« Return to: Cheap Ink Probed
| Printer: Canon S900 (uses six cartridges) | Ink | Text (black), plain paper | Text (black), coated paper | Black-and-white photo, plain paper | Black-and-white photo, coated paper | Black-and-white photo, manufacturer's glossy photo paper | Color photo, plain paper | Color photo, coated paper | Color photo, manufacturer's glossy photo paper |
| Amazon Imaging | Comparable | Comparable | Comparable | Somewhat worse | Somewhat worse | Comparable | Comparable | Comparable | |
| Carrot Ink | Comparable | Comparable | Comparable | Comparable | Somewhat worse | Somewhat worse | Comparable | Somewhat worse | |
| OA100 | Comparable | Comparable | Comparable | Comparable | Significantly worse | Comparable | Comparable | Significantly worse | |
| Printer: Epson Stylus C82 (uses four cartridges) | Ink | Text (black), plain paper | Text (black), coated paper | Black-and-white photo, plain paper | Black-and-white photo, coated paper | Black-and-white photo, manufacturer's glossy photo paper | Color photo, plain paper | Color photo, coated paper | Color photo, manufacturer's glossy photo paper |
| G&G | Somewhat worse | Comparable | Somewhat worse | Comparable | Comparable | Somewhat worse | Comparable | Comparable | |
| OA100 | Somewhat worse | Comparable | Significantly worse | Comparable | Comparable | Significantly worse | Comparable | Somewhat worse | |
| Rainbow logo1 | Comparable | Somewhat worse | Significantly worse | Significantly worse | Comparable | Significantly worse | Significantly worse | Somewhat worse | |
| Printer: HP DeskJet 3820 (uses two cartridges) | Ink | Text (black), plain paper | Text (black), coated paper | Black-and-white photo, plain paper | Black-and-white photo, coated paper | Black-and-white photo, manufacturer's glossy photo paper | Color photo, plain paper | Color photo, coated paper | Color photo, manufacturer's glossy photo paper |
| Carrot Ink | Comparable | Comparable | Somewhat worse | Comparable | Comparable | Comparable | Somewhat worse/Significantly worse | Comparable | |
| InkTec (refill kit) | Comparable | Comparable | Comparable | Comparable | Somewhat worse | Comparable | Comparable | Comparable | |
| PrintTek | Comparable | Comparable | Significantly worse | Comparable | Somewhat worse | Significantly worse | Comparable | Somewhat worse |
This chart shows how the output quality of third-party inks compares with that of printer manufacturer's inks.
1This ink came in a white box with nothing on it except for a rainbow logo.
HOW WE TEST: We test rewritable DVD drives under Windows XP Home on PCs with 1.67-GHz Athlon XP 2000+ processors and 512MB of DDR SDRAM. To test each drive, we use the bundled DVD video authoring, mastering, and packet-writing software; we use vendor-supplied media or Verbatim media. Tests conducted by the PC World Test Center. All rights reserved.