Thursday, March 29, 2012
Refilling HP Inkjet Cartridges
I know that there are vendors who refill HP inkjet cartridges, or at least take used ones in trade for refilled ones. Does anyone have any experiences (positive or negative) with mail order vendors like this, or ones in Boise? HP, of course, would have you believe that the experiences will refills are negative.
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I've had success with refills at my local Costco for about $7.50 each, as I recall. You may want to give them a try when you're in town.
ReplyDeleteNote that they test the cartridge first to see if it will work reliably when refilled. If not, they return it without trying. That may explain the high success ratio I've had with them.
if the cart. has a chip embedded in it, it won't work. once the chip has "empty" written to it, it doesn't matter how full the cart. is, it won't work. and many even have expiration dates embedded in them too.
ReplyDeleteI have been using re-manufactured ink cartridges in my HP Photosmart All-in-one printer copier for a couple years and have had no trouble with them.
ReplyDeleteFrom places like Lazermonks.com they run about 30% of regular HP cartridges.
I've been using a refill kit by Inktec and have no complaints. It seems I have to refill a little more often than if I bought a new cartridge but I don't mind at such a cost saving. The quality of print is good as a new cartridge.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.inktec-usa.com/
HP just wants to sell their overpriced ink....
ReplyDeleteI do so little printing that I haven't had a need for refilling yet, but at some point I will give it a try.
Since I haven't tried anyone yet I can't recommend, but here's some suggestions:
1) costco does refills so if you are a member look into them. They have a web site just for refills
2) Cartridge connection in Boise.
There are other places in Ada County as well.
3) Buy the ink and do it yourself. There are many manufactures that sell kits for this with instructions. Most office stores also carry these or mail order. This really depends on the particular cartridge for DYI. Some are easy and some are fairly hard (manufactures are doing this on purpose).
4) The major mail order places that do trades are probably just fine...I would google to see if they have any/many complaints....
5) Look into continuous injection systems if you are using lots of cartridges! If you have a printer with the print heads separate from the ink container, that is the cartridge is just a sealed ink tank a CIS system is especially ideal. My Office Jet MFP/AIO is that way. In this setup you hook up external tanks and then refill them with ink bottles for a huge savings on ink!
There are some cases where the image quality with original HP ink is best but unless you are making photo prints and are selling them or are extremely picky about the quality you probably won't care! If you print few photos but find the refill doesn't cut it you might just consider a place doing those few prints for you (Costco does a decent job).
HP is just using fear to maintain their huge profit on consumables.
We used to refill our HP cartridges at Walgreens but just felt like we weren't getting any savings . We found ourselves saying,"It's already empty?", in a few months. We went back to buying HP name brand cartridges instead.
ReplyDeleteI refill my own HP74XL's all the time using cheepo ink from eBay. Pint of ink for $20 lasts me a year. No big whoop to fill them, but of course they won't show ink levels on your puter anymore.
ReplyDeleteI tried to refill a cartridge at home - several years ago - and it made a huge mess. The refilled cartridge emptied out inside the printer and made a puddle on the tabletop, where the stain remains to this day. I haven't tried since.
ReplyDeleteLast time my wife and I bought a printer, we chose a laser printer, for this very reason: we decided ink-jet ink was too expensive. With our printer, we've gone through one or two toner cartridges, and it has served our needs well, even though sometimes I wish the thing printed in color.
ReplyDeleteI vaguely remember being uncomfortable with attempting to refill the cartridges, but I can't remember why.
HP is a bit blind if they think that ink lock-in is the way to go. If the ink cartridges are too expensive, and they make refilling cartridges seem too scary, then people are just going to go with alternatives.
Oh, and if I were in the market for a new printer, unless I wanted to print photographs, I'd probably see if I could get another laser printer--perhaps even a color one. I just wish that someone would make an itty-bitty printer that could store an entire ream of paper for future use.
Epsilon: The problem is that inkjet printers are higher resolution than color laser printers. You won't quite get the photo quality from a color laser printer.
ReplyDeleteYes, laser printers are cheaper per page, although many of the low cost to purchase printers (like my HP 1536) have more expensive toner cartridges in compensation. If you plan to print a thousand pages a week, spend the extra money for a business laser printer.
I gave up on HP printers years ago when I installed a *brand new* cartridge and it failed to work because it had expired. I took it back to the store and got a replacement, but still, at the price HP charges for these, there is no excuse for this sort of thing. (A few years ago, there was a class-action law suit against HP for this.)
ReplyDeleteI have three printers; A Lexmark laser that I use for 90% of my printing needs that's black and white only, a cheap color laser that I use for color brochures and the like, and a Canon Pixma Pro 9000 inkjet for photography prints.
I bought the Canon printer over three years ago. New cartridges from Canon are expensive, but after the printer went out of warranty, I started using a do-it-yourself refill kit from American Inkjet. I have been doing this for over two years now and the system has worked flawlessly. I am very pleased with both the printer and the refill kit. The complete kit, which included a device for resetting the cartridges, cost less than $100. A single new cartridge (Canon uses a separate cartridge for each color),is about $15 retail, and I have filled each one of them at least 10 - 14 times. I have saved beau-coup money by doing this and the print quality is just as good as original cartridges.