[Closed] Printer cartridges, original or cheaper one's?

I use non-originals in our older HP Photosmart. Cartridges are a fraction of the cost using 're-manufactured ones:-

Our printer often sits for months unused, then will get hammered.

The printer warns us on first installing that they aren't 'originals' but that's the last we hear.

Sometimes the odd cartridge will be a bit duff, but given the savings, it's not an issue. I've found some makes a bit hit and miss. Currently using 'office world' ones off Amazon. 5 cartridges for less than the cost of 1 original. I like them because they are transparent and you can see you are getting a full cartridge, and can see when it's nearly empty - not just relying on the printer to warn you - ours was reporting black was low this week, but it went on to print at least another 100 pages - daughter was printing stuff out for college.

We've had one instance where the ink had 'gone off' - the colour was duff - checked the cartridges and you could see the 'yellow' ink inside the clear cartridge wasn't yellow !

I have just been doing some printing after a break with an Epson R3000. I was sure that it would be clogged to death so I was unwilling to pay 25 quid per colour for it just to be wasted on cleaning cycles, and bought a set of cheapo inks for 10 quid each. After a lot of arseing about - cleaning with Windex etc, it was working fine except for horrible black smudges. I replaced the cheapo black ink with a cartridge of Epson ink and it seemed to work better - maybe coincidence, I don't know.

TL;DR Original might be better, or might not 🙂

Cheap cartridges in my Canon MG5750. I have no problem with the print quality, except that when I print photos I think they fade (E.g. in direct sunlight) quicker than they should, though I haven't done any comparisons.

I keep telling myself 'next time' I'll buy the proper cartridges. Then I realise there's a 5-fold difference (~£15 for a set of the cheap ones vs £69 for the official ones) and I keep buying the cheap ones. Haven't had a problem. I've used Stinkyink shop a few times and their service is great.

https://www.stinkyinkshop.co.uk

I have a couple of cheap ones in our canon printer.

The colour one has been fine, the black one is a pain in the arse. I think it's leaking as it needs removing and wiping before use each time.

They will **** your printer eventually. But, the cost difference is normally sufficient that unless your printer is very expensive, you’ll probably have saved (at least) enough to just sling it and get a new one. Or, like I do, just soldier on with weird marks/shit print quality because you don’t care 😀

Cheap ones in the HP for years, never had a problem, just done a bulk order of black ink ones as the Mrs has been hammering it with wfh crap.

How will a cheap cartridge mess up a printer?

Cheap ones in the HP for years, never had a problem

Same here, although I did have to set it to a strange service mode to stop it rejecting the non oem cartridges & to make it work once the cartridges got low - but still plenty of ink to print 😡

Used non OEM ones for 20 years now, never had a single issue and never been able to tell the difference.
I use Inkfactory.com at the moment - always use the bigger online companies rather than the absolute cheapest on eBay/Amazon and never had an issue. Huge savings - if a printer is £50 (my current one was) then you only have to buy non OEM ink carts 2 or 3 times to save the cost of the printer itself.

How will a cheap cartridge mess up a printer?

It's happened sooner or later to every single person I know who runs 3rd party inks/toners on commercial printers (including me 😃)

I do use compatibles on home/office style printers though, the cost saving outweighs anything else!