OEM vs. off-brand ink for Epson printer

TerryP

I am printing on an Epson R1800 from LR, PS CS, and Elements 4 for MAC. I am consistently getting a green cast on a horse's body in a certain print. I can't seem to get rid of it. The blue/aqua in the jockey's silks is perfect.

I used both matte and luster paper with the proper paper profiles. My monitor is calibrated with Spyder2Pro.

I figure the only thing left is the ink itself. It is an off brand (G&G) from SuperMediaStore. At $93+ for an Epson OEM pack, off-brand ink seemed like a good idea. For the life of me I can't figure out why it wouldn't be as good. Ink is ink, right? Or am I being a tad naive here?

Epson sues every off brand they can so the off-brand ink must be good. They never cite it being because of inferior ink or cartridges breaking their machines and protecting the consumer. They are protecting their profit model, which I can appreciate, but hey, welcome to America.

Any thoughts out there on OEM vs. off brank ink?

Terry

arodney

TerryP wrote:

I figure the only thing left is the ink itself. It is an off brand (G&G) from SuperMediaStore. At $93+ for an Epson OEM pack, off-brand ink seemed like a good idea.

Not a good idea <g>. First, you could void your warranty or clog the heads. 2nd, the paper profiles you're using are based on the Epson inks, not a off-brand which probably accounts for the color issues.

Sweeper

There are so many different off-brand ink companies now looking for your $$. What I have found over the last 3 years is that ink for an Epson R-800 is never listed on their hit list of availables. Any of the "R" series are simply not available in the big box stores either.

To save a few $$ but worry about it later is not my avenue. I pay the extra and sleep at night. I also stick with the Epson papers. Perhaps paranoid over it, but I have been home printing since my early Canon series printers several years ago. Stuck with those inks as well until one day I decided to do the refil thing. Did that for 6 months and woke up one day to the fact that I was also buying print heads more than before. Perhaps I am on the losing end of things for doing so but, I now stick to company originated supplies. If nothing else, when I have a complaint, then it is valid.

...Steve

cabbey

not for photos.
3rd party ink is for business documents, not photos. The local ink place even brags that their inks make better reds than the factory inks because they specially formulated them since red is such a high impact color in spread sheets and business documents. I used to use 3rd party ink all the time for business documents before I started printing graphic arts. That's when I abandoned them for real oem ink (and a new print head at the time).

entropysedge

Sweeper wrote:

There are so many different off-brand ink companies now looking for your $$. What I have found over the last 3 years is that ink for an Epson R-800 is never listed on their hit list of availables. Any of the "R" series are simply not available in the big box stores either.

To save a few $$ but worry about it later is not my avenue. I pay the extra and sleep at night. I also stick with the Epson papers. Perhaps paranoid over it, but I have been home printing since my early Canon series printers several years ago. Stuck with those inks as well until one day I decided to do the refil thing. Did that for 6 months and woke up one day to the fact that I was also buying print heads more than before. Perhaps I am on the losing end of things for doing so but, I now stick to company originated supplies. If nothing else, when I have a complaint, then it is valid.

...Steve

+1

I worked for one of the printer companies as a marketing rep and one of the things that we did in training was the off-brand vs oem inks. the oems came out on top across the board (they had us try examples from all the printer companies so that we could see the differences the ink made on all brands of printers.) The oem ink tended to last a little longer than the off-brand stuff as well.

Hindsight

I use off brand ink for Epson from supermediastore.com all the time for DVD printing and it does just fine. I just switched over to the R380 from the R200 which uses claria ink and haven't tried the offbrand claria type, but as far as the R200 ink my DVD's look great and have held up well vs any fading. I don't print my own photos, preferring to have them done by a lab, but if I did would seriously hesitate using the offbrand ink just based on all I've read. For DVD printing however at least for the pre-claria ink, it looks great.

BBiggs

cabbey wrote:

3rd party ink is for business documents, not photos. The local ink place even brags that their inks make better reds than the factory inks because they specially formulated them since red is such a high impact color in spread sheets and business documents. I used to use 3rd party ink all the time for business documents before I started printing graphic arts. That's when I abandoned them for real oem ink (and a new print head at the time).

I agree, if you are printing photos use OEM.

ArfArooo

Off Brand works perfectly well with my Epson 4000
I've been using G&G with my 4000 for around 18 months and they work perfectly fine. My warranty period ended a couple of years ago so that's not an issue for me, and the $40 tab per cartridge beats the socks off Epson's price. Plus I got annoyed with Epson for saying their cartridges needed replacing when they actually had more life in them - that was the subject of a class action lawsuit which successfully required Epson to refund consumers. (It was maybe a $25 refund, total, and I forgot to send my claim in on time ... but my trust level fizzled somewhat).