How to choose the best ink for your printer
Spending hours, or days even, finding the right printer can be tiresome. Depending on your needs you have to wade through all of the options, decide which peripheral components you absolutely do and do not need, and then you have to buy the actual thing, whilst trying to get good value at a price that?s right. However, as tricky as finding the right printer can be, finding the right ink for your new printer can, unfortunately, be even more cumbersome. No matter how good your printer is, it will only ever produce documents as good quality as the ink that printed them, so finding the perfect ink to go with your printer is key to a stress-free printing future.
All printers have slightly different ways of telling you that your ink is running out, from no warning whatsoever, to a flashing light or convenient red stripes emblazoned horizontally across anything it spits out. But assuming you know your printer definitely needs new ink, and isn?t just faulty, then you can start choosing the best ink for the job. Don?t ever measure the amount of pages printed on the cartridge that came with the printer, as you obviously can?t tell exactly how new it was, but start keeping a rough tally of how many jobs you get out of each cartridge you put in - as this will help determine value for money.
If, for example, you usually just print basic A4 sheets of black and white text, then you can expect to get a lot more from your ink cartridge than you would if you were printing various documents in various colours. And likewise, measuring how effective your ink is far simpler if you routinely print similar documents.
The first option that many people consider is the common DIY refill kits that are available from many print stores and electrical specialists. For a start these obviously don?t fit all printer brands and models, so double check yours, and unfortunately they are prone to using as generic an ink as possible, so that they can work on many different printers. The quality of these will never be high so, unless you?re happy with a little bit of mess and low-quality printing, then stay away.
Of course, the simplest and most obvious way to choose ink for your printer is to simply follow the manufacturer?s recommendations and replace your old cartridge with one of the manufacturer?s own models of ink for printers. Most printer brands will also make print cartridges too, so there should be an exact cartridge for your model of printer. However this often comes at a premium and will rarely be the cheapest option. That said, for hassle-free, safe and good quality printing, there is no alternative.
