Independent study shows why cheaper isn’t always better

Ink refills and remanufactured cartridges are so cheap and commonplace these days that you wouldn’t think twice about buying a third-party product. After all, what’s the harm in buying a non-original product if it gives you practically the same quality of an original product at a fraction of the cost?

HP Philippines busted this and other myths at its recent HP Mythbusters Night held recently at the Blue Leaf Events Pavilion at McKinley Hills, Taguig.

HP announced the results of an independent study conducted by the internationally renowned testing agency TÜV SÜD PSB. “We’re the first company in the Asia Pacific to conduct such a comprehensive remanufactured and refilled ink cartridge test,” said Tan Lee Heng, assistant vice president of Testing Services, TÜV SÜD PSB.

For half a year, HP commissioned TÜV SÜD PSB to evaluate the page yield and reliability of HP branded inkjet cartridges versus 14 brands of remanufactured or refilled cartridges from the Asia Pacific region. The 14 brands of cartridges were selected based on sales and usage in the region and sourced from Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Korea and the Philippines. For testing, HP 45a and HP 56a black ink cartridges and HP 78a and HP 57a tri-color cartridges were used on HP Deskjet 5650 and HP Deskjet 930C inkjet printers.

The results? HP Original Inkjet Cartridges were shown to produce more than twice as many pages –106.6 percent on average, in fact –than any of the Asia Pacific brands of remanufactured and refilled ink cartridges included in the study. Also, over one in four (25.7%) of cartridges from Asia Pacific brands of remanufactured and refilled cartridges tested were found dead on arrival (DOA) or failed prematurely, compared to original HP cartridges that had no such reliability issues during testing.

“Ink cartridge consumers across the Asia Pacific are unaware of the issues in reliability when printing with remanufactured and refilled cartridges, and HP has long been concerned with this. We commissioned the study to expose the concealed real costs involved to aid consumers have a more informed choice,” said Neel Pillai, marketing manager for Supplies Category, Imaging and Printing Group, HP Asia Pacific. “Customers’ time and money bear the impact from high failure rates of remanufactured and refilled cartridges. These failures also cause a lot of frustration and might also lead to expensive long-term printer.”