Question about printer ink

[bif]

I just got a new Canon printer. Is it worth buying Canon ink or not? The knock-off brands are about half price. Are some brands better than others?

[Old Crank]

1. I have only used Canon ink

In my printer. No problems in 10 years of intermittent use. I have paid probably more than double the original cost of the printer for ink.

[boonecreek]

2. Does your printer have all in one cartridges?

Or does it have separate ink tanks that feed an internal print head? If they're all in ones I would stick with Canon. The off brand compatibles tend to run out pretty fast, or just dry out. My printer has ink tanks and Canon is the only brand I can find.

[bif]

9. It has a B&W cartridge and a color one

[boonecreek]

10. Yeah, those are the all in ones.

They're possibly starter cartridges so they so they may not last as long.
Give the compatibles a try and see how long they last.

[Silent Type]

3. I've used off brands in a bunch of printers. Whether you buy from Amazon or not, I look for high ratings

on the off brands there.

[Intractable]

4. I have a high-end Canon (IP8720 wide format) and use it to produce detailed images.

I've owned this printer for maybe 12 years, mostly using with generic ink. The printer is still an ace! Beautiful pictures.

I have had fading issues with generic ink. After a few weeks of exposure to sun and air, the colors can fade.

I can't say for sure that it would or would not happen with real Canon ink. Probably will fade after a while.

Framed pictures in glass never faded. I have some that were printed in the early days of the printer.

Paper choice matters. I just did a comparison between Canon Glossy II and another brand (not sure which one), and the Canon was clearly superior. I also use their luster and semi-gloss, and cannot tell the dif between them. Luster has a physical texture that you can feel, but manifestly the prints look the same to me. Glossy II is very shiny and not appropriate for all uses. Might look bad behind glass. Too much reflectivity.

I recently made business cards from Glossy II and very inexpensive generic ink, and they look better than anything anyone else produces.

[lavoosh99]

5. Retired IT Guy Here

With 30 LaserJets, 2 Inkjets, and a $3,000 wide format Inkjet, we decided the lesser quality, leakage and other problems, and the risk for machine damage was not worth the savings from "compatible" cartridges. For home use, I've had positive results from a place called Inktechnologies.com - their customer service people are friendly, knowledgeable, and speak clear, intelligible, unaccented English (and generally, free shipping.) Then again, your mileage may vary. And, of course, in many cases one can buy a new printer for less than the cost of a set of OEM cartridges.
P.S. We also tried refilling our own ink - a huge, messy mistake.

[SorellaLaBefana]

6. You may NOT have a Choice. It started, I think, with HP actively refusing to work if HP brand cartridge not installed...

...and has now spread to other brands (Canon, even Brother) on a seemingly random hit or miss basis.

The brand-specific cartridges are so very expensive that they come close to the cost for a new printer. The point, I believe. End stage capitalism runs on creating unlimited demand for new, basically disposable products.

I have an iPhone-11, which I bought ONLY because my iPhone-6s literally fried itself when updating to whatever the then current iOS was. Overall, the iP-11 takes better pictures (the only clear advance); but, have no *desire* for a newer phone as this one does all I require, and the images the camera takes are not the AI-Processed plastic crap as have seen from current crop of iPs

Buying supposed brand-specific new cartridges from amz, found that many had actually been refilled. If you go brand-specific, suggest buying from the company's website if possible.

My main production printer is a now, quite old, Xerox Phaser color laser for which have used 3rd-Party refills for over a decade without any problem. My daily printer is a Brother, which complains, but does work, with third-party refills—although I know that some models apparently do not.

[bif]

7. Well the printer was $60

and I think a set of B&W and color cartridges are $70! They really hose you with the ink.

[Eugene]

8. Canon printers use DRM to enforce vendor lock-in, but it can be bypassed.

Some other manufacturers are even worse. (I'm looking at you, HP.)

[jmowreader]

11. I assume returning it for a "super tank" printer is out of the question

Epson and HP both make inkjets that have ink tanks you fill from a bottle of ink. That's the way to go if you use inkjet printers.

I run third-party ink in the HP Scitex FB750 printer I have at work, but there's a damn good reason for it: official HP ink for this is nearly $600 for a three-liter cartridge (it is a cardboard box with a bag of ink in it) but the third-party stuff is only $350 and works just as well. I don't think I'd want to try third-party ink on a printer less than 12 feet long.