EPSON Ink Cartridge, Vivid Light Magenta, Genuine

I use this ink regularly

Very Good Value

Always good for the money

Does the job

As much as Epson seem to hate their customers (their photo papers are a disorganised nightmare, try finding them on Epson UK, and working out what's what), I do like printing with the P800. The inks work well and last for ages.

I have been using Epson printers the last decade, and I have also concluded that 80ml as used in the 3800 and the current 3880 printers is just about the smallest ink cartridge that makes monetary sense if you do any proper volume of printing. Any smaller and cheaper printer with lower capacity ink cartridges - also from Epson - will soon have cost you more than the professional A2 printers.It varies depending on what you print, of course, but at £35 per cartridge, my calculations indicate a price of 1p per square inch with the 3880's ink. That's almost exactly £1 per full-bleed A4 sheet. Based on numbers I found online that in my experience seem relatively accurate, changing blacks costs a bit over £1 as well, though with a bit of planning, one can avoid doing that too often.From experience, I have also found that there is no need to worry about expiry dates on ink cartridges - at least not with these - as I have some that are more than two years over now (I've not printed as much as I used to the last few years), but there's been no problem with clotting, clogging or colours being off.I can't compare it to third-party inks as I'd never gamble by putting anything like that through a £1,000 printer. I'll stick to the originals, thank you very much. I know that they work, that they last, I know exactly how they behave and how I have to adjust my prints to make them exactly the way I want them.To this day, Epson Ultrachrome is the best inkset I have used, with the nicest colour transitions and shades of (very neutral) greys, negligible metamerism, an excellent gamut, and no clogging problems - though that is probably also due to the printer as the 3800-series seem to historically have had fewer complaints about that than Epson's other offerings.

The cartridge does not fit in the printer (Epson Stylus Pro 3800). It looks almost the same as the original but in the back of the casing, it is very slightly different which prevent from the cartridge to fit within the printer. See picture with the original in the bottom and this one on the top.In addition, the best before date had expired for more than 6 years.

When I try to install the ink this ink cartridge won't go in. Compared to the empty one, it looks exactly the same, so I have no idea what causes it not to fit physically. Packaging looks genuine too. It is not out of date either (2024 bb). Bought this in July 2021 but only run out of light cyan now. It is out of the return window, but a quick chat with Amazon and I got refunded for it. However, I notice that someone else reported the same issue here in the reviews back in 2017 already. I would order from somewhere else like Cartridge Save instead.