printers and printer ink

tbgjlb

Not long ago I bought a epson xp630 after my old printer died. The printer in its self is good for what we need except both me and the wife feel it uses way to much ink and have replaced inks more times in the time we've owned it than the years we owned the old one.
I've tried using epson and non epson ink both with the same results. One more MAJOR problem is if it runs out of ANY ink it won't print even in black.

now comes the questioins.
the replacement inks i've used have a mind of there own as to when they will work or not , one minute fine next minute printer does not recognise them. Can anyone recommend reliable replacement (cheap ish ) inks so I can have a stock pile of inks without breaking the bank for when it runs out of inks.

Or the alternative any recommendation for a replacement printer that is on a par with the xp 630 interms of quality and is cheap to run on inks / will run on non brand inks ok And be able to at least print a text page in black even if I run out of a colour.

thank you for any help given in advance

forgotmyname

I have an old RX620 and its been great run on refillable cartridges from day one.

The problems with the later ones is they took a stringer approach to clone chips, mum had issues with her 400 series printer, which was also cheaply made.
carts would work for a bit then stop recognising them. Even the genuine ones would sometimes glitch.

Define using too much ink though? How often do you switch it on and off? How often do you perform a head clean? or nozzle check?

How much do you print and how often?

esuhl

I've always had problems with Epson inkjets. The nozzles just seemed to get clogged constantly. I've had much better luck with Canon inkjets.

I've never had any problems using compatible cartridges, though. I used a chip-resetter and reused the old chips on the compatible cartridges with the Epson, while the Canon works fine with compatibles without any extra work.

It's definitely worth looking into the anti-competitive restrictions that printer companies put in place to make your life harder and more expensive before you buy.

interstellaflyer

Tbgjlb wrote: »

I've tried using epson and non epson ink both with the same results. One more MAJOR problem is if it runs out of ANY ink it won't print even in black.

Most modern printers that take ink tank type cartridges are designed to stop if a cartridge is empty, this is a feature to protect the printhead which is part of the machine, if your were allowed to carry on printing with empty cartridges in the printer there is a good chance the printhead will overheat and a damaged printhead will write the machine off. It is a colour inkjet printer, even if you have it set to only print black, it still needs to keep all the print nozzles primed otherwise they would clog up and when you did need to print colour you'd either get nothing on the page or really poor quality prints. my advice is if you don't need colour then buy an all in one mono laser printer, there are plenty about with some domestic oriented machines for sub £100.

tbgjlb

It's a colour inkjet that we use for family stuff as well as printing text. Its just my old canon used print if it ran out of ink and you would end up with a bad print but could still use it if needed.

SouthUKMan

A slightly alternative thought! Have you investigated the printer driver software on your computer and tried adjusting the quality settings? Most printers allow you to choose from a range of quality settings ranging from draft (poorer quality but uses comparatively very little ink) through to photo quality (lovely images but uses a heck of a lot of ink). You don't give too many clues about what you use your printer for, but if you just need to print something for archive purposes or printing simple letters - then you can save loads of ink and money by using a slightly lower or much lower quality setting.

interstellaflyer

Tbgjlb wrote: »

It's a colour inkjet that we use for family stuff as well as printing text. Its just my old canon used print if it ran out of ink and you would end up with a bad print but could still use it if needed.

What cartridges did your old Canon take as some Canon and HP printers take cartridges that have the print head built in and these printers will allow you to continue as you are only likely to damage the cartridge?

MarkFromCornwall

Tbgjlb wrote: »

Or the alternative any recommendation for a replacement printer

A long time ago I used to be in charge of a network with loads of printers and always found the HP ones were a lot less trouble than the Epsons. At home I use an HP inkjet printer. It's been in daily use since 2002 and shows no signs of going wrong. I buy original cartridges for it but I get them cheaply by buying them on Ebay where they are well past their use-by date but this never seems to be a problem.

DoaM

I have an HP all-in-one colour inkjet printer (takes HP364 cartridges) where the print head is built into the cartridge (as I recall). This has worked fine for me.

I always used to use HP originals but I've recently used JARBO inks and they seem to work fine.