JCam Loc: MD Eastern Shore

After having a knock-off ink cartridge leak in a HP printer/copier some years back and had to replace the reasonably expensive printer, I decided never to use non-OEM ink again; the risk outweighs the savings!

If you sit down with a calculator and compute the price of printing inks, they are horrendously expensive, but at a cartridge or two at a time (four if using B&H) the cost doesn't break the budget and I sleep much better!

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Yeah, personally, I don’t use third party inks. However, some of the larger commercial supply houses carry known, good third-party inks.

CamB Loc: Juneau, Alaska

I treat my printer better than my cameras and use only EPSON ink. Living in Alaska, if my printer has any sort of problem there is no way to get it fixed. You can't ship a printer once it has been filled with ink. (which I learned the hard way) The extra money on EPSON inks is well spent to make sure the printer works perfectly every time.
...Cam

cjc2 Loc: Hellertown PA

IMHO, if you're looking to save money on prints, farm it out to some local shop or use one of the popular national labs. Purchasing a quality photo printer and using cheap ink may save money, but it will not lead to good prints. If you're not looking for properly produced prints and just want to play, have at it. Personally, I use an Epson P800 printer, only Epson inks and mostly Red River paper. I produce my prints under a properly color managed system and have very happy clients. Best of luck.

Ron Dial Loc: Cuenca, Ecuador

I have two large Epson Pro printers, a 9800 and a 4880. I tried various off brand inks over the years, and within a few weeks, had a clog or something. So like you, I bit the bullet and now buy only Epson inks. In talking to a service rep, he told me that some of the off-brand inks are missing an anti clog chemical. When printing on expensive paper or canvas, you don't want the printer to stall or clog half way through the print.

Flickwet Loc: NEOhio

I have a Canon Pixma Pro-100, the 3rd party inks I buy have been terrific, "LCL" and "G&G", never a problem, but I've only done 3 cycles of ink. And, yes I'm curious what others have experienced.

edrobinsonjr Loc: Boise, Idaho

I only use "re-manufactured" ink from Amazon. I have tried several sellers and have has very few problems.
I refuse to pay the rip off prices for new cartridges...
Ed

wrangler5 Loc: Missouri

I got a Canon Pro-10 in 2016. Two of 'em, actually, because they had a terrific discount/rebate deal, and my printing is almost all for Christmas books that I make for family. These have to be done between Thanksgiving and Christmas, so I wanted a backup in case one printer had a problem. Anyway, for Christmas 2016 I used only Canon brand carts - which BTW are exactly the same $14.95 price at my local photo store as at Amazon or B&H or Canon's web site - and kept close track of usage. Ink cost per print came out to about 68 cents for the size of black and white prints I make. My Christmas books total about 1000 pages, so ink cost alone was ~$680. More than I paid for both printers combined.

So for 2017 I decided to try third party inks from Precision Colors. I had kept a lot of the Canon brand empty carts (just in case I decided to refill), and had to buy a chip resetter and scale which cost less than $100 combined. (You refill the PGI-72 carts by weight, since they don't have a visible internal reservoir like the carts I used to fill for the Epson printers I had been using.) Apart from the equipment investment, my ink cost for the 2017 Christmas books was $2.00/cart which came out to about 9 cents/print, for a saving of almost $600 over Canon brand ink. Functionality has been perfect - never had a clog with either printer over the 2000+ prints done so far. If I can get through Christmas 2018 with these printers I'll have saved far more than enough to replace both of 'em (if necessary) even without discounts or rebates, and have money left over for a new lens or something.

There IS some convenience in just ripping open a fresh Canon cart and pitching the old one when it runs out. OTOH, when you refill you don't wonder if you can get another print or two out of a cart that's running low (I actually print in batches of 5, so I DID think about this fairly regularly when I was using $15 cartridges) you just pull the almost-empty one out and pop in a full one, then refill the old at your convenience. In fact, you pull out any that are getting anywhere close to running out, because, Why Not? And I have been refilling carts for my old Epson printers for a decade or more, so the process has long been a normal part of my year-end printing activities.

My usage and timing needs may be somewhat unusual, so this is only offered as information to consider. But if I were starting with a new printer I would absolutely stick with Canon brand ink to begin with. (And as others have noted, if you buy it from CanonUSA they usually throw in "free" paper if you buy more than a couple of carts at a time - I have over 250 sheets of 13x19 Canon paper and about as much 8.5x11, in a variety of surfaces, that came with the ink I bought, although printing on all that paper would take WAY more ink than I bought to get the paper in the first place.) Keep detailed track of your ink usage BY COLOR, so you'll have an idea of how fast you use what color - and SAVE the old carts. I average 88 prints out of a Gray cart and over 500 from Red - not sure why I use ANY red in B&W prints, or ANY Photo Black when all my prints are on matte paper, but all the colors do get used up over time.

Once you have an idea of your own usage patterns, you can evaluate the cost/benefit of refilling - refilling the original Canon carts you save in the process, that is, in case you do decide to refill.

jeep_daddy Loc: Prescott AZ

I don't know if there is a 'use by date' on the CLI-8 ink. I know for a fact though that there is one on the ink for the Pro-1000. It's on the outside of every box. If you buy a complete set of CLI-8 inks that do come in a box there may be a 'use by date'. But I don't have a brand new unopened box to check.

Berthold

dpullum is my rational hero": ". At 82, all inks are archival !!" even more when 86 like me. I use LD cartridges--$50 for a full set for my Canon
Pro-100 and I am delighted with the results--and the $ 100 saving significant with Medicare.
Bert in Tucson