The cost to print photos on your own printer is higher than you probably realize. The money spent on a new printer is peanuts compared to the money that will flow out of your bank account for ink. A set of ink cartridges for an Epson R1900 printer will set you back $125. You’ll get about 40 8×10 prints, or $3 each. Add the cost of premium paper (often $1 per sheet) and you are spending what a professional printing service charges (Shutterfly.com charges $4 for an 8×10). When you consider paper jams, clogged ink heads, color tone mismatches, several hundred dollars for a printer, and the hassle of dealing with another computer peripheral… it makes more sense to use Shutterfly.
If you are not technical and not printing several pages of pictures weekly, I suggest you bypass a photo printer. You’ll save money, frustration, get better results, and you can stop reading right now and go do something more enjoyable. Did you know a simple cleaning cycle on your printer can drain 1/10th of the ink in your tanks? The truth is, once you add up the costs, photo printing companies are cheaper and easier.
On the other hand, if you are willing to spend a little time and energy doing research and endure a bit of frustration to set up an alternate ink system, you can drive the cost down…waaaay down. By carefully selecting paper and by using third party ink, my 8×10’s run about 30 cents each. Ink is the bulk of the savings. Epson and Canon will tell you that only their inks and papers will produce acceptable results but I’ll tell you right now that’s BS marketing hype. Of course they want you to buy their papers and inks…they are making a killing selling them to you.
Initially, I rejected the thought of refilling my own ink. The syringes and bottles of ink looked more like a drug lab than a home office. My cousin, Lou, convinced me to begin offering a refill service at the computer store we both were trying to get off the ground. He made it look simple; people brought in empty ink cartridges and we saved them over 80% and still turned a profit. In the end, bottles of ink and syringes became as common as motherboards and hard drives in our back room and nobody ever even accused us of running a drug lab.
Over the past fifteen years I’ve tried different inks and refill devices on Epson, HP, and Canon printers. I’ve had good and bad experiences. To increase your chances of a good one, you need to consider three important requirements:
1. Customer support (first and foremost)
2. Reliable hardware (refill kit or inking system)
3. High quality ink
When it comes to using a 3rd party ink you have two options: refill cartridges or a Continuous inking system (CIS). Refilling usually means a syringe is used to put ink into an empty cartridge. A CIS is a device that sits outside your printer and has tubes running from ink tanks into your printer. Each has pros and cons.
I researched the market, combed the newsgroups, and have picked three companies that appear to meet the three requirements. I have seen and tested CIS devices from each of them for the Epson R1900 and will be posting reviews of them in the near future. Based on my early results, each of these companies offers a reliable product with the potential to save an avid printer like myself hundreds of dollars. I will add detailed information as I continue to use their products.
Before you go down this road, there are pitfalls. Using these methods is not as easy as popping in an ink cartridge from Epson or Canon. Initially, give yourself several hours to get set up. Stay organized, read the directions completely, and clear off a good workspace. Take it slow and make sure you contact support if you have questions or comments (you’ll save yourself time and headaches). If you run into problems my research has found that you can rely on these companies to take care of you. Then, once you get your system setup, it will run quietly in the background with minimal effort to maintain (other than filling the external tanks or cartridges with ink). My dad has had the same CIS on his Canon printer for nearly four years now and I’d guess he’s saved over $5,000 in ink (he prints a lot).
When I use these inks I am completely satisfied. Photos are vibrant and although I haven’t tested for longetivity, others have claimed they stand the tests of time. Everything I have printed has held up well but it’s tough to do a 20 year test without a time machine. Now, having said that… if I compare side by side to Epson inks, I can see the difference. Epson has slightly better color. Not by a long shot, but it is noticeable when you compare them directly. To me, the minimal increase in color doesn’t justify the massive increase in price. And I have three teenagers who love to print and I’d never let them if my printer was stocked with liquid gold from Epson.
Here are the three companies I recommend if you’d like to trek down this path. If one doesn’t support your printer, try another.
![IMG_0213 [640x480]](http://www.warrenhenke.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/img-0213-640x480.jpg)
www.efillink.com Ronnie at efillink.com excels at customer service. My experience and the comments on the newsgroups support this claim. He is willing to talk with you on Skype (in fact, he will make sure he is available if you schedule in advance with him and can walk you through your first refill or CIS setup), send you free replacement materials if his products have issues, and responds quick to requests for assistance. If you buy from Ronnie, you can expect follow-up emails asking if everything is running well and making sure that you are satisfied. In addition to a CIS, he sells the only refillable cartridge option for the R1900, which I prefer. Based on my output, I only have to refill every 3 weeks. He uses ink from Image Specialist and is having custom profiles built which may help prints rival those of the Epson ink.
www.inkjetfly.com Leo has also been quick to offer support and answer questions, even before I began testing his ink systems. His “Bigfoot” system has my favorite external tank design (a long and narrow set of tanks that easily sits next to the printer). Initial tests indicate that his ink has slightly more vibrancy than the Image Specialist ink, but not quite as much as the Epson ink. I have heard of another photographer who uses Inkjetfly ink but sticks with the Epson photo black and claims it is almost identical to a full set of Epson inks. I haven’t tested this yet.
www.inkrepublic.com They seem to be the largest organization of the three, but I could be wrong. They sent me a solid system, included directions, and so far everything has gone smoothly. Comments on newsgroups are generally high when it comes to their products and support. They also use ink from Image Specialist.
August 21st, 2008 at 3:18 pm
i look forward to your reviews. I’m sitting on the fence until i see get a comparison of these systems to install on my R1900.
best regards, mel
October 14th, 2008 at 8:00 pm
I’ve been using the efillink refill cartridges for the R1900 and been pretty happy but the refill cartridges seem to be having chip related errors. The display window shows several with a red X through them as if they are empty and the others are grayed out. When I run through the online replacement routine it says the X’d cartridges are not compatible with the printer (although they had been workign fine). I’ve actually seen this several times…usually it clears itself up within a day or two. It doesn’t seem to be working this time. Has anyone seen this before? Ron wonders if it’s driver related, I’ll update when it is resolved.
I’m getting new inks for the other CIS units in a couple weeks and hear they rival the Epson (which is much higher in gloss and color). This would be enough to convince me to use 3rd party ink for all my printing…I’m looking forward to testing them and will post my results.
February 16th, 2009 at 8:33 pm
I have the same efillink cis system and re-fillable cartridges and am plaqued by the red-X problems. Mine won’t clear this time either. Something is wrong. I’m calling Ronnie tonight. He indicates there are known chip problems, and tank fitment issues in the carriage.
May 12th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
It is not easy to make a suggestion on third party ink systems. Any option requires more time, work, and troubleshooting than original Epson ink. However, the money savings are considerable. New inks are being rolled out that are coming closer to the Epson ink, but still, they have not perfected the process.
Here is what I suggest.
No CIS was without headache (I had issues with every one of them). Setup takes time, it can be intimidating, and even once you get them working right your problems aren’t over. The key is to plan on some troubleshooting and work with somebody who is committed to assisting you throughout the process. Leo sent replacement parts whenever there were issues. He also listened to my complaints about the quality of the black ink and worked with his suppliers to improve it. He sent me 3 different sets to test, and another that I have yet to test. Each time is has improved over the original (which isn’t that bad, just not quite the same as the Epson).
The Bigfoot had been working fine but has started having issues with yellow that I need to troubleshoot. Leo is available to work with me when I get a chance…I just haven’t been able to get to it yet. I’ll keep you posted.
I’ve printed out thousands of prints that have turned out great. The couple of hours every few weeks to tweak the system has saved me hundreds of dollars in ink. It is also nice to let my kids print whatever they want and not have to be an ink Nazi. I like to encourage their photography and printing pictures is part of the process so it is nice to not stress about $6+ in ink for every 8×10.
July 25th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
Hi,
Do you know anything/have an opinion about Lyson CIS?
July 26th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
No experience with Lyon, sorry.
September 18th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
Very helpful review. I just got the R1900 and like it, although there appears to be some banding on my prints. You cannot see it on the DVDs so I assume it has to do with the rollers. You don’t see it right away, but when you inspect the print you see that in the solid colors every 3/16 of an inch across the print there is a stripe across the width of the print. Have you experienced this? Should I return the printer?
September 18th, 2009 at 2:09 pm
I should have added that I plan to go to the refillable ink tanks once I have this banding issue resolved. But I don’t want to go to a non-Epson solution until I know the printer is OK.
September 23rd, 2009 at 9:29 am
I have seen banding on occasion. I’ve usually been able to clear it up right away though, especially on a new printer. If you just got it and are having problems, I’d def suggest you contact Epson…especially before you use any 3rd party ink.
January 25th, 2010 at 6:55 am
First off, THANK YOU for writing this article! I have a R1900 that I use for my art business, and with the economy all iffy, I have been looking for ways to save a few bucks any where I can. I am interested in investing in the CIS from inkjetfly and I wanted to check to see if you had any updates to this article. Any assistance is MOST welcome, as I have never set up a cis system before, and Im worried about the long term quality of my prints. Thanks again for your help! best of luck!
Carla Morrow
AcrylicDragon Fanatasy Art
February 11th, 2010 at 5:00 pm
I wish I had something better to report. I’m still not satisfied with the quality of ink in terms of color saturation and how often 3rd party ink seems to clog the heads. I’ve had several companies say they will send me newer improved ink, canisters, and/or CIS systems…but so far nothing has come through that gets two thumbs up. These systems work, but they take a lot of effort to keep them going. And the colors are still way short of OEM quality. If I find something that works better (I’ve tested about 8 different systems now) I will certainly let you know. If you want me to review one that doesn’t show up, send the manufacturer a link to this article. I’ll be happy to do it for anyone who thinks they’ve finally got it right.
February 27th, 2010 at 4:50 pm
Thank you for doing all the testing and posting. Have you tried Cone Inks? from InkjetMall? What has been your experience?
I have an Epson R800, but really want to be able to print larger. Cost of ink on pro-sumer 13″ wide printers is exhorbitant (with the concomittant problems of small ink carts losing a large % of their ink for cleaning/priming),. but we just cant’ justify the expense (or space required) for a 3880
Thnaks for your input
March 1st, 2010 at 5:46 pm
I haven’t tried Inkjetmall. If they contact me to test for them, I’ll let you know how it goes.
Thanks,
-Warren
March 17th, 2010 at 10:28 pm
Hi Warren,
Just read and enjoyed your article “Zen Photography in 10 Steps”. I’m putting in a link, but don’t know if it will work. http://www.warrenhenke.com/writing/essays/zen-photography-in-10-steps
(By the way, your link to the “Zen….” article from your Photography tab seems to be broken, the one in Writing works fine)
Now to the reason for this post. I have an Epson Stylus Photo 1400, and have been using refillable cartridges purchased from Precisions Colors (which uses Image Specialists ink) with no problems after hundreds of photo prints. From my limited experience I agree that Epson Ink is the best, but also agree that it’s simply not affordable to those of us who like to print a lot, but are on a budget.
Your comments in this section (above) are the best I’ve come across on the subject. Because I enjoy printing very much, and want to continue to be able to print with little concern for cost, I’m writing to ask the questions below.
1. I’ve been very pleased with Costco (Kirkland) photo paper, but it only comes in 4 X 6 and 8.5 X 11 sizes. Could you recommend inexpensive larger sized paper in both matte and photo quality (hopefully 13 x 19 size).
2. You’ve now tried 8 different systems and many different inks. Your comments make it clear you’re not real enthusiastic about any of them. However, I wonder if you could tell us, as of now, if you have a favorite selection or two with regard to inks, refillable cartridges, and Continuous Ink Systems.
Any comments or help will be very much appreciated. I hope to find time to explore your site further.
Best of luck in all your endeavors,
Daniel
April 13th, 2010 at 5:54 pm
Hi Warren,
Thank you for the great information. I was very iffy about switching over myself. However, I recently installed the CIS for my Epson 1400 and ran it couple times. I come back a day later and the ink level on magenta is empty. Now couple more days later cyan is almost empty. I’ve printed couple pages at the most, but now I already have to order the refill inks. Very frustrated. Do you have any idea why this is happening?
Would greatly appreciate any feedback you can share.
Thank you so much!
August 12th, 2010 at 11:27 am
I see your last post was a while ago, I am glad I ran into this article – thank you so much!
At this point if you were to recommend the least headachy of the refillable cartridges and CIS which would they be? And which ink was closer to Epson?
thank you sooooo very much!
August 12th, 2010 at 11:38 am
The reason I haven’t posted for so long is the utter discouragement I have felt trying to find a 3rd party system that works and prints well. I’m still looking. Ron at eFillink.com is the only one that hasn’t given up and is sending me a new round of cartridges to test. I’ll let you know what I find out. If they work out better (ink blots on pages and clogged nozzles have been a problem so far) I still have the problem of color quality to address. But Ron is confident he can deliver an ink color and profile that I’ll be happy with. I’ll keep you posted. The other companies gave up with my questions and requests for improvements.
August 13th, 2010 at 3:11 pm
Warren, I just set up my R1900 and love the quality but the ink really goes fast. I want to go with a compatible ink because of I have a lot of printing to do. Please keep us up to date on what you find out with Ron’s latest inks. I will just have buy OEM inks until I know what is best. I had a R800 and loved it but had problems with a clogged ink cartridge that I couldn’t get cleared and it was with OEM inks. So I went with the R1900. I look forward to hearing good news on these inks.
Thanks for sharing your information with all of us.
Richard
August 31st, 2010 at 12:48 pm
I have been using the Epson R2400 for some 3 years now, along with a Stylus Color 3000 that I use for proofing. The R2400 has been a great printer but the ink costs associated with it have been been somewhat astounding. Since I use the R2400 for both Photographic work AND graphics and DTP my ink usage may be somewhat higher than usual. For quite a while I toyed with the idea of going to some sort of refillable or continuous ink system but there were always caveats associated with most
of these devices and I looked at quite a few. There’s really no way anyone can REALLY determine which of these devices actually works other than taking the plunge and investing in one. So after much deliberation I decided to go with a refillable cartridge system rather than a CIS because ALL the CIS devices I devices I checked into required stuff to be hanging out of the printer or to be
drilling holes in it since the R2400 was never designed with CIS in mind. The Idea of cartridges appealed to me because I like things nice an neat. So I decided to go with the Efillink cart system as it was really the only system that was getting CONSISTENTLY (important word there) good reviews from people on the forums that actually had them. My setup consists of the R2400 8 ounce cart package, chip re-setter, and cleaning kit.
Personally I wouldn’t recommend someone getting any sort of third party continuous system unless you have a method of profiling the system to the paper(S) that you’ll be using. I had to do this with the Epson K3 and I’m using epson papers (among others) as the canned (downloadable) profiles were close but not quite close enough. I use a DataColor Spectro with SpyderPRint Pro. After installing the Efillink cartridges the first thing I did was print out the 8 Color test pages I got off of Rons’ site. The First print (on plain paper at Best Photo setting) showed banding on LLK, LC, K, C, M, and
Y. Since I use a print server I installed the SSC utility on the server so I could use the more superior head cleaning options that this utility allows. This utility has a bevy of useful features but DOES NOT
work with Networked printers unfortunately. So I ran a SSC Power clean and then printed the second 8 color purge page which now showed perfect blacks but still some slight banding on M, LC, and C. At this point I did a SSC color ONLY clean and printed the 3rd, 8 color purge page. All colors were now perfect with no banding on any color.
Now it was on to profiling. I use mostly Epson papers with some Ilford heavy bond for very large photographic prints. Epson S041124 for graphic output and S041405 for regular photographic prints. The 2 Epson papers are the ones I use the most and are the ones I profiled first. Epson S041124 is a lighter weight smooth satin gloss paper. The R2400 prints inherently darker but even more so on lighter paper. Im guessing the lighter the paper the more chance for ink to blot as the printer uses
pretty much the same amounts of ink at any of the given settings regardless of the paper being used. I print a 225 color and 255 chip gray sheet (2 sheets) for each of the given printer settings and then spectro those into a profile for that particular setting. On the R2400 there are 4 settings, Fine, Photo, Best Photo, and Photo RPM with is used for printing on canvas (which I have yet to
use). Printing out the first set of chip sheets on EPSON S041124 in FINE mode with the Image Specialists ink set, I compared those to it’s K3 counterparts. There wasn’t much of a difference really other than the noticeable slightly darker blacks which was a welcome change from the K3. Whites and mids were neck and neck with the K3 with no really noticeable differences. Once I got the
chip sheets spectro’ed, and a profile for the Epson S041124 paper in Fine mode completed, I printed some composited graphic material out of photoshop using the new profile. Compared to output from the K3 ink set there is VIRTUALLY NO DISCERNABLE DIFFERENCE IN PRINT QUALITY! Same goes for pure photographic material. The blacks are slightly blacker but this was something I was missing with the K3.
So, all in all a GREAT investment. The same to better print quality, for what approximately amounts to 3$ per color cartridge to print as opposed to the genuine Epson K3 which I was paying from 11-13$ per color cartridge. I must say as well, Ron Luk of Efillink is very attentive to his customers and I can’t say enough about the kind of support he provides. I will also say that I am NOT, in any way shape or form, affiliated with Efillink in any capacity other than being a customer of the R2400 cart system. I recommend the Efillink cartridge system for anyone who has a profiling system and a Epson R2400 printer. This cart system actually makes a good printer even greater by reducing the costs it takes to run it.