Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I'd give this product 0 stars if I could. First off, I've been color printing for myself and commercially in labs for over 30 years and have (no exaggeration) printed over 250K prints using conventional photographic papers and chemistry as well as inkjet printers. I followed Ultragamut's instructions to the letter while refilling my cartridges, and refilled cartridges immediately (literally within minutes) after they registered as empty, so these problems are not due to using, old, dried out cartridges.
These inks are simply a nightmare:
1) Ultragmut describes these inks as: "Highly Reliable Clog Free Formula - Archival ink is filtered to 0.2 um, which is the same as original ink. Archival ink will never clog your printer like cheap third party inks" They can't be serious - this ink causes constant clogs. I have spent far more time using cleaning and testing utilities than actually printing. I literally cannot get a single 8x10 out without banding showing up by the end of the print. Ultragamut even knows that their "never clog" claim is false - your first order will come with a coupon for a free bottle of "clog buster" with your second order. Guess why? You'll need it if you use these inks!
2) The colors yielded by these inks aren't even in the ballpark of the original HP inks: the magenta is anemic compared to HP's ink, so needs to be bumped up, and the yellow is grossly oversaturated, so needs to be knocked down considerably. This is a huge problem, because ultragamut does not provide profiles to go with their inks, and the response of the colors does not appear to be linear (so you can't just dial in one correction and leave it).
3) Customer service is a joke. When I related the above problems, they simply reiterated their advertisements, claiming that "Our inks match original quality 100%" and advised that I let the ink settle in the cartridges for 24 hours before using (how convenient is that??) because "air bubbles" in the cartridge might be what are causing both the banding and color problems. I followed this advice, and got exactly the same results as before - pronounced banding and color that needed corrections so extreme that I was pushing the limits of the printer color panel.
Now, I have waited 15 days for a promised refund, and according to the tracking number they gave me, they never actually sent the check to the post office, they merely notified the post office that they intended to send it (Status: Electronic Shipping Info Received), but have not yet sent it!
Between the flaky colors, and constant head clogging, I've wasted around $20 worth of paper and at least 6 hours of my time, and who knows what this ink has done to my print heads.
It's back to HP inks for me...
Amazon should not be selling this product, and you should not be buying it!
Click Here to see more reviews about: Ink Refill Kit for HP Photosmart C309a Printers using HP 564 Cartridges
No comments:
Post a Comment