The print quality will be the same as the cartridge that is included with your printer. The only con of OEM ink cartridge is that it is expensive. It often cost more than third party ink cartridge because it follows the high standard set by the manufacturer. When buying OEM ink cartridge, you must check the expiration date on the package.

If you are shopping on the internet, you can visit the product description page to find out the expiration date. The expiration date should be 1 – 2 years from the present date. Many sellers deceive customers by selling expired ink cartridges. Expired ink cartridges are often sold at lower price to attract customers. Though expired cartridge can produce fine quality, it can cause serious damage to your printer. You should not be greedy for the expired ink cartridge because it can cause your printer to fail apart progressively.

Besides, sellers on auction site such as Ebay like to sell trial cartridge. The title of the advertisement states that it is a brand new OEM cartridge but it is actually a trial cartridge. Trial cartridge is made by the OEM manufacturers for testing purposes and not for sale. When buying OEM cartridge, make sure you don’t fall into these pitfalls.

Customers are encouraged to perform research before buying the ink cartridge. OEM ink cartridge is expensive so you must spend time to do research. Performing research on the internet ensures that you buy a genuine OEM ink cartridge at the cheapest price. You can use the shopping search engine to compare the ink cartridge you want to buy. You can read customer reviews to find out their experiences in using the ink cartridge. If the ink cartridge receives positive reviews, you can buy it. In this way, you will know whether the ink cartridge will work on your printer when you buy it. Before checking out, make sure you check for coupon code which you can apply on your total order. You can use the search engine to find relevant coupon code offered by the ink cartridge store.

OEM ink cartridge has the best quality and is the most expensive. It is expensive because it has the least failure rate. OEM ink cartridge will surely work with your printer as long as you buy the right model. It is produced by the original manufacturer unlike third party ink cartridge.

Third party ink cartridge can help you to save up to 80% of the sale price of OEM ink cartridge. Third party ink cartridge is not suitable to be used for professional printing purposes. You can use it to print all kinds of documents including school project, text document, and etc. This is not the type of ink that you can use to print photo. Third party ink cartridge may or may not work with your printer. Sometimes, the ink cartridge will not work properly and you will end up wasting your money.

To ensure you purchase a high quality cartridge, make sure you purchase one that is certified by the International Organization for Standards. International Organization for Standards is one of the largest organizations in the world that is responsible for developing standards to measure the quality of ink cartridges. It had a track record of providing high quality standards for manufacturers to follow. Manufacturers have to meet the minimum standards in order to get certified. You can check if the third party ink cartridge is certified by referring to the packaging label. The packaging label should contain the statement ISO 9001. If the packaging did not state the ISO label, it means it is not certified.
Remanufactured ink cartridge can also be purchased from the store. The advantage of remanufactured ink cartridge is that some of its parts are made by original printer manufacturer. Remanufactured ink cartridge is made by OEM and third party parts so it is able to produce print quality that is same as OEM standard. Remanufactured ink cartridge costs lesser than OEM cartridge but higher than third party compatible cartridge.

The control panel of this cheap printer is basic, though well-organized. The Pixma MP470 uses a two-tank ink system: one black and one tricolor. Using the large tanks for best value, a black-only print costs about 5.6 cents, while a four-color page costs about 13.7 cents. The cheap Canon Pixma MP470 offers copy, scan, and photo print features.

The cheap Canon Pixma MP470 is slow with text prints, but quick with graphics and 4×6 photos. Its scans are right in line with everyone else’s. It printed text at a pokey 5.45pages per minute. The Pixma MP470 produced color graphics prints at a rate of 2.10ppm. The Canon produced grayscale scans at a rate of 4.60ppm and color scans at a rate of 4.49ppm. The text print is dark, sharp, clean, and legible down to very small point sizes. The graphics print is also sharp and detailed. Colors were true and gradients were smooth.

The control panel of this cheap printer is basic, befitting the basic nature of this all-in-one. The paper handling is typical of Canons: The input paper support folds out from the rear and holds up to 100 sheets. The cheap Pixma MP210 is compatible with two sets of Canon inks. The standard capacity black costs $16 and the standard tricolor costs $20. Canon estimates that a black-only print costs about 4 cents per page while a full-color print costs about 12 cents per page. The Pixma MP210’s can prints, scans, and copies over a USB 2.0 connection. Canon Pixma MP210 lacks an auto duplexer; the driver will assist you with manual duplex tasks.

When it comes to task speeds, the Canon Pixma MP210 prints text at a rate of 6.13 pages per minute, behind only the Dell photo 926. It printed color graphics at a rate of 1.45 pages per minute, the slowest of the pack. It really shined, though, when printing 4×6 photos, scoring a fast 1.05 pages per minute; none of the others came close.

The design of cheap Pixma iP4500 is simple and straightforward–the body is mainly black, with silver accents. The printer measures 17.5 inches wide, 11.9 inches deep, and 6.3 inches tall, and weighs 15.2 pounds. The only features in the printer’s control panel are a PictBridge USB port, power and cancel/feed buttons, and an input source button that switches between paper trays. The cheap iP4500 uses a five-ink system: pigment black for better text prints, and dye-based black, yellow, cyan, and magenta for better graphics and color blending. Canon estimates that a page of text costs about 3 cents, and a full-color page costs 4 cents to print.

The Pixma iP4500 offers a fairly basic feature set. The only connection option is USB, though you can network the printer using a print server. This cheap printer offers up a built-in duplexer for automatic double-sided printing. The iP4500 lacks memory card slots, but it does offer a PictBridge USB port for printing directly from PictBridge cameras and devices. The cheap Pixma iP4500 prints black text at a rate of 8.25 pages per minute. The Canon Pixma iP4500 is an all-around good printer. The text prints were nicely dark. The color graphics print showed pleasing saturation and sharp details in the photo elements. Overall, the printer’s quality is great for everyday home printing.

The printer has two input options. The rear input holds as many as 150 sheets of plain paper and is good for all the acceptable paper types. The front input holds up to 100 sheets of plain paper and should be used only for plain paper. The cheap iP3500 uses a four-ink system with individual ink cartridges. Canon estimates the per-page costs for the Pixma iP3500 to be 3 cents for a black-and-white print and 5 cents for a full-color print. The features of iP3500 are predictably simple. The only connection option is USB 2.0. It does serve up a PictBridge USB port for connecting PictBridge cameras and other devices, but it lacks memory card slots.

The cheap Pixma iP3500 prints black text at a rate of 6.52 pages per minute (ppm). The Canon produced color graphics prints at a rate of 2.07ppm. The Canon is fastest at printing 4×6 photos. The print quality of Pixma iP3500 is good. The black text print showed decent sharpness and legibility. The characters were nicely dark, too. The color graphics print has sharp details in photo elements, pleasing saturation, and good color reproduction.

The cheap Canon ImageClass MF4690 is compact for a multifunction laser printer. Printer measures 15.4 inches wide, 17.4 inches deep, and 14.6 inches tall, and weighs just less than 32 pounds. The 250-sheet paper cassette tray resides at the bottom of the printer and can be adjusted to hold legal sheets. Also mounted on the input cassette is a manual feed tray for one-off prints. It only holds one sheet at a time, though, so you’ll have to manually feed each sheet. The output tray has a pull-out arm to corral long sheets.

The printer’s control panel is well organized and clearly labeled. The only other feature on the MF4690 is a USB 2.0 port for connecting USB storage devices (more on this in the Features section). The Canon ImageClass MF4690 also consists of a starter toner cartridge, rated to print about 1,000 pages. The 2,000-page replacement cartridge costs $70, for a per-page cost of about 3.5 cents.

The cheap Canon ImageClass MF4690 prints black text at a rate of 14.70ppm and black graphics at a rate of 14.51 pages per minute (ppm). The quality text print is good overall: sharp characters and nice, deep black. The same goes for the grayscale graphics print. Overall, the print quality is acceptable for a small office or work group.

The control panel of this cheap printer is busy, but everything is clearly laid out. At the bottom of the printer is a 250-page cassette with a removable dust cover. Just above the cassette sits a one-page multipurpose feeder with adjustable paper guides. The cheap ImageClass MF4270 contain 1,000-print toner cartridge. The replacement cartridge is good for about double that and goes for $70. This works out to about 3.5 cents per page. The scan feature on the MF4270 is limited to use over a USB connection. The fax options of Canon ImageClass MF4270 are also very basic.

Compared to other mono laser multifunction in the $300 to $400 price range, the cheap Canon ImageClass MF4270 performance is admirable. It produced text at a rate of 15.13 pages per minute (ppm), beating out several others, including the more expensive Canon MF4690. It is the fastest of the group with scans and copies, though. Printer prints 5.84ppm of color scans (a full page faster than the next printer), a blazing 12.19ppm with grayscale scans, and 15.50ppm with copies using the ADF, just edging out its big brother.

The cheap Lexmark X4270 All-In-One is a squat and lightweight machine that measures an average 20.4 inches wide, 11.7 inches deep, and 7.3 inches high and weighs a light 9.1 pounds. The printer increases its height by 4 inches by extending the top-loading input and the flimsy-feeling front output trays. All the Lexmark X4270′s controls are on a front panel, easy to reach and use. Underneath the control panel sit two cartridges that supply ink for the multifunction four-color printing, faxing, scanning, and copying capabilities. The Lexmark X4270 comes with 16MB of RAM and is not upgradable, a problem for small businesses. The Lexmark X4270 All-In-One is best at faxing, scanning, and copying. The fast and quiet faxing includes useful features such as manual answering for a shared fax/phone line, and on-hook dial to worm a fax through an automated answering system.

The Lexmark cheap X4270′s main input tray holds 100 sheets of paper, and the output tray holds 50 sheets, which is fairly small for office use. The Lexmark cheap X4270 also bundles Lexmark’s fax, printing, and photo-editing software and the Solution Center for troubleshooting and how-to information.

The Lexmark cheap X4270 All-In-One is good in text printing. The monochrome text is printed at 4.6 pages per minute (ppm). A color 8×10 photo took the Lexmark X4270 a poky 5.2 minutes per page (mpp). Color graphics prints were also mediocre, with great detail but poor color matching; the whole image looked dithered and dotty.

The back of the Z816 color jet printer contain a power supply connector and the USB 2.0 port. To connect the Z816 to your PC or Mac, just use the included USB cable (if you already have your own, buy the version of this printer that doesn’t come with a cable). The Z816 is compatible with Windows 98, 2000, me, and XP, as well as Mac OS X 10.1.5, 10.2.3 to 10.2.8, and 10.3.0 to 10.3.2.

The Lexmark Z816 comes as a four-color (CMYK) inkjet printer with one color and one black cartridge. Z816 can be turned into a six-color photo inkjet by replacing the black ink tank with a photo color cartridge. The print quality performance of Z816 is average. The Z816 redeemed itself somewhat with its photo output, which was the best among the Lexmark printers. While they’re far from perfect, our prints were reasonably well detailed and crisp, if a bit warm. Average color graphic print cost about 25 cents.