Report on MediaStreet Plug-N-Play Inks for Ink Jet Printers

Written for "The Imaging Resource" by Peter Horwood

I recently had the privilege of starting a detailed test of MediaStreet inks. There are several steps planned to fully test all of these products over the next few weeks.

There are two main ways to get and use these MediaStreet inks.

1. Buy pre-filled ink cartridges filled with your choice of any of the MediaStreet inks. In this manner you get the ink delivered in the way you are used to, in cartridges that look and feel like the manufacturers ink cartridges.
2. The second is to buy a CIS – Continuous Ink System. This second way is the one I recommend for most users.

There are two additional ways to get these inks into your printer.

1. "refill" cartridges. The first can be rejected easily – just try it a couple times. (See my report on CIS and other choices coming soon.)
2. Buy printers with a reservoir of ink . Normally you will know if you need this type of printer for reasons that have nothing to do with ink, rather issues like paper size are the more common reason. However, I know of one person who bought a huge commercial printer because of the cost savings on ink. He bought it before CIS systems become well known. He reasoned correctly that the cost of a $3000 printer would be paid for by the lower cost bulk inks. He was correct for his situation. My point here is if that is the reason you are buying the bigger more expensive printer, you should be looking back at other options.

In all my tests I will be using a couple different CIS systems in an Epson 1280 printer. A review of these alternatives will be coming in a future report.

This first report is looking at a directly at a comparison between the Epson Manufacturer inks and the MediaStreet Plug-n-play inks.

To do this test I did several hundred print jobs of varying types on all sorts of papers ranging from low end ink jet to premium ink jet photo papers. I also printed out on numerous papers that were not intended for ink jet use.

The quick summary is simple. The MediaStreet Plug-n-Play ink are exactly identical to the Epson inks in every way. They performed no better on any tests, they performed no worse on any tests, they were the same color on all papers and in all printing methods. So, if you want to know what the MediaStreet inks will look like on a given paper my tests suggest that you should just use your current manufacturers inks on the paper and you will know.

The only fundamental difference is cost.

And what a difference. I started with about $50 of ink from both Epson and MediaStreet. I started by printing 14 full page images, according to the Epson monitor, I used up ½ of Epson’s color Cartridges and almost no black.

I then printed 30 ½ pages use up almost all of the remaining color (½) (I started receiving warnings of low ink after about 20 ½ pages) I used ½ pages because I wanted to get print samples on as many different papers as I had at collected for the test. Since it was obvious I wasn’t going to be able to print out enough full pages, I switched to ½ pages. When I finished, I was warned by the Epson monitor that the color was almost exhausted.

I then printed out 225 of text documents – all black at which point the printer told me I had run out of black ink and it wouldn’t let me print a 226th page.

What is interesting to note here is that I did all this printing in one day without turning the printer off even once. This means that there was only one head cleaning (wastes ink each time) that happened and that was when I put the cartridges into the printer. If you turn your printer off for any length of time, or if you only print once in a while and when you do your nozzle print checks you get white lines, when you or the printer decide to do a head cleaning, that will waste more ink. This means that the results where I got about 30 pages of color and 225 text pages is probably an optimum result not a typical result. Unless you print much less saturated colors than I did (mine were average) or you print with a font that has very thin strokes (I used Times New Roman 10) or you are printing less than a full pages of text, you will get the same results as I did or fewer pages if you print over a longer period of time.

I then switched to the MediaStreet Plug-n-Play inks and reran the same tests on the same papers. At the end of all the tests (14 full pages, 30 ½ pages and 225 black documents) the 4oz ink bottles had gone down a bit. The black, cyan & magenta had gone down approximately 1/10th to 1/8th, the Yellow, Photo (Light) Magenta and Photo (Light) Cyan had barely gone down (but they had gone down some) This suggests to me that the Epson 1280 ink cartridges are filled with only about ½ oz of usable ink.

The next tests I did were to spill the ink on various surfaces like carpet, fingers, wood, linoleum, tile, grout. Really, it wasn’t an accident, it was on purpose. The flooring was leftover pieces of carpet etc.., I didn’t use the office floor or the living room carpet in my house! First, both inks were just as easy/hard to clean up. If you got them while they were wet, a little soap and warm water cleaned up most spills including good Berber carpet. But when it got on something porous like wool carpet, I could never clean it completely up. Perhaps if I spent another few hours dabbing and blotting it might have come up. But again the results of the tests showed that both Epson’s inks and MediaStreet’s Plug-N-Play inks had the same characteristics. If your office has carpet near or around the printer, you may want to spray it with ScotchGuard® just to be as safe as possible, that way if/when you spill, you will have the greatest chance of being able to completely clean it up.

These inks truly appear to me to be plug and play replacements.

I did not look at the issue of longevity. MediaStreet has their "Generations" ink which have been tested to last for generations. If you wanted long lived inks, unless you are using printers like the Epson 2200, you are not going to be looking at the Plug-N-Play inks, you are going to be looking at the Generations inks. I have a different report coming on those inks.

Now lets look at the cost of it. A pair of Epson cartridges where I normally buy (bought) them costs $48.60US if I buy in quantity, a couple dollars more if I buy one pair at a time. A set of 3 black & 1 color (the approx. ratio I use typically) costs about $140.

I use about 3 black and one color cartridges every 2 to 3 weeks, you might use one pair a day, a week or a month. Lets call it "one unit of time."

A CIS system for my Epson 1280 with 4oz bottles of each color is one of the more expensive (though still very cost effective, see below) CIS systems because of the 6 colors. It comes in at $200 for everything including shipping. MediaStreet offers a lifetime 10% discount on their inks if you buy a Niagara II, that has been used in the price calculations.

So, By the time I have used up the black on my CIS, I have printed 10 times as much as I did with the Epson cartridges at $140 for "my special set" and I still have more than ½ of my Cyan and Magenta ink left and I still have more than 75% of my Yellow, Photo Cyan and Photo Magenta left.

So what does that say about cost?

By the time you use your second Epson color cartridge you have spent more money than the CIS system and minimum 4oz bottles of ink! This assumes the same 3 to 1 ration of black to colored cartridges that I experienced.

Lets look at in another way. When I first got a new Epson 1280 this fall (I had one before), I said to myself, I should probably run this printer on Epson inks until the warrantee runs out. But then I did a calculation:

Option 1:

Epson 1280 $400

Epson cartridges, 2 black and 1 color per month for 12 months: $864

Total: $1264

Option 2:

Epson 1280 $400

MediaStreet Cartridges, 2 black and 1 color per month for 12 months: $954

Total $1354

Option 3: a) Bad problems

Epson 1280 $400

CIS System with enough ink to easily last as long as the 24 black and 12 color cartridges in example 1: $220 (This example has over ½ the ink left at the end of the period based on my ratio of usage)

Assume the Epson printer dies, Epson refuses to warrantee it This is unlikely on 3 counts: 1 It is unlikely to die, and 2. Epson would have to demonstrate that the CIS inks caused the malfunction, both are highly unlikely. 3. Epson changes you the same amount to fix your broken printer as the cost of a brand new one: $400
 

Total cost: $1020

Option 3: b) Likely situation

Epson 1280 $400

CIS System with same amount of ink as a) $220

Total cost $620

Option 2 is obviously not a good choice and MediaStreet will be very quick to point this out – in fact, they told me before I did the calculation that using their cartridges only makes sense to determine whether you are happy with the ink enough to go to Option 3. For this reason, MediaStreet gives a 40% discount if you tell them that you want to "Try before I Bulk –Up". That is really the only reason they expect people to buy the cartridges filled with Plug-N-Play ink. The standard cartridges may make sense if you want to use generations ink in small quantities, see my report comparing all the Generations ink for more details.)

With Option 3, if I have to replace the printer every 6 months and I use ink at a fairly moderate level – using MediaStreet Plug-N-Play inks in a CIS would still save me over $200 per year. And I would still have half the ink left over going into the second year because black, cyan & magenta are the only colors I would have used up.

I decided that I was foolish to "use Epson inks until the warrantee runs out". I was much better using the 2 cartridges that came with the printer, to make sure it works, and then personally take the risk that I would have to buy a new printer if the printer breaks down and if Epson refuses to service it free or economically.

And also remember that, with the Niagara II CIS, you don’t have to worry about things like trying to use up as much of the ink as possible before replacing the cartridge, nor do you have to worry about adjusting things so you don’t wasting 4 colors of ink just because 1 color ran out – this means a potential huge saving in time and convenience.

Conclusion the MediaStreet Plug-N-Play inks are perfect replacements for manufacturers inks and if you look at the costs you can be way ahead.

Upcoming Reviews:

• Which ink to choose: Comparison of MediaStreet Generations Ink to each other and to the manufacture/Plug-N-Play inks. You will want to read this one if any of your printing is supposed to last for many years or generations.
• Is CIS the way to go yet? Detailed Comparison of ink delivery methods, focusing on the new Niagara II CIS (Continuous Ink System) in comparison to other CIS’s, new cartridges, refilled cartridges and refilling cartridges yourself.