With the high price of cartridges, it is very tempting to purchase cheap inkjet cartridges made by third-party vendors. But should you?
Studies indicated that third-party inks can indeed save money and make prints on par with inks made by the printer manufacturer. However, not every brand did. Some clogged the print heads and/or produced poor prints from high resolution images.
There is also concern about how long the prints will last when using cheap inkjet cartridges.
Permanence Ratings of name brand inks, when used with archival photo paper, is about 25 to 90 years! Some third-party inks, while cheaper, only had Permanence Ratings of between one and five years.
Before deciding whether to use third-party brands, visit the Wilhelm Imaging Research website for more information about photo longevity and inkjet ink. The site has reprints of articles published in respected magazines about inkjet print permanence.
