Practical Photography, September 2002 With thanks to Practical Photography magazine, September 2002: MWORDS Continuous Ink Supply Thanks to the new breed of photo quality inkjet printers, producing masterpieces at home has never been easier, as Will Cheung explains. Inkjet printing is easy and convenient, tempting you to make more prints than ever. But it’s also pricey, and when you’re printing for the club, your portfolio as well as friends and family, that’s when you might consider investing in a continuous ink supply (CIS), such as this from Mwords. And you should look on it as an investment. The initial outlay for the Mwords system I tested is a stop-you-in-your-tracks £255 but that includes six 125ml bottles of colour dye inks. A set of six replacements costs just over £55 and the individual inks £11.75 a piece. According to Mwords, that’s equivalent to 14 Epson OEM colour cartridges and 10 black ones. A set of Epson inks for the 1290 costs from £23 to £30 and will produce about 35 top quality A3 prints. The Mwords inks are still going strong so I can’t tell you how many prints they produce. Ask me in a couple of months! If long term (more than 10 years) print permanence is a concern, then spend the extra on Fotonic Dye inks, as these pigment based inks are said to last longer. The Fotonic colour ink version costs and extra £33. Setting up is easy, the instructions clear and there’s plenty more helpful advice on Mwords website. My tip is to leave yourself plenty of room and prepare the area beforehand where the printer and inks will stand. Getting the inks into the cartridges is particularly easy - a syringe a tube clips make the process almost foolproof and there’s no need for any follow-up processes to get rid of air bubbles. Nor does installing a CIS system involve anything that can’t be undone later, should you want to sell the printer. The Mwords system uses ‘chipped’ cartridges on the 1290 so that the ink counter is always reset to full each tim e you turn the printer on. This is a huge benefit, meaning you don’t have to fiddle around with reset procedures or buy resetting software. Mwords doesn’t claim to give identical results to Epson’s own inks and state clearly that tests and tweaking are necessary. That’s no different to say, switching from Fuji to Kodak chemistry. I made prints from the same image files, using Epson and Mwords inks, without any tweaking and, yes, there was a difference. It was particularly evident in areas of neutral grey where there was a magenta tinge. Going to the printer interface an reducing the magenta output seemed to do the trick without detriment to image quality. In several instances, differences could only be spotted by direct side-by-side print comparison. My tests were made on Epson Premium Gloss and Tetenal Premium Art Gloss papers, two leading varieties. Mwords has reviews of different media on its website and some work better than others. I was impressed with the print quality and I’d be more than happy making important prints using the Mwords CIS system. | Ratings out of 100 | | Setting Up | 89 | Instructions are superb and no problems surfaced. | | Ease of Use | 91 | The ‘chipped’ cartridges make life easy | | Colour | 90 | Lovely and saturated | | Neutrality | 90 | Fine after the first few tests | | Value for Money | 90 | Potentially, a sound and worthwhile long-term investment | | TOTAL SCORE | 90% | Occasional inkjet users might not be able to justify the initial cost of the Mwords system. But if you’re constantly replacing cartridges it’s highly recommended, especially if you have bought a printer with a long-term relationship in mind. | © Practical Photography, EMAP Active Limited |
