Inkjet Wars: Cheap Ink vs. Expensive

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Everybody always talks about the price of inkjet cartridges, but nobody ever
does anything about it — or do they?

With more and more businesses relying on inkjet printers for their hard-copy
needs, and more and more photos produced using computer printouts instead of traditional
photochemical paper, the high cost of brand-name ink affects an ever-larger audience.

Some people are doing something about the price of ink — but you need to know
both the ups and the downs of the alternatives.

Excellent Prints, Widely Varying Prices

Today’s inkjet printers (and competing technologies, such as dye-sublimation) can
deliver excellent quality for almost any business need. Take the Canon i9900, a
$499 printer that uses eight separate ink cartridges to provide accurate color reproduction.
It’s been top-rated by Wired, PC World, PC Magazine, and other reviewers for everything
from its tabloid-size capability (up to 13 by 19 inches, borderless) to its fast
and impressive 4-by-6-inch
snapshot prints.

The prices of ink cartridges for this SUV of printers, however, are all over the map.
Here’s what I found in a recent price check for a single i9900 black ink cartridge
(in U.S. dollars, not including shipping or taxes):

• Canon USA Web site: $11.95.
The official Canon site sells each i9900 ink cartridge for almost
$12. And, remember, the printer requires eight different cartridges, adding up to more than $95
for a complete set.

•
Amazon.com (genuine Canon): $8.15. The exact same black ink cartridge, a
genuine Canon product in Canon-logo packaging, is discounted about one-third by
Amazon.

•
Amazon.com (third-party alternative): $4.00. When I investigated
Amazon’s “New & Used” link, which leads to the e-tailer’s partners, a vendor
named Inkfair was promoting a black i9900 cartridge for two-thirds off. This,
however, is clearly a look-alike cartridge that’s not manufactured by Canon.

I even found numerous offers made by Amazon partners
advertising black cartridges for a mere $0.01 (one cent). These
listings, being easily the lowest price, tended to sort to the top of the page.
Most of these links led to an Amazon-affiliated seller named SkyTechStore, which
wasn’t actually selling cartridges for a penny, considering that the fine print
said “buy 3 get 1 free.”

(I guess Amazon doesn’t allow its partners to enter a price of $0.00 for the
fourth, “free” cartridge. I never found out why Amazon allows a price as low as
one cent to be entered, though, since it’s hardly possible to order just one
cartridge for that little.)

Surprisingly, it was quite difficult for me to find listings of genuine Canon
products when I searched Amazon.com and several other price-comparison sites.
Overwhelmingly, the search results I saw were stacked with third-party offers
prominently pushing the Canon name. In every case, however, the term “Canon
Compatible” appeared somewhere. Whenever you see the word “compatible,” be aware
that you’re not being offered the brand-name product.

How To Choose Between Brand-Name and Third-Party

If there’s no trickery involved, and it’s clear that you’re buying an
alternative to the printer manufacturer’s official ink, my research indicates
that third-party cartridges can truly offer bargains and deliver high-quality
output. Not all third-party cartridges are the same, unfortunately.

Many corporations insist on using brand-name inks from the original printer
maker because of the following concerns:

• Will third-party inks damage my printer?

• If the printer will be OK, will third-party inks produce poor color
quality?

• Even if the colors match, will third-party inks produce prints that
rapidly fade?

• Even if all the above is fine, are the lower prices due to less ink
in each cartridge?

In a widely quoted study, third-party inks tended to produce poorer color
fidelity and fade much more quickly than brand-name Canon, Epson, and HP inks,
in a review published by PC World.
That finding, however, came out in September 2003, which is two years ago. A lot
has happened in ink technology since then.

With brand-name cartridges listing for at least triple the cost of
third-party alternatives, I can understand why heavy ink users don’t feel like
handing over the manufacturer’s asking price. After all, why pay the $12
cartridge price at Canon’s site when you could instead use that money to, say,
buy yourself a cup of coffee at Starbucks?

In my next few columns, I’m going to take you behind the scenes of the inkjet
business. There’s good ink and bad ink, as well as excellent and questionable
inkjet paper. It’s about time you learned how to tell the difference — and how
to protect yourself from shoddy and faded-looking prints.

If you yourself have insider information on printer ink, toner, or paper, e-mail
it to me using my
contact page. I’ll send you a gift certificate for a free book, CD, or DVD
of your choice if your tip is one that I print.