It can come as quite a shock when you find out that your printer ink cartridges cost almost as much as the printer itself did. There are cheaper alternatives to the OEM products however and these are called compatibles. Compatible HP ink cartridges cost on average 50% less than the genuine HP ink cartridges and they print the same number of pages with print quality you will find hard to tell the difference between even when compared side by side. Compatible ink cartridges are also available for other makes of printer not just HP and the ones for HP Lexmark and some Canon printers are slightly different as these printers use ink cartridges with an integrated print head and this means compatibles are not brand new manufactured from new materials like ones for Epson printers but recycled OEM ink cartridges that have been stripped and cleaned then refilled. Because these cartridges rely on the supply of empty OEM cartridges coming back they offer less of a saving than compatible Epson cartridges but still offer good saving over the Genuine OEM equivalents. One advantage remanufactured cartridge have over brand new compatibles is that they are kind to the environment as they save thousands of cartridges going to landfill even year.