You do have to wonder what’s behind this Sydney Morning Herald warning against third party brand inks: SMH: Photos fade with cheap ink . Is the bias merely from bad experience with one brand of inks?

Imaging can’t speak of Epson experience but we can report that third party inks wreaked havoc on the expensive printer heads of a Canon printer we owned. The heads clogged up and there was nothing we could do to clear them. When we checked with Canon they told us that use of third party inks does not void their warranty. They neither recommend nor warn. But our experience turned us off no-name inks forever.

The writer then goes on to reference a Wilhelm Imaging Research Institute (”the de facto standard for inkject print longevity”) study that gives “another persuasive reason for not using third party inks” because:

prints made with them quite literally fade before your eyes. The Wilhelm Imaging Research Institute - the de facto standard setter for inkjet print longevity - has recently tested a range of alternative inks from the big office supply companies in the US. The house brand names are unfamiliar to us but presumably these inks come from the same source that supplies our third-party market. Wilhelm found that where, for instance, Hewlett-Packard inks used with HP Premium Plus Photo Paper produce prints that last 73 years under standard illumination, the cheap inks faded in five months or, at the most, six years. HP 95 and 99 photo cartridges produce prints with a life expectancy of 108 years. With the cheap inks the life of a print is 4.6 years at best.

What do they mean by fading? I’ve always used standard inks and often standard paper from Canon and Epson and HP and I’ve seen fading in months and years, so I’m uninclined to trust figures that state 73 and 108 years. Do they mean that the pictures are totally gone in five months? I’d also find this hard to believe as I have a number of friends who only use third party inks and are still buying them years on which I doubt would be the case if they found all their printed data disappearing after months. There’s also no mention here that not everybody buys a printer to print digital photos. If all you are doing is printing out your documents for review and have no need for serious archival purposes then as long as the inks don’t ruin your printer then why do you need to pay a premium?

Even more questionable is the article’s statement that these American inks were “presumably the same source that supplies our [Australian] third-party market” Where’s that evidence? There are plenty of manufacturers, including local ones, so to state this is irresponsible. There are plenty of consumer studies done on locally sourced inks, I just saw one in an Australian computer magazine yesterday, why weren’t any of them referenced?

Canon, Epson and HP keep the formulations of their ink completely confidential so third party manufacturers have to do quite intensive testing to crack the code. Some do it better than others. The major printer manufacturers are now using intellectual property (eg copyright and patent) to try and stop this third party manufacture and again the consumer loses out as they are trapped into expensive refills that may not suit their needs:
Epson hits another third-party ink retailer
Third-party printer-ink row twist
Epson claims victory in third-party ink case
Epson gets online retailers to stop selling third-party ink cartridges for use in its printers

If that’s not scary enough, Lexmark is also attacking the consumer directly through contract, ie if you open the printer/cartridge box you agree to use their inks only and are not allowed to refill: The Latest IP Crime: “Box-Wrap” Patent Infringement. Brilliant!

, , ,