PriceSCAN Blog

for HP printer...Color refills kits are a complete waste of money, imho. I never had good results with them. However, the black ink ones are easier to do and has great results. The reason is that color ink cartridge has that sponge inside that is hard to refill while the black ink has liquid ink.

I have a Brother MCF5100 C printer and it is rigged to not accept home refills with kits you can buy. The printer simply will not recognize them as full and usable. Consequently, I would urge people to avoid buying this machine. It has enough other problems as well.

Interesting...if color refills aren't ready for primetime and some printers handle all refills poorly, one wonders whether refill capabilities will begin to drive consumer printer selection.

I have used generic black and color cartridges in my HP Officejet v40xi until recently installing it on a new computer. Now it keeps giving an annoying error message to "Remove and check color cartridge" even though it will print just fine. If only there was a way to stop that pop-up!

In the past, where printing was limited to 300x300, refills where easy. Now printers give us resolutions that need advanced inks and heads. If you take a look at a spent cartridge you will see that printing has taken a toll on the head itself. How many refills can it take before it misprints and ruins a 2$ print? A black refilled cartridge that I bought (56Hp) lasted only until half full, then it was done! I haven't bought any refurbished ones since then. How does EPSON sell printers with an irreplaceable head that can last for a long time, I don't know!

I've done alot of aftermarket refills and I'll break it down for you all..

Canon and Brother = great refill (with the 21/24 as the exception) and great OEM prices.

Epson = good to refill with the right tools.

Lexmark = simple design makes refilling pretty easy.. but newer cartridges are built to fail sooner.

HP = annoying.. and getting worse.



Generalization or categorization, call it what you will. I'm starting to see more convergence though. HP seems to be trading tech with Canon. Lexmark.. well, they've always had their price. Epson has more inks than a leopard has spots.

For the last post.. Epson can use an irreplacable printhead, because they use pizoelectric technology instead of thermal tech. It means fewer burnouts and longer life. In most cases it also means larger drop size, and more ink used for excessive cleaning cycles. I'm not saying it's better or worse, but that's why they have the fixed printhead.

..and sidenote: I've refilled the LC21 cartridges many times without a problem. You just need to find the right refill instructions.

-len