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3 Options For Replacing Your HP 27 Ink Cartridge
The HP 27 ink cartridge is one of the more popular black cartridges - HP uses it in several of their current models of printer. These printers have excellent print quality, however there is one drawback - the 27 ink cartridge is relatively small and doesn't last as long as some others.
HP's 27 cartridge only holds 10ml of ink. When compared with some of HP's other cartridges, which can hold up to 45ml, you can see why it might seem like you're running out of black ink all the time.
Fortunately, you have several options when it comes time to replace the ink. You can always choose the original HP cartridges, which are naturally going to give you the best possible print quality.
There are also remanufactured cartridges and refill kits which can be quite a bit less expensive, but the question of quality always comes into play when dealing with these cartridges.
If you take HP's word for it, these compatible cartridges and refill kits will give you poor results and quite possibly ruin your printer.
That isn't entirely true, however. Yes, refills and remanufactured cartridges don't always work as well as the original but it depends on several factors.
First, when you're dealing with remanufactured cartridges, be sure you get them from a reliable company, like 4Inkjets.com for example. They thoroughly clean, refresh and test their cartridges after remanufacturing them and they are generally just as reliable as the original ones from HP.
Refill kits are a little different matter. Because you are refilling the cartridges yourself, and most people don't have the equipment to thoroughly clean and refresh the cartridges, your print quality can deteriorate over time.
If you are refilling your own cartridges, it's best not to use the same cartridge more than two, maybe three times at most. Any more than that and the cartridge itself can wear out, causing a major drop in print quality.
If you're not concerned about the quality of your printing - maybe you're just printing hard copies of email or web pages for your own reference for example - refill kits are the least expensive of the three options.
How The Prices Compare
Let's take a quick look at how the prices of the three types of ink compare to one another. We'll use 4Inkjet.com for this example (I've found their prices are generally the best of any of the ink websites).
Original HP c8727an cartridge: $19.95
Remanufactured HP 27 cartridge: $13.99 ($13.00 each for 3+)
Refill Kit for HP 27 cartridge: $11.95
Now, the refill kit doesn't sound much cheaper, does it? It actually includes 40ml of ink (2 x 20ml bottles) so it will refill the cartridge up to 4 times. So that's about $3 per refill - a heck of a lot less than $20 per cartridge for the original HP.
Now, as I said earlier I wouldn't recommend refilling the same cartridge 4 times. What I would do is refill it twice, using one of the two 20ml bottles, and then replace the cartridge and refill that one twice with the other 20ml bottle.
So let's break the costs down further, over the cost of 6 cartridges.
Original HP ink cartridges only: $119.70
Remanufactured cartridges only: $78.00 (at bulk price)
2 HP cartridges + refill kit: $51.85
2 remanufacture cartridges + refill kit: $39.85
So you can either spend almost $120 or almost $40 - which one sounds better to you?
Go and check out the HP 27 ink cartridge page at 4inkjets.com for these cartridges or read more about other models such as the HP 15 Ink Cartridge.
