The acquisition costs for a printer are usually fair. But it often gets really expensive because of the printer cartridges. Stiftung Warentest found out that there is also a much cheaper way: You can save up to 80 percent with the right alternative cartridge. We show how it works and reveal in the video why printer cartridges are so expensive in the first place.
While many good printers are quite cheap to buy, the manufacturers charge a relatively large amount of money for refilling the original color cartridges. In some cases, new color sets are almost as expensive as a new printer itself. But does it really have to be the manufacturer’s original or do cheap alternatives serve just as well?
Stiftung Warentest (Issue 4/2022) got to the bottom of this question. In the test, the experts tested a total of 20 XL ink cartridge sets with four different printer models. In addition to the original cartridges, the cheaper alternatives also came into the printers. In addition to the print quality, smear, water and light resistance and packaging, handling was also evaluated in a total of 6 runs. It is primarily important that the printer recognizes the cartridges at all. Only once was this not the case in the test.
Many other cheap alternative cartridges can convince. We’ll show you where you can save and how you can keep track of things despite the lack of filling level control. The printer types used or printers that are compatible with the cartridges, as well as the best cheap cartridge alternative in the test, can be found in the table.
Cheap printer cartridges: You should pay attention to this
With the exception of one product, all alternative cartridges are suitable in the test. The set from G&G does not pass the test with the rating “poor”. The reason: These are the only tested cartridges that the Brother printer does not recognize and are therefore useless.
With most cheap alternatives you can save a lot of money, sometimes up to 80 percent. However, some printers have problems with the level control – and not only with the cheap cartridges, but sometimes even with the original cartridges. the level control helps you keep track of how much paint is left and when to buy more. However, you can often avoid this problem with a trick: If you call up the page counter for the respective colors in the printer settings and compare them with the information provided by the manufacturer or in the test by Stiftung Warentest, you can see how many pages you can still print. This is a bit cumbersome, but you save money with the cheap cartridges.
But there are also offers on the internet that are too good to be true. In addition to cheap alternatives, you can always find supposedly original cartridges at a low price on the Internet. However, you should stay away from these offers. Expensive brand cartridges that are sold for a fraction of the original price on Ebay or Amazon Marketplace are rarely serious offers.
You can read the detailed printer cartridge test for a fee at Stiftung Warentest.
The best printers
The 5 best printers in the test can be found in the following list. You can find all the printers tested in our full leaderboard.
In our detailed printer buying guide, we present the top models to you in more detail, tell you what you should look out for when buying them and answer the most frequently asked questions.
Multifunction printer (ink) in the test
HP OfficeJet Pro 9012e
Offer from BestCheck Printing cost (1.9)
Quality (1.0)
Speed (1.0)
Amenities (1.7)
Ergonomics (1.1)
Epson WorkForce Pro WF-4830DTWF
Offer from BestCheck Printing cost (2.7)
Quality (1.6)
speed (1,2)
Amenities (1.0)
Ergonomics (1.1)
Canon Pixma TS6350
Offer from BestCheck Printing cost (2.5)
Quality (2.0)
Speed (2.8)
Amenities (3.4)
Ergonomics (1.0)
Epson Ecotank ET-4700
Offer from BestCheck Printing Cost (1.0)
Quality (2.9)
Speed (5.0)
Amenities (2.8)
Ergonomics (1.9)
Epson Expression Photo XP-8600
Offer from BestCheck overall grade
2.7
Satisfactory
Printing cost (3.6)
Quality (1.3)
Speed (4.0)
Amenities (3.2)
Ergonomics (1.7)
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