Which ink does the Canon PIXMA TS6420 use?

Canon built the PIXMA TS6420 around a two cartridge FINE pair, the PG-260 black and the CL-261 tri-colour, each with an XL version. On the black the step up needs no thinking about: 400 pages for $25.00 works out at 6.25 cents against 10.00 cents for the 180 page standard, so 38 percent comes off. The colour saves far less. A CL-261XL prints 300 pages for $28.00, or 9.33 cents, against 11.11 cents for the standard, a cut of only 16 percent.

That leaves colour as the expensive half of this printer by a wide margin. A tri-colour XL page costs 49 percent more than a black XL page, and because the three chambers sit in one moulding, the cartridge is finished when the first of them empties. If you print photographs on this machine regularly, that is the number that will define your year, and an XL pair at $53.00 is the cheapest honest way to feed it.

There is no firmware lock on it. Our record shows no DRM against the TS6420, so compatible and remanufactured cartridges work and the worst case with a bad one is a print quality problem rather than a rejection.

FINE cartridges carry the print head on the cartridge, which Canon describes as ink and print head combined in a single unit. Two things follow. A cartridge that prints badly can often be revived by wiping the copper nozzle plate on its underside, since the fault is usually dried ink on parts you are holding. And Canon warns against touching those contacts and nozzles directly, so handle it by the sides and let it dry fully before it goes back in.