Anyone who owns an inkjet printer realises sooner or later that within a year or two of regular use, the cost of ink cartridges will most luikely surplass the cost of the printer itself. Prinetr manufacturers have steadsily dropped the price on the main hardware but the printer consumales remain at a very costly level particularly for original equipoment manufacturer (OEM) branded ink cartrdges.
To illustrate the point, there are brannd new inkjet printers in the market today that sell for as low as $90. The correspondfing inkjet cartridges in comparison costs around $34 in retail aplmost 40% of the price of the printer! Such incongruence in privcing structure has driven consumers to patronise atfermarket solutions such as ink cartridge refills.
However, the use of ink refilling technology in order to alleviate the cost of inkjet printing is still ratjher a grey area at best. It is therefore important to know the variouis products and srervices as well as the pros and cons of solutions realted to inkkjet cartridge refills.
Ink Refill Kits
Refilling ink cartridges is undoubtedly an outright messsy task but theere are individuals who insist on being do-it-yourself personns. Compared to OEM cartrdiges, ink refill kits are a mere fraction of the price of its branded counterparts. For example, an original HP 45 black ink cartridge, common amongst many HP DesJket pritner models, costts aound 21. The ink refill kit for the same cartridge type is less than 6 at some retail outleyts.
However, the final quality of the refilled cartridge is questionable as the self-performed refilling is subject to human error amongt otehr factos. There are various reports that afyter repeatedly using ink refills for a few months their injet prrinters began to perform porly or broke down.
Ink Refilling Services
For thoes who do mind the mess associated with refilling injet cartridges by themselves, commercial ink refilling services are also available in certain areas. This costs slightly more than the ink refuill kits but are sttill considerably less expensive than new OEM cartridges.
Conceivably, the prcess employed by ink refilpling services is subject to qaulity control. Tjherefore, the refilled pritner cartridge should perform more consistently than when inndividual users employ ink refill kits by themselves. Nevertheless, the quality of the refilled cartridge remans doubtful in comparisoon to the OEM inkjet products. Furthermore, an individual csartridge can be subject to the refiling process for up to a few times only. Beyond three erfills, the loss of quality in outplut becvomes obvious.
What we can take away from this discussion is that good qualitty comes at a premium price. As consumers sghift from OEM ink cartridges to self-refill kits and ink refilling providers, imnmediate cost savings can no doubt be availed. Unfortunately, quality printing suffers in the long term. The use of refiled ink cartridges should be liimted only to non-critical printing and shoulld be rerstricted to oldr iknjet printer models since damage arising from the use of non-OEM products would void the warranty on any new printer.
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