Canon CLI 8C - ink tank

Author's product rating:   

Reliability	Excellent
Ease of Use	Very Easy
Quality	Excellent
Durability	Excellent
Value for Money	Satisfactory

Advantages:	Easy to fit, built in LED warning light
Disadvantages:	Expensive for 13ml capacity and is chipped

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

These new ink cartridges come in Cyan, Magenta and Yellow as well as Black and are for the Canon Pixma iP4200 and other similar printers.

There is absolutely no difference apart from the colour of the ink in them.

Where to buy
**************
I get mine from Maxsave.com @ £7.07 inc P&P
OR from Ebuyer @ around £7.50 (different prices for different colours for some reason) with free P&P.

What do you get?
******************
You effectively get a small clear plastic box 1cm x 4cm x 7cm. This box is split into two compartments -

Towards the back of the box and taking up about 2/3 of the length is a sponge. There is a hole in the base of the box under the sponge where the ink passes to the print head. To make the box ready for insertion into your printer you simply snap off an orange plug to open the hole. and push the unit gently into the appropriate slot in the print head.

Towards the front of the box and taking up about 1/3 is the ink compartment containing 13ml of ink.
There is a small connecting hole between the ink compartment and the sponge compartmentwhich allows ink to flow into the sponge when the orange plug is removed. This can cause some people to panic as about 1/3 of the ink can apparently vanish very quickly - it has only moved over to the sponge side.
The ink will not leak out of the hole because of a vacuum in the ink well holding it back. It only soaks into the sponge as and when ink is used by the print head.

Warning light
***************
There is a red LED warning light built into the unit at the front - this flashes when the chip has counted a set number of uses of the print head for this colour. This light seems a bit pointless as you cant actually see it without opening up the printer cover and you get a warning on the computer anyway when the ink is low.

How many photos
********************
In normal use the inks last quite a long time, but if you are printing A4 photos at high quality then you get around 20 full A4 prints - I don't have an exact figure but it works out at around £1.00 for the ink for one A4 print. When you use cheap photo paper , you can get prints for around £1.20 wich is about 1/3 the price you would pay at a lab.

Photo quality
**************
This depends partly on the quality of paper used and the image resolution, but I use ASDAs own glossy photo paper on which the photos look pretty good. I have tried Canon pro paper that came with the printer and the results were even better, but probably not worth the extra money. The ink, when using Canon papers, is said to last 100 years - no idea how they would know that !!

Can you refill them
********************
Yes , but the chip will cause the computer to display error messages and warnings that your printer warranty will be void if any damage is caused by refilling. There is talk of third party ink cartridges becoming available soon which get round the chip problem in some way - we wait with great anticipation.

Value
*******
They are I suppose reasonable value but could be a lot cheaper if they did not include a chip and an LED.
Some places are charging over £12.00 for these ink cartridges - avoid such places, you can get them for just over £7.00.