When the ink cartridges for your printer start to wear out, it is not cheap. Finding replacement ink cartridges in color or black and white is an expensive project. When it comes to this I always choose compatible ink cartridges. I know you have probably seen these at the store – they are the non-brand equivalent of the ink cartridges your printer manufacturer puts out. Since they are generic they are cheaper, and they work just the same as a regular cartridge. But I want to let you in on a little secret.
When you buy a name brand ink cartridge for your printer, do you know how much ink is in it? Well let me put it this way, the manual that came with your printer guarantees that this cartridge will cover x number of pages before it runs out, right? You can bet that is almost exactly how many it will produce under normal circumstances. But that is as far as the company will fill up the cartridge. If it has room for more ink they will just leave it less than fully filled, as long as it has enough to meet that guarantee.
You can test this yourself if you have ink refills. Take a totally new brand name ink cartridge and grab an ink refill for it. If it was sold to you completely full, you would not be able to add ink to it, would you? Yet you will find that you can indeed refill it even when it is brand new.
That is not the end of the secret though: some of the compatible cartridges will come completely full, right off the store shelf. That means that no only is the price cheaper for generic, but you get more pages out of them. That is the real reason I recommend compatible ink cartridges.