Holo Holo Blog

HP Ink Challenge - Week Five, Assignment Five

It's Week 5, the final week of the HP Ink Challenge and Assignment 5. My final conclusion is that although I am Ms. Cheapskate, I believe purchasing new ink is so much less stress knowing that  you will have a constant and consistent flow of ink that won't fail you. Refill ink which costs less, is a guessing game as to whether or not your prints come out clean and in color when you absolutely need them to be perfect.

During the setup stage, both printers were easy to load with ink. The only glitch being that the refill ink had an error when loading the refilled ink cartridges. From the start, the refilled cartridges were streaky and although I tried to realign the cartridges and cleaned the nozzles, the streakiness continued during each print. The HP Ink was far superior in quality and consitency.

The HP ColorLok paper improved the print quality on the HP Ink Printer while the quality of the paper could not help improve the prints from the HP Refill Printer.

Over time, the HP Refill Ink continued to lighten and became more streaky. There were no blue hues and everything printed pink and yellow. The HP Ink Printer continued to produce quality prints with no banding or fading.

The distance I need to travel to get refilled cartridges cannot be justified as the quality of the prints produced was extremely poor. HP Ink, although more expensive, can be bought everywhere, even the CVS that I can walk to from my home. Convenient, easy to use and reliability is worth the extra money you pay for new cartridges.

This was a fun Challenge which made me realize that sometimes cheaper isn't always better.

 *I received two free HP Deskjet 3510 printers, supplies from HP as well as a gift card to purchase re-filled cartridges in order to participate in the Ink Challenge. All opinions and views expressed are my own.*

HP Ink Challenge - Week Four, Assignment Four

It's Week 4 of the HP Ink Challenge and Assignment 4 was to print 20 prints using HP ColorLok paper on each printer. The setting was on Fast Draft . The HP Ink Printer with new ink was crisp and the colors were bright while the HP Refill Ink Printer produced faded gray prints with streaky pinkish images.

I then printed 20 more documents on each printer using generic paper on each printer. The printers were set on fast print for these also. The HP Ink Printer was slightly less crisp on the generic paper than on the ColorLok paper but still pretty clear. The HP Refill Ink Printer was even less legible as the images and text were gray and very light. The prints got progressively worse as each print was created.

The ColorLok paper definitely produces a better product with brighter colors and crisper lines and looks similar that of the image on the computer screen. The generic paper dulls the look of the images and text. ColorLok is presentation quality and I most likely wouldn't use it for everyday use if the price difference between the generic and ColorLok is significant. Paper quality is just as important as the ink quality when printing documents for business purposes.

The Every Week Documents printed with the HP Refill Printer documents looking very pink without any blues (bottom image). The HP Ink print seems to be consistent with the previous week's prints.

The refill ink documents change with each print. I can never predict what color differentiation I will find from page to page. I only know that the print will never match the image on my computer screen.

 *I received two free HP Deskjet 3510 printers, supplies from HP as well as a gift card to purchase re-filled cartridges in order to participate in the Ink Challenge. All opinions and views expressed are my own.*

HP Ink Challenge - Week Three, Assignment Three

It's Week 3 of the HP Ink Challenge and Assignment 3 was to print on HP Brochure paper (five documents on each printer). The new ink always printed clearly and had crisp text and colors (bottom, while the refill ink was streaky and faded lookng (top).

I also printed the weekly documents and as expected, the new ink was consistent and printed the same as the previous weeks while the refill ink seems to print with streaks and in varying faded colors.

This week's results are not a surprise at all. The more I print, the more I feel that purchasing new ink may cost more but I can rely on the consistency of the product.

 *I received two free HP Deskjet 3510 printers, supplies from HP as well as a gift card to purchase re-filled cartridges in order to participate in the Ink Challenge. All opinions and views expressed are my own.*

HP Ink Challenge - Week Two, Assignment Two

It's Week 2 of the HP Ink Challenge and Assignment 2 was to print 20 colorful prints on each printer. The HP Ink Printer with new ink worked great and printed consistent images (right) and prints while the HP Refill Ink Printer consistently printed inconsistently (left).

The new ink always printed the same (top) and the refilled ink cartridge varied from page to page (bottom)  in it's washed out streaky colors.

When I printed the color blocks, it's even more apparent the the refilled ink on the right image below, is very poor in quality compared to the new ink on the left.

It seems after each print, the refilled ink cartridge get progressively worse. I know that refilled cartridges are not always this way but how can you tell which are lemons when you buy them?

 *I received two free HP Deskjet 3510 printers, supplies from HP as well as a gift card to purchase re-filled cartridges in order to participate in the Ink Challenge. All opinions and views expressed are my own.*

HP Ink Challenge - Week One, Assignment #1

I am fortunate enough to take place in the HP Ink Challenge, a five (5) week review in which I will conduct studies to compare the ink of New HP ink versus Refilled HP ink utilizing two (2) identical HP 3510 Deskjet printers. I originally signed up for this challenge under my Hound and Hydrant graphics biz but I think that this blog is a better place to showcase my findings.

The two (2) HP printers that were sent to me for this challenge currently take residence on the end of my dining room table since I don't have much room in my office. Notice that I have colored labels indicating the printer with HP Refill ink and the printer with New HP ink. I have set them up to print wirelessly which works perfectly since my computer is set up in my office.

The most difficult task was to find a place that would refill the ink empty ink cartridges. I was lucky to find Rapid Refill  but they actually exchanged the cartridges and sold me refilled ink cartridges. The store isn't as conveniently located to my home as I had hoped but it's nice to know that such a store exists here. The store was nice enough to give me a 10% off discount as a first time customer. The #61XL Black cartridge was $17.99 and the #61XL CMY cartridge was $20.69. The transaction was quick as I did not have to wait for the cartridges to be refilled. I have read that other participants had to wait anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 days for the cartridges to be refilled. I used the pre-paid debit card that was provided to me for just this purpose and payment went through without incident.

As instructed, I printed test pages to compare the two inks. It is very apparent at this stage which printer has new ink and which has refilled ink. The HP Refill printer test page (left) is very streaky and the color looks faded. I may need to realign the cartridges or clean the printheads to see if that will help.

 *I received two free HP Deskjet 3510 printers, supplies from HP as well as a gift card to purchase re-filled cartridges in order to participate in the Ink Challenge. All opinions and views expressed are my own.*