Third party ink recommendations

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Craig
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Done to death I know. I was pretty happy with the results I was getting from my Canon pixma ix6550 with canon inks (CMYK). The Canon inks are not cheap though and don't last particularly long, so I recently tried some compatible inks from 'Inkredible' and the results are not so great. The blacks are much more grey and the whole spectrum of colours looks muddy and bland with a cyan/green cast.

Does anyone have any recommendations for good quality third party inks (if they exist) that give good accurate colours? Eventually I would like to upgrade the printer but that won't happen for a while and I'd like to be able to use what I have and keep the costs down if possible.
 
I've had some poor third party ones that just fade in the sun within months of use. The canon originals did not.
However, as I print non essential stuff at the moment I use StinkyInk.
 
I've had some poor third party ones that just fade in the sun within months of use. The canon originals did not.
However, as I print non essential stuff at the moment I use StinkyInk.

I'm assuming I won't quite get to the quality of the canons, but not sure why a third party company aren't able to match the quality.


See my opening post.
 
some of it comes down to the quality of the pigments or dyes that they use.
I think that one is cheaper and is fine for black text printing. the other is better for photos and deep colours.
That's why, I think, that canon printers have a bulk black print reservoir and a photo black cartridge which is smaller.
If you get super cheap inks then I think that the 3rd parties go for cheaper dyes when they otherwise would use more expensive options...(not sure on all of this).
so essentially you can get decent quality stuff as long as you don't go for the cheapest option without paying through the nose for the originals.
knowing what is good enough though is difficult without printing out something from different manufacturers and then putting them along side each other in the sun shine for 12 months or so.
 
I think I paid £5.99 for a pack containing all 5 cartridges so pretty much at the bottom end of the scale. Maybe if I try somewhere in-between I'll get better results.

Considered city ink express as they do refillable cartridges and supply the bottles of ink for around £30 which is the equivalent of about 11 cartridges per colour, but would rather not waste all that ink if the results are similarly disappointing.
 
Thanks for the recommendation, Rich.

Have you done much photo printing with inks from them? How do the colours look, and if you don't mind me asking are you the type who has a calibrated monitor and uses icc profiles, or are you not that bothered with that level of colour management?
 
Thanks for the recommendation, Rich.

Have you done much photo printing with inks from them? How do the colours look, and if you don't mind me asking are you the type who has a calibrated monitor and uses icc profiles, or are you not that bothered with that level of colour management?

No problem Craig, so here goes
I've done a reasonable amount of printing and the colours match pretty well with my Spyder Pro 5 calibrated IPS monitor, I use let the printer (Canon) manage colour.
Worth a try at £8.75 for a set of inks, delivery is usually free and prompt too
 
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My advice would be to have a set of genuine inks ready to flush out the cheap inks should they prove to be as poor as the one I tried a few years back. Only did a couple of prints with it and the colour was cr@p from the start and faded very quickly. Good luck with your experiment - I hope it works for you (but I'll stick with expensive genuine inks!)
 
Indeed! I think I may end up waiting till I can afford a printer upgrade to be honest.
 
We have had about 4 different printers, Epson , Canon , Brother and have used 3rd party ink in all of them with varying degrees of success from OK to awful.
We now have an HP office jet and subscribe to the HP instant ink scheme at the cheapest level and get genuine HP ink which works every time ( we have had one printer replaced under warranty but that was a known fault)
 
Hi

Been using ink from http://www.coralgraph.com for years, very consistent and high quality inks with indistinguishable results from Epsons own.

I use their Dye inks and at under £7 for 6 100pml bottles for my CIS is unbeatable. Don't know if they do Pigment inks though as I have never had a pigment printer.
Strange there is no listing for 6 also its like there is only one set of colours whereas different printer use different colours as in not all cyan are the same in each printer. I also find the ink very.Cheapl epson ?
 
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