EPSON DURABrite Multipack - print cartridge

Author's product rating:   

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

Advantages:	Fade resistent, water proof ink .
Disadvantages:	Limited choice of printers .

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

DURABrite ink is the latest addition to Epson. It is a new generation of ink that quarantees fade resistence for 80 years and is completely waterproof.

---PRODUCTS---

As far as I am aware, there are only 5 products in the DURABrite range. There is a:-
'DURABrite Cyan Ink Cardridge'
'DURABrite Black Ink Cardridge'
'DURABrite Yellow Ink Cartridge'
'DURABrite Magenta Ink cartridge'
''DURABrite Multipack'

The individual cardridges average price around £7 to £15. I recommend you use a compare price website such as 'Kelkoo' or 'Ciao (hey that rings a bell!)', as it is very easy to get ripped off on printer ink cardridges.

The multipack, contains 1 of each of the seperate cardridges. It is usually cheaper to do this. The multipack averages around £25 to £45. Again it is easy to get ripped off so you should compare prices online.

---COMPATABILTY---

The printers that support DURABrite ink are:-

Any printer in the Epson Stylus C64 Series.
Any printer in the Epson Stylus C66 Series.
Any printer in the Epson Stylus C84 Series.
Any printer in the Epson Stylus C86 Series.
The Epson Stylus CX6400 printer.
The Epson Stylus CX6600 printer.

Cheaper cartridges will work, but as DURABrite is unique to a few printers, if you're buying one of the printers above, you'll probablly want to have 'DURABrite Ink' on your shopping list every couple of months (depends how much you use your printer). The cartrdges are pretty much the same as normal ones, where you take it out of it's box, remove the yellow tape, and slide it into place. They also look the same as normal Epson Cartridges, but you'll find out these are much better once you start using them.

---USING DURABrite---

I started my printer up with my new DURABrite cartridges and printed a test page. It was very quick, although I shouldn't really say this because then it would be more of a review about my printer (CX6600). I then noticed on the packaging the claim to be waterproof and dry instantly. So I printed another test page and wet my finger. The very second it came out I rubbed a big black picture on the paper. It was still in the printer 5 seconds before and it didn't smudge what so ever when I rubbed it. Yaaay. No longer would I have to wait 5 minutes before I could move a photo after it comes out.

---FADE RESISTENCE---

Epson claim that DURABrite ink is fade resistent for 80 years. I cannot prove this but there was a picture on the Epson website of a picture printed with DURABrite and the same again after being left for a year (no change), then there was the same again using normal ink and after 1 year the ink had very much faded.

---CONCLUSION---

I would recommend DURABrite ink to anyone. You need one of the printers listed above but there is a fairly good range of excellent DURABrite compatable printers available. The water resistence and price are excellent although I cannot prove the fade resistence. The cartridges last about 3 months on average use and I am very happy with this. Please note to only buy DURABrite ink cartridges with the official 'Genuine Epson' label and not the 'Epson Compatable'.

'Epson Compatable' cartridges probably wont be DURABrite ink and they void your printers warranty once inserted.

Thanks for reading.