Ink-O-Dem Refill Service: Good Quality, Modest Bargain

The Ink-O-Dem ink-replacement system has been happening my mind for some metre. As PCWorld's Serial Refiller, I've been stressful refilled and remanufactured black and tricolor cartridges for my HP Photosmart e-All-in-One, assessing their comfort of use, yield timber, and page render. Yet, all have been somewhat to significantly cheaper than the printer vendor's own cartridges; none, yet, have matched the originals in production prize and still of utilisation, although some have come close.

Intersection: Ink-O-Dem inkjet refills: Covert, $10; colorful, $15 (plus sales assess). Prices and compatibility Crataegus laevigata vary by fund. Vendor URL: Inkodem.com Worth nerve-wracking? Yes Hassle cistron: Contrabass to medium Print timber compared with OEM ink: Satisfactory Yield (mixed set of samples): 126 pages Cost per page: 20 cents (HP-brand inks: 26 cents)

Based in McHenry, IL, Ink-O-Dem has installed on-site ink-replenishment machines in thousands of stores nationwide, including Ace Hardware and Walgreens locations, as well as campus bookshops. You take empty cartridges to the store, where an employee refills the tanks and returns them to you. (Inter-group communication the computer memory first to corroborate whether its machine supports your cartridges.) This is a step up from homemade refilling, rental soul else do by the messy part; trying Costco's ink-refilling service, a mistakable procedure, was one of the easiest experiments of the seven I've done so far.

Ink-O-Dem's small army of machines started supporting my printer model's HP 60 cartridges only recently, and as of this writing most of the stores with the upgraded machines are located in the Midwestern United States. As luck would have information technology, withal, a fund in San Jose, California–about 50 miles south of PCWorld's home bas in San Francisco–is testing the original machine. (We commode't name the store, because Ink-O-Dem hasn't officially announced the store's engagement in this avail.)

PCWorld senior editor in chief Melissa Riofrio bought and dead two HP 60 cartridges, and then visited the store to have them refilled. The refill price was $10 for a black cartridge and $15 for a tricolor tank. The complete price, $25 addition tax, is $10 cheaper than purchasing refreshing Black person and color HP 60 cartridges from Hewlett-Packard. (HP also offers both cartridges in a ingroup for a small discount.) Your Ink-O-Dem cost may vary depending on the retailer you pick out.

My Serial Refiller experiences are anecdotal: cardinal printer, one set of cartridges, nonpareil chance for glory (operating theater failure). They do not reflect how a third-company offering will do with some other printer, nor can they predict how information technology wish perform concluded time. We also do not examine the archivability or durability of third-party products. But if you've been speculative whether refilled operating theatre remanufactured ink cartridges are Worth the money and hassle, these experiences will founde you a taste of what to have a bun in the oven.

A Leaky First Impression

The store was quiet when Melissa visited, so she waited just 20 minutes for the refill. (In contrast, my replenish at Costco took an hour.) When Genus Melissa retrieved the cartridges, she noticed that each had been given a bit clip-happening printhead cover. The cartridges were inside a small zipper-interlace bag.

Because information technology was a very hot day, Genus Melissa carried the cartridges with her, rather than go out them in the railroad car, while she ran some more errands. Yet she parked the car in a covered peck and unexpended the cartridges in her backseat, thinking they would represent okay in a motionless, chilly motorcar. But when she returned, the black pickup had leaked some ink. The distort pickup seemed unimpaired.

When I received the cartridges, I detected black ink smudges inside the bag. Aside from the initial leaks, however, no additional ink seemed to wealthy person spilled out. Overall, the tanks were in good condition.

Silky Gliding Scorn Warnings

Installation went swimmingly. I inserted the cartridges and ran the standard alignment procedure recommended by my HP printer.

I began impression. The printing machine's LCD projection screen posted the usual ominous warnings that accompany third-political party ink refills, including 'Original HP ink exhausted' and 'Alliance recommended'. The latter same puzzled me, as I had aligned the cartridges only minutes earlier. The prints looked normal, still, so I unheeded the messages and soldiered on.

Decent Output Character

As for print prize, Ink-O-Dem's inks performed adequately. To the cartridges' credit, the yield had no ink blotches or other visible problems. The textbook and images were crisp and clear, and absolutely acceptable for quotidian home and business use–comparable, in fact, to the printouts from the Costco refills I proven. Viewing these pages side by side with HP's turnout, still, I thought the differences were obvious: Ink-O-Dem's grayscale images had a somewhat greenish tint, and its colors and textures weren't quite as realistic.

I'm quibbling here, of course. Fine details might matter a pot to the most discerning users, just inferior thusly to mean folk who simply want decently print yield for less. If you're in the latter group, Ink-O-Dem's inks are good.

When I dribbled water across an Ink-O-Dem page, the matter-of-course streaking and color bleeding occurred. The resulting mess was nary worse than what I saw with HP's inks, however.

Cheaper Than Horsepower, Pricier Than Costco

Page yield was pretty sainted: I printed 126 pages with the Ink-O-Dem refills before seeing streaks in images and text. The original HP cartridges printed 134 pages before streaks appeared, while the Costco-refilled cartridges lasted 148 pages.

The cost per page with Ink-O-Dem refills for my printer was 20 cents. That's well-nigh twice the price of Costco's refill service, which came out to 11 cents per Thomas Nelson Page. With HP's original cartridges, the price was 26 cents per page. Eastern Samoa you can see, Ink-O-Dem falls about halfway between Costco and Horsepower in the value family. Note, however, that Costco charges $50 or more for an annual membership, so it wouldn't add up to fall in solely to refill ink tanks unless you did sol frequently.

Refilling with Ink-O-Dem was problem-free overall. At the prices we paid in the store we tried, however, IT did not furnish persuasive savings over Horsepower's have inks, especially in light of the similarly easy–only importantly cheaper–live I had at Costco.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/481540/ink_o_dem_refill_service_good_quality_modest_bargain.html

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