Vito Cassisi – Tech Blog Delving into technology

Rihac CISS Review

Conclusion
It'd be ignorant and wrong to say that the Rihac CISS is a typical cheap generic product. Replacement inks are often tagged as low quality supplements for people who can't afford the best. What Rihac has offered is anything but low quality. The performance tests show a competitive product, that with a little patience and tweaking, can produce stunning results.

Although the CISS uses a cheaper dye based ink, the quality and longevity appear to be unaffected, and in some cases, superior to the genuine pigment based inks. Print quality on photographic paper is essentially indistinguishable from the genuine article. It's also very easy to maintain once installed. It's a matter of popping out a plug and topping it up. For $145 you get 500ml of ink in total, which let's face it, is a lot better value than Canon's offerings. And it gets better! Refill bottles retail at $13 per 100ml, or $95 for a 1 litre bottle! If we consider the approximately 8ml size of the genuine inks (which retail at over $20 per cartridge), and do a little math, the genuine ink costs over $2.5/ml, compared to $0.095/ml (1 litre bottle) or $0.13/ml (100ml bottle) for the Rihac system. That's a significant price jump, for very little quality difference.

If you're unsure about transplanting chips between cartridges, Rihac offer models with pre-installed chips for an extra $25. If you're familiar with a soldering iron, the process takes no longer than 15 minutes to do manually.

Printer head longevity is hard to test. After several full colour prints, there's no sign of any damage occurring. The ink rating of "strictly" 0.1 microns suggests that this will not be an issue. To check this, I searched for reported issues using several search engines. I couldn't find a negative thing about it. There are several positive reviews though, which include (but are not limited to) Rihac's eBay feedback. There's also reviews on their website.

Overall, the Rihac CISS is hard to pass up. It's a very efficient solution for heavy ink usage, for both novices and professionals. If you don't mind having silicon tubing protruding from your printer, this may well be the product for you.

Value: 10/10 - great price
Performance: 8.5/10 - almost identical to Canon's offering when settings are tweaked
Ease of use: 7/10 - once the initial installation is done, it's all smooth sailing
Aesthetics: 6/10 - can make printers look dodgy with silicon tubes protruding out
Build quality: 9/10 - High quality kit and materials

Author's note: Highly recommended.

Note: This review will be updated if concerns arise from the continual use of this product.

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