Epson Claira Inks Provide Decent Prints
This cartridge series contains the Epson Claria High-Definition color inks used in many consumer-class printers and multi-function devices, though the black cartridge must, unaccountably, be purchased separately. These inks are touted by Epson as being fade-resistant, but if you don't put prints deep inside an envelope, keep them in a photo album, or place them behind glass, they will start fading noticeably within a few months, particularly if kept in a brightly-lit area. Thus, for photos you want to preserve, I'd recommend the higher quality K3 inks used in the non-consumer-class Epson printers, which means you'd have to purchase a more expensive printer. For general documents, these inks are fine, but unless you just need color, outputting to monochrome laser printers is far more economical. If you print with these Epson Claira inks, don't bother with "draft" mode because the document will be nearly unreadable. Also, paper is important. General copy paper with these inks bleeds through to the other side and saturates and wrinkles the paper. It also makes it impractical to print two-sided if you want to be able to read the document. The papers that work best are those made for ink jet papers, such as Weyerhaeuser First Choice Satin Ink Jet Premium Paper that is at least 26 pounds (98 grams per square meter) in weight, but then you are adding even more cost to your print job. If printing two-sided with these inks (NOT in draft mode), be sure to set the printer driver configuration to allow one side to dry for a few seconds before printing to the other side. This avoids over-saturation with bleed-through and provides a much better finished product. Overall, these inks do the job, but because they and their cartridges are proprietary and the ink quantities are so miniscule, Epson is free to charge what it wants, and for my money they still charge far TOO much. You can get good deals on the auction site for these inks, but even these deals make printing many times more expensive than monochrome laser printing. A monochrome toner cartridge will provide thousands of pages, but one of these cartridges probably provides less than 100 pages, on average, though this can vary widely based on ink coverage. This means you replace them A LOT. However, they store well inside the printer between uses, and unlike older types of Epson inks, they don't clog the print heads very often (and if they do, the handy head-cleaning utility fixes the problem quickly). Bottom line: PROS--excellent colors, great results with the right paper, good for two-sided prints with proper drying times, long life to prints if stored properly; long storage inside the printer without damaging or clogging the print heads; CONS--black must be purchased separately, draft mode is mostly unreadable, cartridges are expensive, and cartridges don't contain much ink, meaning frequent replacement.Read full review
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