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!"

Reliability

[MagPulse]

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.

Re:Reliability

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Ink? What ink?

[Vellmont]

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.

Re:Ink? What ink?

[garcia]

People think they need color for some reason. Why I'm not exactly sure.

Wow, you're still using an amber or green CRT? Wicked retro man!

Re:Ink? What ink?

[Anonymous Coward]

People think they need color for some reason. Why I'm not exactly sure.

Translation - "Since I don't need color I can't imagine why anyone else would."

Re:Reliability

[omeomi]

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.

Don't wanna turn it into another DRM discussion...

[Opportunist]

...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.

Re:Reliability

[paeanblack]

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.

Re:Have tried third party nk

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure how much color you are printing, but it would be cheaper to go with a laser printer for B&W. I picked up a Brother HL-2070N for $80 last year. I received an auto in-store rebate for $30, and a mail-in rebate for $20. Original price was $130. It is a network capable printer. The non network printer version was more expensive during this deal, but was basically around $110. There was a Konica color laser for about $150 also, but I read about too many issues regarding it. Plus, I have an Epson Stylus Photo R200 ink-jet for color prints.

I barely do any color printing, and what I do print is photo prints. I started going to the local pharmacy to get those printed. Things are a lot cheaper. I will say having the ability to change the colors out independently is a nice addition on my R200. I'm not sure about evaporation, but I do know that the ink cartridges for my Epson Photo 700 that I got as a refurbished model in '99 lasted a long time while in storage. I have had that printer stored on a few occasions for over a year, or just plain not used for over a year, and when I went to print, it worked fine.

So for B&W, it is my laser, for color print proofs, my R200, or Photo 700, and for final prints, I use the local pharmacy. Granted after a few weeks I need to adjust my color settings on the images due to the chemistry change on the machine at the pharmacy, but that still does not add much to the cost if you learn the maintenance schedule of the machine. I can't use the Wal-Mart photolab, as many times they accuse me of printing someone else's photos even though I shot the originals.

Small note: In photography school I was taught, "Learn to shoot your pictures as if they were custom printed, that way you can charge for custom prints but only pay machine costs."

Re:Reliability

[Godji]

"when the initial cartridge runs out, toss the printer and get a new one." So much for being friendly to the environment...

Immediate gratification is expensive.

[Kadin2048]

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.

Re:Reliability

[iminplaya]

...I have no real need for colour and have the few photos I want on paper printed by a lab

Just make sure there are no unpleasant surprises [dallasobserver.com].

Re:Advertisements

[T-Bone-T]

I don't know about you, but with only 10 sentences, a single picture on the first page, and no printer-friendly page, I refuse to read the rest of the article.

Re:Reliability

[CastrTroy]

I'm sure that inkjet would be cost effective for me if only the cartridges would stop drying out. I don't print that often, and find that most of the time the ink has dried up before I have the time to use even half of it.