Which ink does the Canon PIXMA TS6220 use?

Five tanks go into the Canon PIXMA TS6220 and two of them are black, which is the first thing to understand about it. The PGI-280 is a pigment black for plain paper text. The CLI-281 black is dye based and belongs to the photo set. The printer picks between them by what it is printing, so you cannot swap one for the other or skip buying one.

The pigment black is the dearest ink in the machine. At XXL size the PGI-280XXL prints 600 pages for $27.00, which is 4.50 cents, against 3.28 cents for the CLI-281XXL black at 670 pages for $22.00. That makes the text black 37 percent dearer per page than the photo black, and there is nothing to be done about it beyond buying the larger size.

Buying the larger size is where the real saving is. The PGI-280XXL takes 44 percent off the standard PGI-280, which costs 8.00 cents a page, and the XXL colours drop to 3.08 cents from around 5.02 cents, a cut of 39 percent. A full XXL set of five lists at $115.00 against $68.00 for five standard tanks, and the XXL set prints far more than the extra $47.00 buys you.

Canon does not lock this printer. Our record shows no firmware DRM against it, so compatible and remanufactured tanks are a genuine option, and the failure mode when a cheap one disappoints is a poor print rather than a refused cartridge. With the print head fitted in the printer rather than in the tanks, that head is the part to protect: run a nozzle check before you assume a tank is faulty, and do not leave the machine unused for months at a time.