Sudhaus refill inks

[inkoholic]

I'm wondering if these refill inks might be worth a look. Sudhaus cartridges are well reviewed on druckerchannel.de, so I'm guessing the refill ink should be cool also. Most people in here seem to appreciate ink by Image Specialists or Octoink etc. But Sudhaus is a major German commercial manufacturer so I'm curious about the quality.

Check it out over here:
http://www.patronenhandel.de/shop/en/Redsetter/IP-Serie/iP-4500/mit-Refill-Set

 

[panos]

I have used these inks when I bought my redsetter.

The quality was excellent. Among the best I've ever used. But I print almost entirely on plain paper and I only care about characteristics such as reliability, duplex printing quality, water, smudge and marker resistance etc.

 

[falcongp4]

Image Specialits compared Sudhaus that this is? someone has been able to compare?

 

[ahinterl]

I ordered a refill set of inks for my Pixma 4850 last week. Compared to the Peach ink that I used before, I get significantly more visible dithering on all high quality photo papers (glossy) that I normally use. Don't know where this comes from, since Sudhaus has a good reputation and various reviews recommend their ink. But the results with Peach ink are way smoother at least on my printer. In addition, colors are more saturated with Peach ink. Sad, because it looks I'm not going to use the Sudhaus ink, and I just have to inform me about a way to get bulk Peach ink...

Andreas

 

[The Hat]

I ordered a refill set of inks for my Pixma 4850 last week. Compared to the Peach ink that I used before, I get significantly more visible dithering on all high quality photo papers (glossy) that I normally use. Don't know where this comes from, since Sudhaus has a good reputation and various reviews recommend their ink. But the results with Peach ink are way smoother at least on my printer. In addition, colors are more saturated with Peach ink. Sad, because it looks I'm not going to use the Sudhaus ink, and I just have to inform me about a way to get bulk Peach ink...

Andreas

If you mix colour ink brands the result will inevitable lead to variations in your output especially noticeable with photos.
Third party inks (not all) just dont mix well and can cause variations to your ink flow and lead to ink starvation in your cartridges.

I dont know which cartridges you are using but when you switch from using any third party inks
it is always advisable to purge your cartridges of all the old inks in them.

Try to avoid using compatible refill cartridges and only refill your OEM cartridges for the best possible printing results..

 

[ahinterl]

I use a set of empty refillable cartridges that I filled with the Sudhaus ink. Then I printed several pages with color patterns to make sure that most of the ink that's still in the printer got washed out and the Sudhaus ink took over. When I now print with that ink and compare the results with those that I've made using Peach ink, I can see a subtle difference in the smoothness of the colors: The Sudhaus printouts show a much more "grainy" structure, so I can see some kind of "granularity" of areas such as sky or darker portions of the photo. Not that there's any kind of posterization or blocks of colors/jagged edges or so. You need to look very, very close, only then you can see an effect like if you watch a full sized commercial poster from arms length - dithering, that's what is more visible.

Don't know why this happens, but it doesn't look like a printer malfunction or a problem with the color. It's the dithering that I can see much more with the Sudhaus ink. Peach delivers more smooth colors - I can see the dithering there too, if I really, really look close, but it's way less than the Sudhaus ink.

Fact is that I now tested on high quality paper like Kodak Premium Ultra and HP Advanced, Sudhaus ink shows the dithering on all of them (Kodak was worse). Same goes for the paper that i normally use for my Peach ink (HP Everyday - besides, after my tests, the best and cheapest high quality paper, you can see no difference to much more expensive paper).

I thought I save some money by using bulk quality ink - man was I wrong! I got myself refillable cartridges, packages of different high priced quality photo paper, and a set of quality ink (Sudhaus) just to find out that my initial setup (Peach ink and HP Everyday Glossy Paper 200g) was the optimal setup! I had the "luck of the stupid" when I chose that ink and paper! Now I'm "wiser" and won't test any other "quality" ink or paper anymore. Since Peach doesn't sell bulk ink, all that's left for me is to buy their sets of 5 cartridges for EUR 19,- each time I run out of ink... Sad...

Andreas

 

[ahinterl]

Tested some more with Sudhaus ink: Cannot recommend it because it has far smaller a gamut than e.g. Peach ink.

 

[WolfgangExler]

as written earlier in other topics:

I highly recommend Coloration ink from Farbenwerk.com or OCP inks

Wolfgang

 

[ahinterl]

Thank you, Wolfgang. I ordered an ink set from farbenwerk.com yesterday. OCP looks good as well, maybe I'll try them out if I'm not satisfied with the Farbenwerk inks (what I don't think).

Andreas

 

[inkoholic]

Wow, some useful info appeared in this thread while I was gone. Surprised to see the original Sudhaus inks had some dithering issue. The Sudhaus brand has been replaced with "Prodinks". Is the quality any different from Sudhaus? Pricing is still very attractive.