Compatible or original: what you give up and what you do not

This is the most persistent misunderstanding about printers, and it is simply untrue. Within the European Union a manufacturer may not withdraw your warranty because you used another ink. What they may do is refuse one specific repair, if they can demonstrate that this ink caused that damage.

The burden of proof is on the manufacturer, not on you. In practice this is about clogged print heads, which is rare on an EcoTank because there is no chip and no cartridge in between: a bottle of ink goes straight into a tank.

Compatible ink is mixed to come as close as possible to the original colour values, but Epson does not publish those values. On ordinary printing, on photo paper at home, and on anything you show your family, you will not see the difference.

Where it does count: if you work to a calibrated colour profile, print for clients, or make prints meant to hang on a wall for decades. Epson tests its own ink for lightfastness in combination with its own paper, and nobody else can supply that number.

So our advice is blunt: if you print professionally on archival paper, buy the original. If you print photographs for yourself, your family or your shop, what the original mostly buys you is the name.

An original Epson 114 bottle costs around 14 euro, a complete set of six around 84. Here a bottle is 6.95 and the set 34.95. Across a full set that is about 49 euro, and a set lasts thousands of pages of text or a few hundred photographs.

That difference is precisely why an EcoTank pays for itself. With original ink it just takes considerably longer.

We print with this ink every day, on the same machines. That is not a guarantee for you, but it does explain why we sell it: we bought it for ourselves first and had some left.