the printer costs $50, and a new manufacturer ink cartridge costs $45

      Officemax/Staples/CompUSA/etc sometimes have inkjets for $30 w/ a $30 mail-in rebate. Just buy a new printer, and when the initial cartridge runs out, toss the printer and get a new one.

      The whole industry pricing structure is insane.

    5. Re:Reliability by pilgrim23 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.
  3. Only pure heroin is more expensive. by rehabdoll · · Score: 5, Funny

    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)

  4. QA is not as stringent on 3rd party refills by arghileh · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  5. Is that website ripping you off ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny


    click [next] to find out !

  6. Reliability and Looks aren't the only issues by drfuchs · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  7. Re:Ink? What ink? by cheebie · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  8. Don't wanna turn it into another DRM discussion... by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...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.
  9. Re:Ink? What ink? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Because you don't want snapfish employees seeing you naked?

  10. Re:Single parent of a 15 Year Old Daughter by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    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!