Printer cartridge, stock, remanufactured, or refillable

[Tom Winters]

Well, you can certainly stick your head in the sand and stick with OEM cartridges or consider some of the high-end third-party ink purveyors out there, especially for archival color or luminous black & white: (warning - it starts getting expensive)

http://www.mediastreet.com/site/index.html
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/digital_b-w.shtml

Keep that baby purring:
http://www.fixyourownprinter.com/

Cheap ink:
http://www.abcink.com/

 

[BKP]

It's also well known, at least in the US, that printer manufacturers make more money on "consumables" like printer cartridges and paper than they do on printers themselves. In some cases, a replacement cartridge is 50% or more the cost of the original printer. That's especially true for the low-priced laser printers meant for the home.

Printer manufacturers for years have used the whole "Only buy from us, you'll have a horrible experience with someone else" line to keep their profit margins up. A few times, it's warranted, but usually it's not.

Although I only buy Epson cartridges, I do so because I use relatively few cartridges, and if I buy in bulk from Costco they're fairly priced. Normally they are ridiculously overpriced for the amount of ink you get. If I didn't have a source for fairly priced cartridges, I would be looking for a good remanufactured or refilled source.

If the printer is still under warranty, by all means use the factory cartridges as unauthorized ones can be used as an excuse to void the warranty even if it didn't cause the problem. But if it's no longer under warranty, I don't see why you can't use a third party source.

Don't know about Epson, but I learned quite a bit in the 23 years I worked for HP... (I'm no longer there).

I agree, that most of their profit comes from consumables... (just the moniker "consumable" makes the industry heavyweights salivate). However, I also know something about the difference in the inks, and the R&D that goes into them.

Like anything else... use what you want... Given that this was a photography thread, and that the OP was apparently talking about printing photographs, I'd assumed they'd want the highest quality of the most important component...

That aside, sure... buy any 3rd party knock-off that suits your budget...

 

[RonDawg]

Like anything else... use what you want... Given that this was a photography thread, and that the OP was apparently talking about printing photographs, I'd assumed they'd want the highest quality of the most important component...

That aside, sure... buy any 3rd party knock-off that suits your budget...

That's true as well, if you are professional shutterbug and need or simply want *stunning* then you definitely want the best equipment, and be willing to pay accordingly. But, is that necessary for the average consumer wanting to show off their latest vacation pics or their children's school program?

My point is, I don't necessarily buy into the printer manufacturers' "only buy OEM" mantra. They have a reason to instill that kind of paranoia (mostly unnecessary in my opinion) onto the average consumer.

BTW I normally don't visit this forum; I think this thread was redirected from somewhere else.

 

[RonDawg]

Even laser printer?

Hoosier, I don't know if you were referring to laser printers in your OP, but as BKP said these are a different beast.

In consumer and even small-office grade laser printers, the "cartridge" consists of not just the toner, but the drum and some of the associated hardware as well.

This is done to cut down on servicing costs, but the disadvantage is that it makes you more dependent on those expensive cartridges. At work, when I find the image gets to be too light to be desired, it's usually because it's low on toner and not because the drum is messed up.

I remember the not-too-distant past where when this would happen, you'd simply add toner to a filling hole somewhere on the printer. A bit messy, but if it was just a low toner situation it was a lot cheaper than replacing a whole cartridge. Now, since the toner and drum are often part of the same consumable, you got to throw the whole thing out. The old way was a lot more environmentally friendly too.

You may already know this, but often if you take the cartridge out and shake it a bit, you can get a bit more use out of it before it's totally gone. This is especially true if it's only light along one side of the page but not the other.

As with inkjet cartridges, there are many "remanufactured" and "refilled" cartridges out there for laser printers that are of course much cheaper than OEM.

 

[ofleisher]

I Use only genuine inks ! for HQ photo printing !

 

[victor]

And its not just the ink, it's the paper as well.
Personally I see a bigger difference from using different brands and qualities of paper than I do of ink.

 

[Hoosier]

Thanks for all good insights.

I don’t know what happened. It was a general question post in a “Non-Diving Related,” not limited in a photo printer. But, it led to a good direction to have more info.

I have a HP laser and HP ink jet printers and am able to access to a HP color laser printer (a real big one) in the office. It is about time to replace both cartridges on my own printers (laser and ink jet), so I am wondering if there is any difference between a stock (OEM) and third party one. I have only used a stock (OEM) one so far.

It sounds like I should be stick to the stock cartridge for an ink jet printer.
As for a laser, it is still a moot question.