How to save money printing with Canon Pixma Printers

Canon Pixma Printers, Smart chips, Resetters, ARCs & how to save money printing

Canon Printers are designed to keep you coming back to Canon for expensive ink cartridges. Let me explain how you can purchase a great Canon printer and save over 90% on printing costs. 

What most people do not know about Canon printers is that they use a 'Smart Chip' system to keep you buying their ink cartridges. Those cartridges for a 5 cartridge printer can cost you over $60 every time you have to replace them! In many cases that is about half the cost of the printer itself. If you have children, or are going to school, or do printing for your church or club, or have a small business, which depends on printing documents, this cost can quickly become a money eating monster. 

We learned this when we purchased our first Canon printer back in 2006. So why not, refill those ink cartridges, and just buy ink? Won’t that work? 

Well it sounds like a great idea until you discover, like many of our customers have, that Canon Pixma printers will recognize the ink cartridge but they will continue to tell you that it is empty despite the fact that you have filled it with ink!

Why this is, is because of the ‘Smart Chip’, which Canon installs on all their ink cartridges. 

That little chip on the bottom front of your ink cartridge has to be reset to its original specifications before it will let the printer print no matter how much in you have poured into it. 

So what to do about that? 

Well it is not such an issue anymore because RKS back in 2004 broke the way for people to decode those chips. Today we have resetters and chips, and even auto reset chips for all of the Canon printers that take: Cli-8, pgi-5, cli-221, pgi-220, cli-226 and pgi-225 chips. 

At this writing, there are 47 printers that take these ink cartridges.

But unless you know which ones to consider, you may purchase one of the other Canon Pixma printers which will never have a resetter. This is where doing your homework can save you hundreds of dollars. The original cost a printer is not high, but if you have to replace cartridges every month, at the rate of $60, that will add up very quickly. 

So now that you understand what you need to know, below I have listed all the Canon Pixm printers, at this writing, which have aftermarket resetting capabilities. We stock resetters for each of these printers, we also stock empty refillable ink cartridges which come with auto reset chips already installed. These auto reset chips, or ARCs as they are called in the business, will automatically reset themselves to the original specifications, every time you remove them from your printer and put them back in. So now you have more choices in the way you can save money. 

1.)You can keep your original ink cartridges and buy a resetter to reset the chips each time. Filling an original ink cartridge can be done either by drilling a little hole in the top and filling with a syringes, or peeling back the top front of the label and pulling out the little dipple plug that seals the hole that Canon used to fill the cartridge. Then once you have filled it with ink, you can either use and aftermarket plug or just a drop of silicon to seal it back. 

2.) You can buy a resetter and compatible ink cartridges without the chips. Then when your original carts are empty you reset the chip, peel it off the cartridge and slide into the harness on the new compatible ink cartridge. With our G&G compatibles, it take about 2 minutes to do this. Price for a set of G&G compatibles, which come with excellent Everbrite ink is $11.92 

3) You can buy a set of empty refillable ink cartridges without chips and then just glue your original chips in place, reset them and fill the cartridges each time. 

4) You can buy a set of empty refillable ink cartridges with auto reset chips and then that is that. Just refill them and put them back in your printer. 

I hope this helped you realize how you can save money printing with most Canon Pixma printers. If you are in the market for a new printer or when you are again, make sure to check the list below or email me with your question or for an update. I will do my best to help you get a printer that will suit all your needs, save you money on printing and hopefully keep this planet green. 

Thanks for visiting - 

Michele & The InkjetReset family 

Please check our store for resetters, empty refillable ink cartridges with auto reset chips, plugs and other helpful aftermarket Pixma printer products. 

Printers using the CLI-8 & PGI-5 chips series include:  (30 printer choices)  See the resetter here: Cli-8 Resetter

iP3500, iP4200,  iP4300, iP4500, iP5000, iP5200, iP5200R, iP5300, iP6600, iP6600 D, iP6700, 

iP6700D, iX4000, iX5000, Pro9000

MP500,MP510, MP520, MP530, MP600, MP600R, MP610, MP800, MP800R, MP810, MP830, MP950, MP 970*, MX700, MX850

Printers using the CLI-221 & PGI-220 chips series include:   (11 printer choices) See this resetter here: Cli-221 Resetter

IP3600, IP4600, IP4700, MP560, MP620, MP620B, MP640, MP980, MP990, MX860, MX870

Printers using the CLI-226 & PGI-225 chips series include:  (6 printer choices) See this resetter here: Cli-226 Resetter 

IP4820, MG 5120, MG 6120, MG 8120, MG 5220, MX882

Please visit InkjetReset.com for all your Canon Pixma reseters, refillables & other money saving items.