Discount InkOwl - 4 Refillable Cartridges for EPSON 200, 200XL with 4x120ml

Customer Ratings:

I have a epson and I wanted to use a more cost efficient way to refill the ink. After a little research I noticed alt of people complained about cheap ink from overseas that ruined their printers. I ended up on Owl Ink and am absolutely happy with the choice. I do notice my printer constantly needs to run alignment checks if I don't use it frequently. I bought it for photos as I recently had my first son. The color quality is near perfect to epson ink, just a little less saturated, which you can adjust in settings I believe.

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Quick review:

Merchandise arrived on time, well-packaged and exactly as advertised. The directions were adequate. After a minor amount of encouraging, the printer (XP-400) accepted the new cartridges and functioned normally. I found the supplied ink did not exactly match the original Epson ink, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. The prints I am getting look very good.

Details:

I was apprehensive about trying refillable cartridges mainly because of scare-story reviews (like one in this forum). After much research I chose to go with InkOwl because they had: 1) a great website, clear and easy to navigate; 2) a plainly stated satisfaction policy; 3) and an 800 number, which I called as a part of my research and was able to speak with a pleasant, knowledgeable human being. (By the way, the deal you get through Amazon is better than direct from InkOwl.)

The included instructions are adequate; easily read and understood by anyone having a basic knowledge of the process to begin with.

Filling the cartridges with ink is not difficult but does require a bit of manual dexterity. Caution: the supplied syringes have very sharp needles and could possibly damage the cartridges or you. (I would prefer something besides sharpened hypo-needles for filling.)

On first installing the filled cartridges the printer gave a message saying it could not recognize the cartridges and suggested they be reinstalled. The printer lists which specific cartridges it cannot recognize. As it told me which cartridge(s) it could not recognize I pulled them part way up and snapped them back into place. On the fifth or sixth try it was able to "recognize" all of them. At that point came a succession of dire warnings about using non-Epson inks. After proceeding fearlessly through those warnings the printer was ready to use.

I have worked professionally in graphic arts and digital photographic printing, and am a critical judge of results. Without going into too much detail, I found the InkOwl ink to be slightly more saturated than Epson's, especially the magenta. For printing graphics that should pose no problem. For more subtle, full-tone images I found my best results were obtained by saving a settings adjustment in Printer Preferences to slightly increase the cyan, slightly reduce the magenta and the saturation, and greatly reduce the contrast (all in the "Epson Vivid" mode).

Matching of printed images to a screen image is a notoriously tricky business and your results may be different. I was at first going to give four stars just because the InkOwl ink did not truly match Epson as implied, but the fact is that after my corrections I am getting prints that, while not the same as they would be with Epson inks, are a very good screen match for me -what more could I ask? Besides, there are bound to be variations among ink batches.

To this point it has been a good experience (one full day of making test prints). I have had no post-purchase contact with InkOwl but will certainly update this review should that occur, or should any other issues arise.

For what it's worth: call me suspicious, but I can't help wondering about reviews where someone gives a bad rating to a product and issues warnings about its use, but they don't bother to mention whether they even TRIED to resolve problems with the company. Like I say, the one fellow I spoke with at InkOwl was friendly, knew his stuff, and seemed happy to answer my questions. Make of that what you will.

Best Deals for InkOwl - 4 Refillable Cartridges for EPSON 200, 200XL with 4x120ml

Refill kit was easy to use....I had to reseat one of the cartridges several times before printer acknowledged it...very happy.

Honest reviews on InkOwl - 4 Refillable Cartridges for EPSON 200, 200XL with 4x120ml

I fell for it. I saw reviews of other products like this that didn't work because the printer wouldn't recognize the cartidges. I went for it anyway, and now I've got a bunch of ink, but nothing I can print with. Yes, I followed the instructions, replaces all the cartridges at the same time, took them out and put them in many times no good.

Live and learn.