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Whats the tangible difference between Chinese compatible cartridges and original inks from HP or Canon?

By: Simon D Young

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This is a question I get questioned an awful lot - is there a good deal of a difference between the OEM original and Far eastern compats or third party remanufactured inks? So the question is in the eyes of the consumer which is the best?

If I start by taking a look at the costs of the OEM ink and compatible ink cartridges the initial thing that becomes noticeable is the great price differential between original and compatible or remanufactured inkjet carts. After that - the other most commonly asked question I get while sat here at my desk in our office and chatting to the clients off the street that find themselves stood in our shop is - what is actually the variation between the pricey OEM cartridges and the compatible refilled and re-manufactured carts. On the other hand there is the other way I'm asked the very same question - ‘How are those cartridges as good as the originals?’ Let me try and give you a solution to both questions here for you now. The OEM chinese manufacturers original ink ink cartridges in the inkjet printers that they have designed for when using the factories own brand photo inkjet paper are often unassailable but thats when we are talking to clients with a VERY diserning eye such as photographers and printers - nonetheless the findings you will get from the range of printers made by any of the major chinese manufacturers such as HP or Epson is quite simply unexpected and better than that which you could expect from a conventional photo printing service such as that offered by Kodak - but and here is the big downside, the cost of printing these photographs and images or documents with OEM inks can also make you think twice and check your wallet!

The major percentage of customers will find that the compatible cartridges are adequate. We do quite alot of in house testing in our factory of all of the inkjet carts that we supply as we have had loads of different suppliers sending samples from China and the Far East - lots of which have unfortunately been found to be not to the regular standard, so the inkjet carts that we are geared up to offer for sale and are willing to make sure of the quality of the output and the life of the cartridges have been fully tried and tested over several years by ourselves and our customer base - trust me there are some unforeseen inkjet carts out there, they may be inexpensive but they may ruin your printer! For testing purposes we have a number of standard and high resolution photographs which we print out onto 128gsm glossy ink-jet photo paper and print using the OEM carts and then clean the print heads and run a head clean then print out exactly the same photographs using the compatible inks - its critical to never mix your original carts with any reman or compatible carts as they just aren't going to work, in my opinion the best thing to do is when you take home your latest inkjet printer put your originals somewhere safe and put a set of compatibles in - then if you ever have grounds to return the printer back for repair place the originals back in as otherwise it can be classed as out of warranty. What we do next is hang these test photographs onto our wall to test for degredation of the picture over a period of time, as consumers come into our office we ask them to identify which of the images they consider is the best (they don't know which is produced by the originals and which by the compatibles) nearly all struggle to tell the variation between one and the other. Therefore the definitive solution to the question ‘are they actually as good as an original' is not exactly a easy one, but based on a price and performance and the printing test they are almost exactly the same, and a exceedingly large % of customers would say they cannot tell the difference even when told which is which - so in terms of outlay to results ratio the compatibles come first without much of a fight.

The only thing to contemplate is that the factories originals will not block your printers print heads or cause streaking but a number of Far eastern carts will do both, but if the cheaper cartridges are causing you trouble try running a set of original cartridges through your printer which will clean and lubricate your print heads, then swap back to copies, they often have more ink in them then the OEM (Original Equipment manufacturers) carts as well - thus giving you a reasonable cost of printing, if you don't get on with a specific brand of compatible carts try getting hold of a different brand (there are hundreds!) you are sure to get one that will work with your printer.

Lastly, occasionally your printer will not recognise the compatible inkjet carts - the number one thing to attempt is the following tip - take all the ink cartridges out and turn your printer off, then turn the printer back on and it will say 'no ink installed' - click OK (DO NOT PUT ANY INKJET CARTRIDGES IN AT THIS POINT) - then it will come up with the message 'no ink' for the second time - this is when you then install your set of compatibles and it should then work, when all's said and done you are tricking the printer that a set of original cartridges is now current. What is the real difference between compatibles and refilled or remans? The answer is clear-cut though the know-how thats behind both types is complicated. Epson, Canon and Brother all manufacture a printer with built in print heads, so when you change the ink-jet cartridge all you are replacing is an ink filled tank. At the moment these printers all utilize individual ink tanks for the different colour inks (which can be up to 10 different ink cartridges in a few of the very top end printers) which means that when one colour becomes empty you just change the specific empty ink cartridge.

Most of the major printer manufacturers all generate a cartridge which has the print head included into the cartridge, although Epson have recently brought out some inkjet carts with chips which is an attempt to make it more difficult for the Chinese compatible manufacturers to make copies. So with this type of printers in actual fact you install a brand new print head when you put in a set of new cartridges. The cartridges with this type of technology are inherently costly for the reason of the chip having to be built in. These are the types of cartridges that are worth sending for recycling because the print heads can be used more than a few times without degradation of quality - thats where you get the remanufactured type of carts. Compatible ink tanks are latest, but have been made by third party manufacturers, 94 % of which are in China - who have nothing to do with the original printer manufacturers, re-filled inkjet carts have been used once, recycled and re-filled with non OEM third party inks. So you can obtain compatible ink tanks for the Canon, Brother and Epson printers, but only re-filled or remanufactured ink cartridges for Lexmark, Dell or HP.

Please have a look at an HP Cartridge and you can establish straight away that it is not going away to degrade and decompose in a landfill waste site, in fact it is expected that it will take 10,000 years for them to decompose so ink-jet cartridge recycling is a big affair and definately needs to be! However please take into account that the only ink cartridges that are at this time worth the price of refilling are the ones which have the incorporated print heads like the Lexmark - Dell and HP types. The Epson - Canon - Brother cartridges are just ink tanks and are not more often than not recyclable. I would as a result encourage you to continually try and be ecologically aware and make sure you recycle your used ink inkjet carts, there are lots of services out there that will even pay you for your empty cartridges.

Where does this leave us - my findings are that the compatible inks are typically fit for their purpose and represent great value for money - When you are using them to print all-purpose office and home documents then keep your funds and use the compatible inks, even photos are fine when printed using the compatibles as in my experience the photo paper used is the most important factor (but thats a whole other debate!). To ensure you are getting the best performance out of your printer just make sure you run a set of originals through occasionally to preserve your print heads in fine order and you will make sure you have a value for money and good product quality long term results from your ink-jet printer.

Article Source: http://depositarticles.com/

Simon Young - Senior Partner UK Injket cartridges

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