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Third-party inkjet cartridges
Daedalus
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Okay, so I ran out of black ink in my printer yesterday. It's an HP printer, takes cartridge 21 for black and 22 for color.
I went to the campus bookstore and it was something like twenty fucking dollars for five milliliters of ink. So fuck that.
What's a good place where I can buy third-party cartridges? Preferably ones that don't suck.
A decent refill kit (or some kind of continuous ink system) would also be a possibility, but I think I want to avoid that so I don't end up spilling ink all over my dormroom.
I went to the campus bookstore and it was something like twenty fucking dollars for five milliliters of ink. So fuck that.
What's a good place where I can buy third-party cartridges? Preferably ones that don't suck.
A decent refill kit (or some kind of continuous ink system) would also be a possibility, but I think I want to avoid that so I don't end up spilling ink all over my dormroom.
Daedalus on
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On the contrary, the cartridges I used in my old Canon printer were filled with like twice the ink as regular Canon cartridges.
I don't know where a good place to get replacement HP cartridges is, though.
That's why I picked up a color laser printer. In 2005 I spent about $500 on ink (I'm a design student so I print a lot of stuff), so when my inkjet died in December of that year I picked up a new $350 color laser. Since then I've spent $90 to buy a black toner cartridge, and none of my color toner has dropped below 40% full. Talk about a great deal...
That's what I did as well. Ended up dumping a POS Lexmark (ugh) inkjet and picking up an Epson AcuLaser C1100. A year later and a full set of wedding stationary later and it's still not even half empty. Plus it doesn't have blocked nozzles every time I come to use it. Cleaning blocked nozzles is what really uses up all the ink in an inkjet.
Anywho, from my experience of managing consumables at the company I used to work at, third-party inkjet cartridges are typically 1/4 the price of regular cartridges and considering how crappy your typical inkjet printer is anyway, there's very little noticeable performance or quality hit. Unfortunately I only know UK suppliers, but you're probably wanting to look for a mail order supplier as shops usually just stock branded cartridges (although IIRC, WHSmiths used to stock own-brand printer inks but they weren't much cheaper than the real thing). Hunt out office supplies catalogues and that sort of thing. Google it.
I've never tried the refill shops, but they are springing up everywhere at the moment. They'd certainly be worth a shot, considering you're just going to bin the empties otherwise anyway.
So I went to WalMart and they had a "cartridge refill set" that came with a 20mL bottle of each color of ink for like $14 total. My cartridge (HP22) wasn't on the list that it said it was compatable with, but one just like it (HP28) was, so I figured "what the hell".
I refilled it and everything works great. Really easy, too: you just peel off the label and the hole's right there for you to squirt in the ink from the bottle.
In hindsight, I could probably find an even cheaper deal on ink (and probably get higher-quality ink) if I looked online.
So, yeah, fuck paying $20 for 5mL of ink. Never again.
You always get some banding with digital printing. Even high-end professional kit tends to output visible banding on large areas of flat colour. That's just the nature of the technology because it is applying the ink in strips rather than screening or transferring it on in one big block.
Theoretically, inkjet printers should output better quality than laser because the ink is liquid and thus able to blend more naturally (although on cheaper paper stocks this just tends to mean it can blot horribly on edges that should be sharp). Higher-end inkjets also have the advantage that they often use more than four inks. Some use up to eight inks to give shaper, richer photographic colours. On balance however, I find that a low end laser printer gives better results than a cheap inkjet printer and my C1100 handles flat colours pretty impressively.
The real advantage comes in the economy savings. Laser printers are a lot more expensive initially - a cheap laser printer costs around £400 compared to £40 for a cheap inkjet printer and a complete set of new cartridges will probably set you back another £200 - but they outstrip inkjets by being a lot more economical with their ink so save you vast amounts of money in the long term.
If you work in an office, or know someone who does, try and find out where they get their ink from. It'll probably be a third-party vendor of some sort with prices a fraction of the branded stuff.
Better yet, if you know someone who runs their own business, see if they can put in an order for half a dozen extra cartridges for you when they next order supplies and piggy-back their tax rebate
Well, I've never seen an office where they refill their own inkjet cartridges. It's always been laser printers (the private law office that I used to do tech work for bought third-party toner drums, the government agency that I interned at didn't bother). I found this refill kit at WalMart, it came with three bottles of 17 mL each (one for each color) and I figure that's at least eight times the amount that comes in one of these fucking HP 22 cartridges. I'm pretty happy with it.
inkjet ink is typically designed specifically for the for the print system by the manufacturer, so third parties may work for a while but will probably eventually screw it up. This is especially true for self refill kits.
Also, regardless of use, most inkjet inks only have a recommended cartridge life of 6 months once installed, so minimum you'd have to buy 2 of every cartridge per year.