Genuine vs Compatible Ink for Ink Tank Printers

The whole point of an ink tank printer is cheap colour: you refill tanks from bottles instead of buying cartridges. But in Hall Road, Saddar and online, you'll find genuine bottles beside 'compatible' ink at a fraction of the price. Here is what each printer takes and what to weigh before you switch.

Which bottle your printer takes

Yields are the manufacturers' test-page figures; real pages with photos or heavy colour use more ink. Bottles are keyed or shaped for their own printer family, so check the code on the bottle against your model before buying. The cost per page for any of these is easy to work out with our cost per page calculator.

What compatible ink risks

• Clogging. Ink that is too thick, has particles, or reacts with the original ink can block print head nozzles — and the head is the most expensive part of an ink tank printer.
• Colour shift. Cheap inks can print a different shade, so photos look off even when documents look fine.
• Faster fading. Some compatible dye inks fade quickly in light.
• More cleanings. Every extra head cleaning to clear streaks pushes ink into the waste ink pad — see Epson ink pad end of service life.

What the warranty says

Epson warns that non-genuine ink can cause damage not covered by the printer's limited warranty. HP's ink tank warranty excludes printer or print head failure caused by non-HP ink, and HP notes that ink left in the print head mixes with any genuine ink you add later. Canon's G-series warranty terms in some markets exclude non-genuine and refilled ink altogether. In practice: using other ink doesn't automatically end the warranty, but if the head fails and the service centre finds foreign ink, the repair is on you. If your printer is new and under warranty, genuine ink is the safer choice.

If you switch: do it safely

• Buy ink sold for your exact model (for example 'for Epson L3210 / 003'), from a seller you can go back to.
• Never top up a tank with a different brand. Let the tank run low, then refill with one brand and stick with it.
• Fill slowly to the top line and no further; overfilling floods the tank vent.
• Run a nozzle check after the first refill, and print a page every few days for the first week.
• Keep the original bottles' caps and colour order straight — a wrong colour in the wrong tank means flushing the whole line.

Laser users: the same question for toner

If you print mostly black text, the bigger saving is a mono laser on refilled or compatible toner — the risks there are different (a bad refill dirties the drum, not a print head). See is refilled toner safe for HP printers and genuine vs fake HP toner.