How Aftermarket Inkjet Ink Holds Up After a Year

An anonymous reader writes "About a year ago I found a link on here for a test of inkjet printer inks. The article compared original manufacturer inks against much cheaper third party stuff and the results were surprisingly in favour of third party products. They've now published the final part of this study, examining the prints produced a year ago. This time the printer manufacturers have come out far better, with some third party prints having disappeared completely! Cartridge World ink still seems worth a try though, if you don't want to pay manufacturers' inflated prices."

Comments

That may be a feature for some

[Programmerman]

If you're in a business where you print documents for a meeting or which will be obsolete in a day or two, this may be of even more benefit than it remaining visible. Undocumented feature?

Re:That may be a feature for some

[peragrin]

better yet employee theft. can you imagine a government case against you falling apart because the documents that an employee stole are no longer readable?

Re:That may be a feature for some

[TClevenger]

I get that a lot from my accounting department.

"Why did you buy a $1,500 laser printer, when Costco has $80 printers on sale?"

"Uh, because the $80 printer uses $55 cartridges that last 2,500 pages, while the $1,500 printer uses $175 cartridges that last 20,000 pages, and don't need scheduled maintenance for 400,000 pages? Oh, and the $1,500 printer prints 50+ pages per minute?"

"Oh. Okay, I guess."

Re:Why I love my Canon

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you tell us where you get ink for only $6. I have an IP4200 as well, and the lowest price I find for ink is $14.95. Thanks.

So?

[EdIII]

I don't think third party ink providers are going to be around much larger. That whole industry is run like the mob. I don't say that to troll either, i'm serious. They are very competitive and the major manufacturers do just about everything they can to stop third party providers.

Ink is one of the most over priced products on the market today. Only Monster has margins that can compete.

A few years ago my father figured out that he could buy a whole new printer with new ink cartridges for about 15$ more then just the ink cartridges ALONE. Of course they got wise to that and I am sure many people are familiar with new ink jets being sold with minimal ink installed.

Now the "final solution" is about to be unleashed, which is the encryption being applied to the ink cartridges themselves. That has been coming for awhile AFAIK, and it will be interesting to see how third party manufacturers react when they have to break these new "DRM" like methods of protecting business revenue.

I have always told my clients that ink jets are for "suckers". Suck it up and buy yourself a color laserjet and you will greatly reduce the cost per page to print a report. Of course, I know there are some people that really need a good ink jet printer for their specific tasks, but does that really represent the mass market? I don't think so.

Re:So?

[Prefader]

Now the "final solution" is about to be unleashed, which is the encryption being applied to the ink cartridges themselves.

I've seen this at my work, where we have several older-model CD and DVD duplicators manufactured by Primera. They come with modified Lexmark printers, which have a little IR doohickey mounted under the ink carriage to read a little barcode-esque sticker on the bottom of the ink carts. They cost significantly more than the carts sold by Lexmark, but we've found that the printers only remember the last 10 or so ink carts that have passed by the sensor. As long as we keep enough around to outlast that 10-cart cycle, we can still refill them on our own and re-use them.

Does it matter?

[Rorschach1]

Really, who cares that much? If I want something to be UV-resistant to hang on the wall or something, I'll go get professional prints.

For the other 99.9% of the stuff I print, my cheap Chinese continuous inking system is the best 300 Yuan (~$43) I ever spent. The whole package, plus some extra ink, cost me less than a full change of manufacturer's ink for my Epson RX580.

On glossy photo paper, it looks just as good as the OEM stuff. Most of the time I'm just printing regular business graphics, though, and it does just as well there. I no longer hesitate at all to print lots of graphics-heavy stuff, and the kids get a lot of use out of it. My son got elected 6th grade class president thanks in part to a series of lolcats-themed campaign posters he printed. (lolcats... is there anything they can't do?)

I've been using it for several months now, and would normally have gone through a couple of cartridges. As it is, I can barely tell that the reservoir levels have changed.

Now if only some honest printer manufacturer would embrace this sort of thing - I'd gladly pay a lot more for a printer with easily replaceable heads and nice, big refillable ink reservoirs that the printer can't lie about and doesn't waste excessively. I don't expect to ever see that happen, though.

Ink costs twice as much as blood

[pzs]

Or so it says here. This seems a bit odd to me.

How About Printing On CDs

[MichaelCrawford]

I use a CD label printer to print CDs of my music. I spend a lot of money on ink, but I have hesitated to use refills because I doubt that their formula took CD surfaces into account.

Re:If only...

[advocate_one]

here you go... shredding scissors... who needs electronics...