Cost of INK

I have a little HP officejet thingy used for printing off the occasional document. I'm happy to stick in third party inks for that.

I have recently bought my first proper photo printer, an SC-900... and I shudder at the price of ink, but I'm not planning on using third party inks anytime soon - yeah for warranty reasons but also I hear a lot about of quality and consistency of the output..
 
Interesting...

[From the article]
Epson WorkForce WF-7210DTW ink is £2410/litre according to Which.

My P-900 costs in at £720 per litre and my old Epson SC4800 was £400 (using OEM inks)

I feel that it's real "hidden" fact that large, expensive printers (P-900, SC4800) are *much* cheaper on ink costs per ml even though the carts are more expensive mainly because the carts hold more ink. I wish the P900 would have had 70ml carts like the P800 but hey ho, newer is better right :)

I had one student at college ask me about an el-cheapo photo printer and the carts held just 5ml of liquid! At £9.99 a pop they appeared to be cheap (compared to £90 per cart for the 4800) but when you multiply it up, it was 4x more expensive! And that's not including the hassle of continuously ordering carts or the postage costs.

It would be good if Which did a long term review of the potential damage of using unbranded inks too. I have no clue whether it's a myth that they damage the printer or not.
 
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The new Epson Eco Tank ones use bottles of 70ml and on the surmise that when loading the printer all 70ml is usable.....

The colours are listed at £15.99 per bottle this per colour based on litre equivalence it is £228.43 per litre, so very(in relative terms) budget worthy :thinking: :)
 
Harlequin565 said:
It would be good if Which did a long term review of the potential damage of using unbranded inks too. I have no clue whether it's a myth that they damage the printer or not.
Click to expand...

I have used third party inks in my last three everyday A4 printers, one Epson and Two Canon.
The Epson (C64) saw my daughter through her degree course which she printed literally reams of paper for.
One of the Canon printers (IP4600) failed after just over five years because of a faulty power module.
Current one (IP7250) was purchased in February 2015 and is still going strong, checked the Canons on my Amazon orders page.

All used third party ink from the same source, just bought a Canon IP8750 which I am running on the same ink from new.
For my enthusiast level printing genuine Canon ink is just too expensive and can't justify it on a pension.
 
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I purchased an Epson ET2500 (£150) over 2 years ago and I have not yet used all the ink that came with the printer. All four colours genuine epson 70ml each estimated 4500 B&W plus 7,500 Colour for the grand total of £31.99. I would estimate I have printed 5000 mixed pages including at least 100 A4 full colour high quality photographs.

Good quality and cheap to run !
 
Large format ink cost far more reasonable money. It is still somewhat expensive but nowhere near that mark. One key observation to make is they include so much plastic in each cartridge that it should essentially be criminal. All the smaller ones also have print head integrated in the cartridge too raising the cost quite substantially.
If it was me it should be just a HPLC style bottle that gets capped with a ink line through, and similar bottle for collecting waste ink... No waste, no hassle. Besides you could have separate printhead channel for waste ink for draft document prints, etc.
 
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One of the things which wasn't mentioned in the article I read about the Which report, was the longevity of the prints.

I have experienced worse fading with third party inks in my old dye printer than the Canon ones. I only use Canon inks in my Pro 1 and so far have seen no fading, but then the prints are not as old yet, and it is also pigment ink.

Compuwight said:
I purchased an Epson ET2500 (£150) over 2 years ago and I have not yet used all the ink that came with the printer. All four colours genuine epson 70ml each estimated 4500 B&W plus 7,500 Colour for the grand total of £31.99. I would estimate I have printed 5000 mixed pages including at least 100 A4 full colour high quality photographs.

Good quality and cheap to run !
Click to expand...
That sounds amazing!
 
I have a fair few old prints from my Canon printers using genuine Canon inks and the only ones that show significant fading are on some cheap Agfa paper that came from Aldi. These faded prints (which aren't quite bad enough for me to bother changing!) are all in the conservatory in a simple sleeve hanger so get very hot (50°C+) and have no real protection from the atmosphere. The few prints I did using a cheap 3rd party ink started fading noticeably within a week. All the printers have used dye type ink rather than pigment.
 
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