UTEP65 Loc: Lake Royale, NC

I use two (2) HP printers. Since retiring, I tend to pay more attention to costs. I have always bought OEM HP ink. Now, I am considering “refill cartridges” and/or “compatible cartridges”. They are much less expensive! Any thoughts?

DIRTY HARRY Loc: Hartland, Michigan

My experience with HP is if I "registered" my machine with HP and I used their ink all was fine. The minute I put refill ink in the machine I started hearing about it from the machine or HP (I don't know) but if I didn't put a HP cartridge in there it would shut down. If I never let the machine contact "home base" I don't have these problems.

Blair Shaw Jr Loc: Dunnellon,Florida

Only buy and use the ink that the manufacturer recommends for your printer. 2nd & 3rd party inks can ruin your print head and the price of repairs will often exceed the price of a new printer.

Don't go cheap on the ink, like I did and wind-up replacing the printer......not worth the aggravation.
And finding a repair facility is not always an easy option either.

I find the HP office injet-printers to be of excellent quality for only 4 color operations and their papers are quite good as well. They are reasonably priced but not cheap......none of them are.

Good luck sir.

Ron 717 Loc: Pennsylvania

First let me say that I have had great success with HP printers. That being said there are two issues that they have, first they will constantly give messages that a cartridge is “expired” when you have had a cartridge on the shelf too long before placing it in the printer. They also recognize a non-HP cartridge and will give error messages when one is inserted.
I only use Branded cartridges in all of my printers, it is costly, but when I click print I want to hear the printer working.

Silverrails

NO, do not use anything other than HP cartridges. Expensive, yes, but the Off brand wrecked my HP 8610 pro Printer.

rgrenaderphoto Loc: Hollywood, CA

Most ink jet printer carts have RFID chips which tell the printer that it is an OEM product. The refils may not work, or will not let you use all the ink.

UTEP65 Loc: Lake Royale, NC

You confirmed my suspicions! Thanks. It’s HP CARTRIDGES for me.

jdubu Loc: San Jose, CA

I have an HP plotting Designjet we use for printing 24x36 plans for clients and internal design usage. I tried to use 3rd party inks from different companies because I don't need photo reliability like I do with the Epson photo printers I have. The HP gave me intermittent grief and finally a month ago shut down completely. I spent the better part of a day cleaning and trying to get it back on line as a printer. I'm not sure what I did and probably couldn't recreate the sequence to do it without another day of trial and error, but got it printing again with oem HP cartridges. Expensive at $60 per color, but I need a plotter that works all the time.

To be fair about third party inks, we have 2 Brother dual paper size printers, one in my office and one in the studio printing 8x11.5 and 11x17, that have always used third party inks and both going strong for years. So, maybe it's HP that puts roadblocks in our way to force our allegiance.

E.L.. Shapiro Loc: Ottawa, Ontario Canada

To print our commercial work for clients we only use the recommended ink and pigments specified by the manufacturers of the printers

In my OFFICE, however, we have a big old HP Office Jet 8620 Printer/fax/copier. scanner. It sucks ink like a thirsty dog and we use it very frequently. We started to order compatible inks at 1/3 of the price, surprisingly enough, it works just fine, day in and day out. I have, just for fun, ran a few prints on it- well it ain't like the big Epson in the production area but it ain't half bad. The color on documents is also very good as well as the black and white for line copy.

The cartridges that we receive do not seem to be refilled or remanufactured, however, I don't know where they are manufactured. They are tightly shrink-wrapped in fairly thick material so they don't tend to dry out in storage. . They have the necessary chip or circuitry to interface with the printer. We buy them online for a source called ABC INKs. They have never leaked or caused any malfunction in the machine.

I just unpacked a kit to reload the printer. It contains the three colors and 2 very large black cartridges for under 60 bucks including shipping.

repleo Loc: Boston

I have a basement full of dead printers that I used non-original manufacturer ink on. I bought my first HP ($100 +/-) at the beginning of Covit and signed up for their Instant-ink program for $2.99 / mo. I have gone over the allowed number of sheets but so far never more than $10 / mo. The replacement cartridges arrive on time without my having to order them. The printer has operated flawlessly for me so I am not going to risk mucking it up with cheap ink.

ELNikkor

I found the HP ink re-supply program to be inexpensive and convenient. It costs $15 per year and knows when to send replacement cartridges. (This is based on my using 50 or fewer copies per month. Increased use may cost more.)

Dave H2

Risking a challenge of Heresy, do all of your printing needs require color?
Folks in this post response mention Office Use and major ink costs. How about simple black and white laser printing? I have been using that approach for years for almost all routine printing not photographic. Simple and cheap. Toner cost is insignificant.

Bayou

I've used this service (HP Instant Ink) for years, and recommend it highly. It's a little more costly than you say, but still a bargain. $2.99 monthly for 50 pages - $4.99 for 100 - $9.99 for 300...etc. They also do the "rollover" thing, where unused pages accumulate to future use, to certain limits. Page count that goes over the plan limits are charged at a reasonable rate.

You must have an HP printer model that is compatible with the program. It communicates the printer's ink levels to HP such that when it gets low, they ship out a replacement cartridge(s) automatically. Works like a charm, and costs less than buying at the store.

Any ink jet printer can suffer from the "use it or lose it" thing. Ink can dry in the print heads and cause dysfunction. I try to print something at least twice a week.

Bayou

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

I've had iffy results from generic cartridges. Sometimes they're excellent, and somethings they simply don't work. The brand doesn't matter. I never know what to expect. I've had excellent results from filling cartridges, but some aren't refillable. My final solution to the very high cost of ink was to buy an Epson ET-2760 printer with tanks of ink. It cost about $65 for a full supply of ink. After printing 2,100 pages, my ink levels are at about 75%.

https://www.4inkjets.com/blog/2017/08/09/how-to-refill-an-hp-ink-cartridge/