Non-OEM ink cartridges vs OEM ink cartridges

timwinters

timwinters

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Has anyone found any no OEM cartridges that are good? I haven't. I've tried numerous brands over the years for various printers in an attempt to save money and always wind up wasting money. The latest attempt was a couple of months ago when I bought a set of Sotek brand 950XL & 951XL cartridges off of Amazon for my HP Officejet Pro 8600 plus.

They suck. The print quality has degraded significantly: waves, skips, and faded areas. Many sheets have ink smeared at the bottom, etc. And that's just black & white; color printing / copies aren't even close to being accurate reproductions. All are issues I never had with the printer before installing these cartridges.

So, any good options out there or should one just stick with the very over priced OEM?
 
Really? I have run aftermarket ink in my Canon printers for years. My old IP4500 probably has north of 20K pages on it - I used it for printing invoices, packing slips and instruction manuals (before switching to PDFs) for my electronic kit business. Even printed CD labels and a couple hundred printable CDs for a while. I was using $2 ink cartridges the whole time. I used that printer for over 10 years. It's still in the basement, it works fine, I'm just not using it any more.

For printing on plain paper, I could tell no difference at all. For printing photos on glossy photo paper, you could tell the difference -- the Canon ink was definitely better. The cheap ink was OK, but not as good. If I was going to print a bunch of photos I'd run factory ink, the rest of the time it was aftermarket all the way. I got a few bad (leaky) cartridges over the years, but the supplier always replaced them. I've heard all kinds of horror stories; maybe I just got lucky but never experienced any big problems.

I used several different brands, because they would come and go. LD Ink was one. Later on I switched to another one; I forget the brand name, but it had a bright green frog on the package. I have a newer printer now, an IP7200... after the factory supplied ink was depleted I've been using aftermarket.
 
IKONG has worked well in my 6600. Amazon. Lasts reasonably long compared to OEM. Color is not going to impress you, but i find them servicable.
 
6 printers all refurb or aftermarket serviced ink and laser cartridges off ebay from no particular vendor with 90% success rate.
 
timwinters said:
Has anyone found any no OEM cartridges that are good? I haven't. I've tried numerous brands over the years for various printers in an attempt to save money and always wind up wasting money. The latest attempt was a couple of months ago when I bought a set of Sotek brand 950XL & 951XL cartridges off of Amazon for my HP Officejet Pro 8600 plus.

They suck. The print quality has degraded significantly: waves, skips, and faded areas. Many sheets have ink smeared at the bottom, etc. And that's just black & white; color printing / copies aren't even close to being accurate reproductions. All are issues I never had with the printer before installing these cartridges.

So, any good options out there or should one just stick with the very over priced OEM?
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I buy ink cartridges from InkJets for my Canon MX-922 and have had no problems at all.

Bob
 
[I went aftermarket when Walmart and Costco quit stocking the cartridges for my HP. I bought off eBay, but the vendor was inkjet2u.com. Other than one yellow
cartridge leaking all over the place, they do work, and are much cheaper than OEM. I have even got some decent colpr photos from them (but don't do many).

My printer refuses to die - but when it finally does, I plan to buy an Epson.

Dave
 
I have tried three different sets of aftermarket ink cartridges and two after market laser toners. Some of them worked almost as well as OEM, but not as long, and they all started leaking and smudging before they were empty. Twice they ruined my inkjet printers and I had to buy new printers.
 
I haven't used an inkjet printer in several years. I literally gave away my last Brother MFC-490CW inkjet multifunction printer on Craigslist because I so despised its extortionist self-cleaning habits that caused it to consume full canisters of ink on roughly a monthly basis, even if it didn't print a single document. If I forgot to unplug it after every use, at least one of the cartridges surely would be empty the next time I tried to use it: and it wouldn't even print grayscale if one of the color cartridges was empty. I used to call it the "Luca Brasi" model.

That printer inspired me to use off-brand ink simply out of principle. I refused to play along with Brother's extortion. All I can really say about the results is that none of the off-brand cartridges especially impressed me for photos, but any of them were good enough for text documents. There also seemed to be little consistency within any particular brand of ink. The colors would be off a bit one way with one batch, but off a bit differently with the next batch. But again, they were close enough for text documents.

That printer also convinced me to never again buy a Brother product.

I have little need to print photos anymore, so I no longer have an inkjet printer. Laser is faster, cheaper, and better for everything except photos. I've never been able to achieve quality better than "barely okay" when using a laser printer to print photos. But that's okay. If I need some pictures printed at a better quality than I can achieve using photo paper in one of my laser printers, I just get them done at Sam's Club. If ever I'm not happy with a picture that they print (which hasn't happened yet, by the way), they'll keep re-printing it until I am.

Rich
 
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JOhnH said:
I have tried three different sets of aftermarket ink cartridges and two after market laser toners. Some of them worked almost as well as OEM, but not as long, and they all started leaking and smudging before they were empty. Twice they ruined my inkjet printers and I had to buy new printers.
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Quite similar to my experience. I had a Canon Pixma Something or the Other that aftermarket cartridges completely trashed.

My current HP printer is very stingy with ink. My first cartridges lasted almost two years and I do quite a bit of printing for my business. It's just hard to pay almost as much for OEM cartridges as a new printer costs when one can pick up aftermarket for about 20% of the cost. Maybe I'll just start buying new printers when the old run out of ink. That's the American way...just throw it away.
 
Thought I was having ink cartridge issues on my Canon 432, then did a “Deep Clean” (?) cycle and all is well again. It’s not always the ink to blame.
 
wrbix said:
Thought I was having ink cartridge issues on my Canon 432, then did a “Deep Clean” (?) cycle and all is well again. It’s not always the ink to blame.
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Maybe...

But, it could be that leaky cartridges are trashing your print head. That's what happened to my Canon. A badly leaking cartridge got ink/toner/whatever all over/in the head, it dried out, and the printer was toast. No amount of cleaning would bring it back to life. (at least that's what I surmised by looking at the carnage...but I'm by no means a copier/printer repair man)

I find it funny that another thread on the same topic was started yesterday afternoon.
 
wrbix said:
Thought I was having ink cartridge issues on my Canon 432, then did a “Deep Clean” (?) cycle and all is well again. It’s not always the ink to blame.
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I found out that when I used off brand ink cartridges, I had to do many more "deep cleanings" as well. I rarely had to do that with OEM cartridges.
 
Tim, if you're doing a lot of printing for your business (assuming it's not all photos), you should bite the bullet and get a laser. Even color lasers are inexpensive these days, and the quality and PITA factor is substantially better than an inkjet.
 
kayoh190 said:
Tim, if you're doing a lot of printing for your business (assuming it's not all photos), you should bite the bullet and get a laser. Even color lasers are inexpensive these days, and the quality and PITA factor is substantially better than an inkjet.
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I may be shopping soon, thanks.
 
For Canon........yes the eBay 40/$29.95 are great.

HP?...not so much. I bought a HP35, decades ago, after graduating using a sliderule. But their printers are pure junk.
 
timwinters said:
I may be shopping soon, thanks.
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I have two HP color laser printers. One is a CLJ 3600 that's about 12 years old. The other is a Color LaserJet Pro MFP M477 that I've had for a year or two. I bought the MFP M477 to replace my despised Brother MFC-490CW for the scanning, copying, and fax functions. It also prints very well, but I still have the CLJ 3600 N as well. I'll probably keep it until the current toner cartridges are empty, and then donate it to Goodwill.

Neither HP machine has ever required any care other than toner replacement since they were purchased. In my experience, they're real workhorses.

Rich
 
I have a perfectly functional Brother Laser printer sitting in the network closet, except it's so old that only has serial or centronics connections. Has a port for a network card, but I can't find a network card for it. Tried a D-Link Etherprint connection - not compatible with Brother ... crap. So i buy throw-away HP inkjets and now a throw away Epson.
 
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