What's So Good About HP Ink Cartridges?

Though many different companies manufacture printers, HP brand printers, one of the oldest brands on the market, have long been considered to be of the very highest quality. Are there verifiable facts to back up such a claim?

HP makes inkjet printers for various purposes and customer needs. For example, there are business printers, photo printers, value printers for the average consumer, and models with specific technical uses.

Whatever type of printer it may be, HP has been consistently recognized for offering a print quality above and beyond that of their competition. The quality can be attributed to the advanced technology used in ink cartridges designed for HP printers.

While most brands of ink cartridge contain only the ink, the grand majority of HP ink cartridges come not only containing the ink but also with the printhead, a printer part that sprays ink onto paper during printing. Other printer manufacturers have the printhead installed as a permanent part of the printer.

When the printhead is part of the printer itself, not the ink cartridge like in HP printers, it becomes damaged as time passes and through repeated use. This means lower quality printing and eventually replacement of the printhead. The replacement, however, is typically at least as expensive as purchasing a new printer and in the end the average consumer just ends up buying a new printer anyway.

By putting the printhead on the cartridge itself, HP avoids this problem of the head wearing out. Over the course of months or years, the print quality will stay pretty much the same as it was when the printer was brand new because each time the ink is replaced, so is the printhead.

Although the HP ink cartridge design has some clear benefits, there are also a few disadvantages. Since the cartridges come with the printhead as well, they are normally more expensive than other brands. This expense, however, prevents you from eventually having to pay for an expensive repair or buy a new printer because of printhead deterioration.

The other disadvantage to HP's system is that their cartridges tend not to work very well when refilled. Because the head is part of the cartridge and is not designed to last beyond the expected life of the ink, it can wear out if the empty cartridge is reused.

While refilling an HP cartridge once doesn't tend to affect the print quality dramatically, further refills usually produce problems.