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How To Save Money On Your Epson R300 Ink
The Epson Stylus R300 series is an excellent photo printer and has the advantage of using individual ink cartridges for each color. This means that you only need to replace the color you're out of, not all the colors at once like you do with many printers that only have a single color cartridge.
Separate cartridges can be less expensive to operate than a single color cartridge but even then the price is still quite high. If you do much printing, especially photos, you've probably had sticker shock when you saw the price of a replacement set of ink.
Fortunately, you can get remanufactured cartridges that cost considerably less than the original Epson brand. These remanufactured cartridges have been cleaned up and refilled so they work much like a brand new cartridge.
There are many companies that sell these discount cartridges for the Epson R300 - the key is to be sure you order from a reliable one. Some companies offer better quality cartridges than others, and their guarantees vary widely.
Make sure that the cartridges are guaranteed to work and that you can either exchange them or get your money back if you run into any problems. A money-back guarantee is usually best, because if the cartridge isn't working because it isn't compatible, exchanging it for another one isn't likely to help.
One option you won't see for the R300 is a refill kit. Epson uses a special chip on their cartridges that "knows" when the cartridge is out of ink. Even if the cartridge is refilled after that, the chip still registers as empty and the cartridge won't work.
There are chip resetters available from some websites, but I've seen mixed results with them. Some people have had success but they haven't worked at all for others.
The companies that remanufacture Epson cartridges often have replacement chips made that they install on the cartridges. This is cost effective for them because they deal with large volumes, but it isn't something that the average consumer would be able to buy themselves.
For the little bit extra it costs to buy the cartridges from a remanufacturing company, I don't believe it's worth the hassle of trying to reset and refill them yourself.
How The Prices Compare
Let's take a quick look at how the price compare between the original Epson T048 cartridges and discount versions.
Original Epson T048 Black Cartridge: $16.56
Compatible T048 Black Cartridge: $6.95
Original Epson T048 Color Cartridges (5 pack): $49.99
Compatible T048 Color Cartridges (6 pack): $39.95
(The original pack of color cartridges doesn't include black, the compatible one does.)
The original Epson prices are taken from Amazon.com's website - the compatible prices are from 4Inkjets.com which has the best prices of any of the ink websites I've used.
As you can see, the compatible cartridges cost considerably less - $39.95 for a complete set, compared to $66.55 for a complete set of originals. If you buy them in bulk, the difference gets even larger. Which would you rather be spending when changing the ink cartridge on Epson printers?
