New report highlights permanance of HP prints

Some prints from third-party refilled cartridges and paper don't even last a year

23 August 2006 11:34 GMT / By Amber Maitland

A new report from the premier printer and ink testing institute has proven once again that third party inks and papers do not have the permanence of manufacturers’ own products.

The Wilhelm Imaging Research organisation tested refilled cartridges for comparison with HP inks and photo paper.

In its tests, HP paper and inks lasted up to 73 years without any noticeable failing, whereas even the best of the refilled cartridges printed on same-branded photo paper lasted only 1 and a half years.

Tesco-refilled ink cartridges teamed with Tesco paper performed particularly badly, fading 730 times faster than the HP prints.

“Generally, refilled ink cartridges and third-party photo papers have been advertised as having quality equal to the original products”, said the president and director of research at WIR, Henry Wilhelm.

“The poor permanence of these products is being hidden from consumers who want to make informed purchase decision."

“Based on the results of this study, WIR considers the permanence of all the refilled ink cartridges tested to be poor and unsuitable for printing consumer photographs.”

Apart from Tesco refilled cartridges, WIR also tested Jessops, Embatex Emstar, KMP, WeCare, and Ink Tec.

The refilled ink cartridges tended to perform slightly better on HP-brand photo paper than on own-manufacturer brand paper.

For example, Jessops-refilled cartridges produced prints that lasted .9 years on Jessops photo paper, whereas they lasted 4.5 years on HP photo paper.

Full tags

Cameras, Printers, Photo printers, HP