Experience of good, cheap, generic dye inks?

[Rapid]

Hi All,

With a lot of you guys seemingly being photo enthusiasts I hope I'm in the right place for this kind of query!

I've recently taken delivery of an Epson ET-2711. We print a fair bit at home purely for our infant's school work and activities for them to do. This has gone up significantly during lockdown as you can imagine.

I realise that Epson OEM ink for this printer is really cheap (in relative terms) but as we only print things that are used for a few minutes and then recycle, OEM ink seems overkill for our needs and there are many suppliers that are still 7-8 times cheaper than OEM with seemingly good feedback.

The only things that are important to me is:

1. ink that doesn't dry up fast in printhead as we often print a load of stuff weekly in bulk.
2. a good level of vibrancy to colours i.e. not dull as I have had with a minority of cartridges in the past - this is important as most of what we print are high proportion of colour for the kids.

Things such as fading, bronzing etc don't matter to me at all.

I use a mixture of Double A premium 80 gsm and HP Premium 90 gsm paper. In the unlikely event anyone reading this isn't familiar with the printer the ET-2711 takes 4 dyes (not the pigment black as some ecotanks do) in built in CISS format (not cartridges).

I'm based in the UK.

So does anyone have any recommendations of cheap dye based suppliers to consider?

I've heard a few good reports about Natureinks, Coralgraph and Aomya although I'm not sure how trustworthy they are! I'd also be interested to hear if Mr Ink Stained Fingers has any experience with Akinks as they are German and possibly made by Inktec? All of the above priced around £2 per 100ml (as opposed to ~£13 OEM).

Before some says it.....I've ruled out Octoink as respectfully, they're not that much cheaper than Epson OEM (probably overkill for what I need?) despite appearing to be a great company.

Thanks in advance!

 

[The Hat]

Before some says it.....I've ruled out Octoink as respectfully, they're not that much cheaper than Epson OEM (probably overkill for what I need?) despite appearing to be a great company.

Well I'll keep my mouth shut so....

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

i recognize that you want to go really cheap. You have 2 choices in this case - you either buy ready made bottles filled with compatible ink or you go even lower and buy bulk ink, screw off the head of the Epson bottle, fill it up again and fill up the printer tank. I don't think the risk of clogging is much higher with alternate dye inks than with the genuine inks, it is just helpfull that you keep the printer busy and don't let the printer idle for too long. The print mechanism will last, I'm currently at above 50 000 pages with an L310 which uses the same print mechanism. Some cleanings are necessary now and then and some waste ink pads needed to be replaced.
I don't know 'Akinks', I assume that you have several larger refill ink suppliers in your country, you mention Aomya, I bought pigment inks from them via Aliexpress from China. Inktec inks are offered by Octoink, I cannot compare their pricing to other suppliers, I'm using mainly Epson inks 106.
All those 3rd party inks don't have a good fading performance - I understand that you don't really care for your type of printouts, and you can expect some color shifts different by supplier, but it should be possible to adjust the output via the driver color adjustment settings . Be aware that dye inks on copy paper, not coated for inkjet use , do not deliver very saturated colors regardless of the supplier, pigment inks in home office printers, with the Durabrite inks would do somewhat better. If you want more color saturation you may look for inkjet paper - one- or two-sided , and up from 90-100gr , it makes a visible difference , you even may print important images on such paper and the rest of the printout on regular paper - it's all your choice.

 

[stratman]

our infant's school work

Your infant is in school???

I remember when all you needed was a colorful mobile above the crib and a See 'n' Say!

 

[Rapid]

Your infant is in school???

I remember when all you needed was a colorful mobile above the crib and a See 'n' Say!

If only we could give them that to keep them quiet!

'Infants' are up to Year 2 in school 😛

 

[Rapid]

i recognize that you want to go really cheap. You have 2 choices in this case - you either buy ready made bottles filled with compatible ink or you go even lower and buy bulk ink, screw off the head of the Epson bottle, fill it up again and fill up the printer tank. I don't think the risk of clogging is much higher with alternate dye inks than with the genuine inks, it is just helpfull that you keep the printer busy and don't let the printer idle for too long. The print mechanism will last, I'm currently at above 50 000 pages with an L310 which uses the same print mechanism. Some cleanings are necessary now and then and some waste ink pads needed to be replaced.
I don't know 'Akinks', I assume that you have several larger refill ink suppliers in your country, you mention Aomya, I bought pigment inks from them via Aliexpress from China. Inktec inks are offered by Octoink, I cannot compare their pricing to other suppliers, I'm using mainly Epson inks 106.
All those 3rd party inks don't have a good fading performance - I understand that you don't really care for your type of printouts, and you can expect some color shifts different by supplier, but it should be possible to adjust the output via the driver color adjustment settings . Be aware that dye inks on copy paper, not coated for inkjet use , do not deliver very saturated colors regardless of the supplier, pigment inks in home office printers, with the Durabrite inks would do somewhat better. If you want more color saturation you may look for inkjet paper - one- or two-sided , and up from 90-100gr , it makes a visible difference , you even may print important images on such paper and the rest of the printout on regular paper - it's all your choice.

Lots of interesting information here, thank you. Where do I start....

Aomya - yes I know. It got a mention because of your original pigment post! It was because you recommended pigments and I'm talking about dyes that I thought it was slightly different. Then again, if they make good pigments it stands to reason they probably make good dyes.

Filling wise yes, I was planning to buy either 100ml or 250ml bottles and use a syringe to fill the tanks.

I appreciate your information regarding ink/paper. I probably didn't explain very well but our printouts or the kids don't need to be anything special so I wouldn't go as far as upgrading paper. As for as 'multipurpose' paper goes the Double A 80 gsm is excellent.

When looking for the ink recommendations it's just a case of not getting dull colours, as I've had that a few times with compatible cartidges. I didn't know you could adjust colour through driver settings (noob!) so perhaps that's something I'll check out when I change inks.

As for pigment vs dye that's interesting however, even if I was considering that route I don't know how I wouldn't mix the two inks due to how the ecotank filling works. I'm not sure how I'd flush the system. Anywho, for ease and cost I think I'd still stick with dyes.

If you were interested in trying Akinks here's the link: http://tintenkammer.de/Tinte-Drucke...uelltinte-fuer-Epson-Eco-Tank---4x-250ml.html

They're only dyes though so I imagine they probably won't be to a printer master level!

Unfortunately they never replied to my email when I sent them a query but perhaps that's because it was in English....

Thanks again for the information.

If anyone else has UK recommendations please let me know!

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I don't know Akink, Tintenkammer claims that those inks are made in Germany - they are not InkTec inks. But 'Made in Germany' does not imply any particular level of quality for me.
You may look for InkTec inks in your country - e.g. here

www.inktec-uk.co.uk/refill_ink_epson.htm

Stay with dye inks - they should fit your tasks.

 

[Rapid]

I don't know Akink, Tintenkammer claims that those inks are made in Germany - they are not InkTec inks. But 'Made in Germany' does not imply any particular level of quality for me.
You may look for InkTec inks in your country - e.g. here

www.inktec-uk.co.uk/refill_ink_epson.htm

Stay with dye inks - they should fit your tasks.

There's a perception in the UK that anything 'made in Germany' is of good quality

Inktec unfortunately are almost the same price as OEM.

I'm not sure about worldwide but in the UK there's a huge lack of transparency about where inks are made. I can only imagine this is because 99% are made in China! The only UK manufacturer I know of is JetTec but like Inktec, they are almost as expensive as OEM.

'Made in China' of course doesn't mean bad quality. The issue is that nobody says which manufacturer they're from in China. Obviously there will be good and bad manufacturers in China, like any other country. If I knew a UK supplier saying 'Aomya Inks' I'd most likely give that a go. I could of course import myself from China but it would be nice to support a UK/European supplier, as I'm sure there are plenty of good ones out there. Then of course there's the huge importing delays due to covid.

The issue with Ecotank of course is if you get it wrong with a bad ink, you're screwed. It's not like you can just whip the cartridge out and put a good one in

It's amazing how little information there is on the internet about experience with cheaper inks. It's like the world's best kept secret!

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

you may try

https://premium-inks.com/collections/epson-dye-printer-refill-ink?page=1

which is a Chinese company with a U.K. outlet which should take away all hazzles with a Far East shipment/import.