by Das Brain
In my review about my Epson Stylus CX5000 multi-function printer I had mentioned about buying Epson compatible Inkjet cartridges from 123inkjets.com for substantially lower price than the genuine Epson inkjet cartridges and that the quality of the printing was close to using the genuine Epson ink. This post is an extension of that compatible inkjet cartridge experience.
When you go to replace the inkjet cartridges in your Epson printer, a pop up window will actually show up on your computer screen and say something like “The inkjet cartridges you put in are not genuine Epson ink, do you want to continue using the printer?” I’m not sure if this message is meant to scare you, so you will only use genuine Epson inkjet cartridges only. However you should just ignore this message and go ahead and print with the Epson compatible cartridges. I did and everything worked just fine.
You don’t have to use genuine Epson ink if you don’t want to. I have used both genuine and non-genuine and they both work about the same. The non-genuine or Epson compatible ink cartridges that I used were ordered from 123inkjets.com at a fraction of the price of the original Epson inkjet cartridges. Let’s examine the savings, which will need to converted to Canadian currency to be valid. The genuine Epson black ink cartridge cost $22.96 CAD + 14% tax = $26.17 CAD from Staples Business Depot store or Staples.ca. 123inkjets.com sells the Epson compatible black for $6.45 USD convert that to Canadian currency and we have $6.54 X 1.17 = $ 7.55 CAD. Wow, what a difference. For the color inkjet cartridges Staples Business Depot sells the genuine Epson’s for $15.96 CAD + 14 % tax = $18.19 CAD. As for the compatible color inkjet cartridges, 123inkjets.com sells them for $6.45 USD which comes to $7.55 CAD. The only additional cost for me is the shipping from the U.S to my address in Canada which will cost $10 USD or $11.70 CAD.
To replace all the inkjet cartridges in the Epson Stylus CX multi-function printer, you will need 1 black and 3 color cartridges. If you use all genuine Epson inkjet cartridges, it will cost you $26.17 CAD for the black + $54.57 (18.19 X 3) colors = $80.74 CAD including Canadian tax. Holy cow. Now if you go with all Epson compatible inkjet cartridges the cost is as follows. The prices for black and color inkjet cartridges are the same at $7.55 CAD, so multiply by 4 and you get $30.20 CAD and then add shipping cost of $11.70 CAD and the total comes to $41.90 CAD. Another item to note is the Canadian customs charge which is $6 CAD. Still after the Canadian customs charge the Epson compatible inkjet cartridges are still way cheaper than buying them locally in Ontario, Canada.
So, you can see that buying from 123inkjets.com saved me whopping 59%. Now what about the actual quality of printing. After installing the compatible Epson inkjet cartridges I cleaned the printing head a few times to get it ready for the new ink and printed some pages from an Adobe PDF magazine which had some high quality pictures. The quality was on par with using genuine Epson inkjet cartridges, the only thing that I noticed was the ink doesn’t try as fast and that there was a stronger ink smell than the genuine Epson ink. I imagine this is because the ink was still a little wet. The printed images were just as sharp as using Epson ink, but just a little less shiny, however this might also be because matte paper was used. All in all, the savings was well worth it. I recommend you check out 123inkjets.com and see how much you can save on replacement inkjet cartridges for your printer.
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