Buying Epson Ink Cartridges: Everything You Need to Know

 Whether your printer is sitting on a desk in your office, on top of a chest of drawers in your spare bedroom or anywhere else, you only really want two things from it. You need it to print what you want, when you want it, and you need it to do that without you having to think about it. Whether you are printing invoices and reports at work, or you are printing boarding passes, postage labels or your child’s artwork at home, all you want to have to do is press “print” and have your documents appear on demand.

Here at Ink Guru, we are dedicated to making sure that your printing experience is as simple and straightforward as possible. As a family company we understand that you have better things to do than worry about your printer, or your printer’s consumables, so we are here to make sure you don’t have to!

If you have purchased an Epson printer, then you already have a quality product that should give you excellent service for a long time. But like all machines your printer needs to be looked after, and the way to look after your Epson printer is to load it with the right Epson or Epson Compatible Ink Cartridges. But which cartridge is the right one for you? Step into a stationary shop, computer supplies store or supermarket, and you can be faced with a bewildering array of packages all containing cartridges of different shapes and sizes, all proudly declaring themselves to be “Epson Ink Cartridges”.

Then there are the cartridges that are not made by, or for, Epson but state that they are compatible with Epson printers. These are often cheaper than the Epson branded products, but are they as good? Can they be trusted? At Ink Guru we only stock the highest quality cartridges so you can be sure that whether you choose Epson or Epson compatible cartridges you can instal them in your printer with confidence.

There are of course a number of reasons why it makes sense to buy genuine Epson Ink Cartridges. Epson develops its ink formulas to work in perfect harmony with their printers. Genuine Epson Printer Cartridges are made in “clean room” conditions and are rigorously tested before they leave the manufacturer. That is why genuine cartridges are approved by Epson and protected by the Epson warranty.

But here at Ink Guru, we fully understand that cost is always an important factor when you are choosing consumables such as ink cartridges. We work hard to make sure that the genuine Epson approved ink cartridges we supply are as cheap as possible. But sometimes when budgets are tight even our lowest prices for genuine Epson cartridges are not quite cheap enough. That is where compatible cartridges come in.

Not made or tested by Epson, but still manufactured to high standards and filled with high quality inks and designed to work perfectly with your Epson printer, compatible cartridges can offer a quality but cost-effective solution to the problem of acquiring cheap Epson Ink Cartridges.

Now all we need to do now is understand which cartridges work with which machine – because there are few things more frustrating than coming back from the shops and realising that the cartridges you just bought do not actually fit into your machine.

What are the most popular Epson printers and cartridges?

Obviously, Epson makes a wide range of printers, and we could not possibly go into detail about all of them, so for ease of example we will focus on two of the most popular models manufactured by Epson, the Epson XP 2105 and the Epson XP 3100 and the Ink Cartridges they take.

Both the Epson XP 3100 and the Epson XP 2105 use the same Ink Cartridges, the 603 series. These are available in two sizes, regular and XL, which we will consider shortly. Whether you need ink cartridges for the Epson XP 3100 or the XP 2105 you will see that the 603 series of cartridges come in four single colours – Black, Cyan, Magenta and Yellow. When you send a document or an image to print your Epson Printer will build your colour document by combining those colours to make any colour you might need.

Separating the four colours into individual cartridges is a deliberate strategy designed to make your printing as cost effective as possible. Some printers have a “Black” cartridge and a “Colour” cartridge which contains equal quantities of Magenta, Cyan and Yellow. At first glance this seems like a simpler solution but in fact, if you print a set of documents which use a lot of blue, it is entirely possible to use all of the Cyan in the cartridge which will mean buying a new colour cartridge even though it still contains plenty of Magenta and Yellow.

The modular approach of the 603 series of Ink Cartridges for the Epson XP 2105 and the Epson XP 3100 avoids this problem – if you have used up all the Cyan, but you have plenty of magenta and yellow left, you just need to get a new cyan cartridge. This both saves you money and helps reduce waste.

Over time you will come to know which cartridges you will need to replace the most. Here at Ink Guru, we can provide cartridges singly so that you only need to buy the ink you need, but also in money saving multi packs containing one each of each colour cartridge – and we offer same day dispatch on orders placed before 3pm, and free first class delivery on orders over fifteen pounds (these deals may be subject to change over time), which means that you will never need to wait long for your fresh supply of ink to arrive.

Whether you need ink cartridges for your Epson XP 3100 or your XP 2105 you do have one final choice to make. As we mentioned earlier our cheap Epson ink cartridges are available in two versions – regular and XL. Although the cartridges themselves are exactly the same size the XL cartridge costs slightly more but contains more ink and so will last longer.

Again, the modular nature of the 603 series of Epson ink cartridges is a real advantage. If you rarely print documents out and so rarely run out of ink, you will most likely only need to install the regular ink cartridges in your Epson XP 2105 or XP 3100. However, if you print out a lot of black and white documents – invoices or school essays for example – but rarely print colour images it might be more cost effective to install an XL black cartridge alongside regular cyan, magenta and yellow cartridges. If you’re a heavy user of both black and coloured inks, XL cartridges all around could be in order.

So, whether you are looking for ink cartridges for your Epson XP 3100, your XP 2105 or any other Epson printer we can provide the cheap Epson ink cartridges you need. And because Ink Guru works hard to make sure we always have the very best quality cartridges it will only ever be the price that is cheap – your Epson ink cartridge will always be the finest quality available.