Are third-party ink cartridges worth it?

Printer ink is sold on a razor-and-blades model: the machine is cheap and the consumables are not. That makes third-party cartridges genuinely attractive, and the market is large. It is also a market where quality varies enormously between suppliers, so the decision is less about compatibles as a category and more about which type of printer you have and what you print.

Step by step

1. Work out which type of cartridge your printer uses.Some cartridges contain the print head — the tiny nozzle array — and some are just tanks feeding a permanent head in the printer. This is the most important distinction. With head-in-cartridge designs, a poor cartridge simply prints badly and you replace it. With a permanent head, poor ink can clog the head, which is expensive or fatal.
2. Calculate what you actually spend.Work out pages printed per year and cost per set of cartridges, and compare with the cost per year of compatibles. A household printing a few hundred pages a year may be arguing over a small sum; one printing thousands is looking at a serious difference.
3. Know your legal position.In the UK a manufacturer cannot void a warranty simply because you used third-party consumables. If they refuse a repair they must show the ink caused the fault. Keep receipts, and keep a set of original cartridges to fit if you ever send the printer for service.
4. Choose between compatible, remanufactured and refilled.Compatible means newly made by another manufacturer. Remanufactured means an original shell cleaned and refilled by a third party. Refill kits mean you do it yourself. Compatibles and remanufactured from a reputable supplier are the sensible options; self-refilling is messy and unreliable.
5. Buy from a supplier with a returns policy.The single best protection is a seller who takes back cartridges that do not work. Quality varies batch to batch, and a supplier who will not stand behind their product is telling you something.
6. Expect to deal with warning messages.Most printers display a non-genuine cartridge warning and may report ink levels inaccurately or not at all. That is normal. Learn to judge by print quality instead.
7. Consider whether an ink tank printer solves it properly.Refillable tank printers cost more up front and dramatically less per page, and they remove the whole cartridge argument. For a household that prints a lot, this is usually the better answer than fighting with compatibles.

Common mistakes

• Buying the cheapest listing available — The bottom of this market is genuinely bad — leaking cartridges, wrong colour, chips that stop working after a firmware update. A mid-priced compatible from a named supplier is a different product.
• Using compatibles in a printer whose head is permanent, for archival photo printing — Colour accuracy and fade resistance are where original inks earn their price. For photographs meant to last, this is the wrong place to economise.

Alternatives

• Manufacturer's ink subscription: Pages per month for a fixed fee with cartridges posted automatically. Genuinely cheap for low volumes, but the printer usually needs to stay connected to the internet and stops working if the subscription lapses. Read what happens to unused pages and to cartridges you have already received.
• Refillable ink tank printer: Bottles rather than cartridges, at a small fraction of the cost per page. Higher purchase price, and worth it above a few hundred pages a year.
• A mono laser printer: For a household printing mostly text, a laser costs very little per page, does not dry out between uses, and toner lasts for years. The best answer for occasional printing of ordinary documents.
• Printing at a shop: For a handful of pages a year, print shops and libraries are cheaper than owning any printer at all once cartridge waste is counted.

Questions people ask