CanonCLI-42 Genuine Eight Color Pack, Compatible with PIXMA PRO-100 Printers

This is the complete ink set for the Canon Pixma Pro 100 and certain other Canon printers. I continue to get excellent results from a three year old Pixma Pro 100 that does a 8 - 10 large prints at a time, then may be idle for 2-3 weeks or longer. I've never had a problem with clogged print heads. The printer seems to do a good job of maintaining itself after being idle, though occasionally it will give a fault message that clears with a reboot.Each ink cartridge holds 13 ml, a good compromise for this type of occasional printer, as it's more than some 5ml types, but much less than the 80 ml commercial duty models that might dry out before they were spent - and whose ink sets cost several hundred dollars. All things considered, including the pleasure of printing excellent quality prints whenever you choose, I've felt this option to be a good value. Note that you'll never "come out even" with the different inks, so plan to buy an extra yellow or light gray now and then, or perhaps the colors-only set if you don't print many B&W or low-key images.Of course the "Gillete Business Model" is in effect (sell the razor cheap, sell the blades dear), as the Pixma Pro is always on discount, sometimes less than a regular ink set. (the printer comes with a "starter set" with less ink, so be sure to buy a full ink set with the printer.Yes, I'd rather pay full price for the printer and half price for the ink, but even so, I'm OK with the long term cost of the process.

I have purchased several other compatible refills to use in my Pro-100 for the purpose of printing planner stickers and found the Canon refills are far superior. These last longer and the colors are vibrant. The quality of my prints are superb for at home printing and there’s zero defective tanks. These are my go to for the foreseeable future.

So I got the Pro-100 printer about 2 years ago, and knowing I would print a lot, I immediately shopped for spare ink. I decided to try a generic ink refill kit, not wanting to give into Canon's notorious ink prices. (we all know they make $$$ on ink). Anyway, the original printer cartridges actually lasted a lot longer than I expected, printing whatever I wanted, in sizes of 5x7, 8x10 and quite a few 13x19. I never felt rushed. But after not using the printer few several months after a house move, several tanks were erroring as empty. I tried the refill kit. It's ink as far as I can tell from naive eyes looks legit. The problem with the generics was I had ink smears on my paper, failing Nozzle Test print pages, and mysterious spots of ink on the paper. I tried all cleanings. After getting an almost perfect test page with the generic refills, I finally I printed out a 5x7 with the generic printer. It was streaked and had ink pools on it. I gave up knowing the sloppy refills seemed to be giving out too much ink. I don't blame the ink or color qaulity, I blame the faulty cartridges that remain after refill. I threw away those cartridges and the refill ink. I bought these genuine canon cartridges which were installed in minutes. I cleaned once. Did a single perfect test sheet, and printed a perfect 5x7 minutes after install. Yes, these cartridges are expensive and I hate Canon for it. But honestly for avoiding the huge hassle of failed refills, I'll take it for the cost.

If you want to save money but don't care about the overall quality of the print, then the substitute inks are good enough. If you want the print to look like what you see on the monitor, then you need to spend the bucks and bite the bullet and all the other cliches and get the Canon ink set. I had some prints that I did with the original inks but then replaced the inks with the substitutes. For some prints it was fine, but where the color cast really was important, the whole print came out with a red tinge and cast. So, I calibrated the monitor again, tweaked the settings, used different papers (all Canon papers) and nothing helped. Still red. Then I read the reviews, one of them talked about the red cast, and I decided to spend the money one time to see if it made a difference. It did. The prints came out without the red cast and look like they do on the monitor. So, try it once- buy the expensive ink and see if there is a difference. If so, use the Canon ink. If not, well you still have all those replacement inks that you bought so use them. FYI- I have a Canon Pixma 100 Pro printer. It's all Canon stuff and that seems to make a difference.

I get exhibition-quality prints out of my Canon Pixma Pro 100 using this OEM ink, and I wouldn't dream of using a non-brand name substitute. But golly, the price of the ink is very high. It's even more expensive when purchasing replacement cartridges for individual colors. If I had the money to buy the newer "replacement" for the Pro 100, that is, the Canon Pixma Pro 200, which takes less expensive ink, I'd do it. For now, I'll just deal with this expensive stuff.