A lot of high street shops and private sellers are still selling refilled printer cartridges these days. However, you might have heard the name remanufactured used to describe ink cartridges and toners. Most people don’t know the difference between the two, is there a difference at all? YES, a big difference. Here are just three differences to illustrate why you should always look out for the work remanufactured when buying your printer ink.

1. Refilled cartridges are simply refilled with new ink. This means that clean ink is poured on top of old ink without the inside of the cartridge being cleaned, that’s why a lot of people get clogged ink cartridges. In contrast, remanufactured printer cartridges are flushed out with deionised water so that the sponge inside is retuned to a natural state before filling. This is the same process used by the major manufacturers such as HP, Epson and Canon.

2. When printer cartridges are refilled, they are often filled through the stopper hole (especially in HP ink cartridges, you may have noticed the smaller plastic or rubber a plug which the refiller has placed in the hole). In order to do this, the ball bearing is pushed in to the ink cartridge and can sometimes come lose and do damage to the printer. Remanufactured printer cartridges do not have this problem as they are filled through the print head in the same way as they are filled when new.

3. Remanufactured printer cartridges are filled under pressure, this eliminates any air bubbles which can cause both leaks and clogs. Refilled inkjets are simply filled up with a filling machine or even worse, a syringe, this means that they are not pressure balanced and can leak in to the printer or clog up and not work.

So, I hope this help you to save money and get quality printer cartridges every time. Remember you should look for remanufactured not refilled printer cartridges.