With the price of original ink cartridges ever increasing we get asked by many of our customer how reliable compatible ink cartridges really are. The simple truth is that, as with all things, you get what you pay for! With that in mind, we with have never tried to cut the cost of both the ink in our compatible cartridges and the electronic communication chip built into the cartridge. These are both fundamental components of a compatible ink cartridge.
How Do Manufacturers View Compatible Cartridges?
The easiest way to talk about compatible cartridge reliability is by manufacturer. It has to be said that printer manufacturer don’t like compatible cartridges as they cut into original cartridge sales but the way they deal with this issue differs greatly.
Epson, Canon & Brother seem to reluctantly put up with compatible cartridges by throwing the odd firmware update out there but generally our compatibles for these brands offer amazing reliability at about 1 failure per 3000 cartridges sold.
HP however seem to employ every trick in the book to stop compatible ink cartridges. In general the models that take separate cartridges for each colour offer the same reliability as the brands above but the printers that take tri-colour and black cartridges have many issues to overcome to produce a truly compatible cartridge.
Are Compatible Ink Cartridges Okay to Use?
Yes, compatible inks are perfectly good to use, provided that you buy high quality offerings. This is our purpose at Internet Ink; to give customers compatible cartridges that they can trust.
You also need to be very aware of what firmware updates are and how they can affect your printer.
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