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“What is the best sublimation ink?”
I have been asked this question more than any other since starting the blog, readers simply want to know, what is the best sublimation ink?
Prior to this comparison, I just knew what worked(and didn’t) for me, but I hadn’t tried all of the sublimation ink on the market. As more and more people asked the same question, I felt like I needed a better answer. I gathered the 6 most popular sublimation inks for Epson (CMYK) desktop printers and created a protocol for testing and scoring each. Began printing dozens of color charts, sample images and tests in each ink to score the product while also utilizing the available customer service resources of each company to rate my experience accordingly.
I fully recognize each user likely has different preferences and needs to consider when choosing the best ink to buy. Therefore, through this comparison, I am focused primarily on providing an in-depth understanding of the necessary information to make a decision, and ultimately a purchase that best suits your needs.
The Background
I started this project at the beginning of the year by deciding which inks to include in my comparison based on what I felt would provide readers of this blog with the most comprehensive and complete sample of readily available options. After calculating the costs associated with all the necessary supplies to conduct my comparison, it became clear that the project may become cost-prohibitive. Fortunately, some of the companies were able to share their products for the comparison to keep my costs manageable and make the comparison ultimately possible. Objectivity is very important to this blog and me personally, so I was not compensated by any of the companies for this project. In the charts below, I discuss what was shared with me for full transparency.
Additionally, this blog uses affiliate links to offset operating expenses. Simply put, if you purchase products using my links, Sublimation Studies earns a small commission for your purchase. These commissions go into funding further projects/tutorials for Sublimation Studies and in no way impacts the outcome of my reviews, comparisons, and recommendations. Don’t worry, I still work full-time in my shop, this is just a hobby!
Supplies Used
– Sublimation Inks
– Epson 7720
-Tex-Print Paper
-Hix Heat Press
-100% white Polyester fabric– this isn’t exactly what I used, but similar.
-CMYK Pantone Color Book
Once I started receiving the inks, I started printing/pressing and that is the order I put together the charts in. I pressed all of the images using the industry standard of 400 degrees for 60 seconds.
If you want to know the details of how this came together and the step-by-step process click here for a detailed blog post.
Pricing
As you can see below, the price varies significantly for sublimation ink, which is a large factor for many when considering a purchase. I believe a large portion of what increases the price of some sublimation ink is the cost of a higher level of customer service. Higher priced inks, typically have a superior product but I think they also have superior customer service that can make the premium worth it when you have a question or issue. Respectively, the lower priced inks have little to no customer support. As you start your sublimation journey, price, customer support, and color accuracy are the three most important categories. I have broken down the information into three charts to cover these topics.
| Cobra Ink (4.3) | Cosmos Ink | Ink Owl | InkXPro | Try The Ink | Printers Jack | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total Price(ink+cartridges) |  $167.99/$194.99 |  $75 | $102.90(not sold as kit)   $102.90 (to buy ink and cartridges) Sublimation Ink Refillable Cartridges | n/a | ||
| Price of ink (set of 4) |  $95 |  $40 |  $74.95 | $34.95- Not available on Amazon | ||
| Size of container | 3 oz (about 89ml) | 100ml | 120ml | 100ml | 100ml | 100ml |
| Ink per Ounce | $31.67 | $11.89 | $18.47 | $13.88 | $10.34 | $7.69 |
| Individual colors Available | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | On website only | No |
| Price of Cartridges |  $39.99 | n/a |  $27.95 | n/a | ||
| Black XXL | Yes, $69.99 | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | n/a |
| What I was gifted: | Never responded to email | Sent ink, no cartridges | Sent ink, cartridges and cleaning cartridges | Sent ink and cartridges | Never responded to email | Sent ink, no cartridges |
Customer Support
In an effort to ‘test out’ all of the companies customer service teams, I called all of the companies that had phone numbers and asked for help with common issues of sublimation ink or refillable cartridges. Sometimes I would say, that the printer wouldn’t recognize the cartridges or I couldn’t get the colors right. etc. I wanted to be just like any other customer and see how they would respond. I also would look at the resources they provided on their website to see if they answered any of these questions online….since its murphies law that you will only run into issues after normal business hours.
| Cobra Ink (4.3) | Cosmos Ink | Ink Owl | InkXPro | Try The Ink | Printers Jack | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Customer Support & instruction videos/material (1-5) | ★★★★ | ★★★★ | ★★★★★ | ★★ | ★★ | ★ |
| Explanation | They receive 5 stars for instruction & trouble shooting videos, but I made a mistake on my order that I placed over a weekend and I emailed immediately about it. By Wednesday, I hadn't heard back from them and I had to call and follow up. They had solved the problem but failed to let me know so I was stressing for no reason. For customer service, I would give them 3 stars, making their average 4 stars. | Cosmos Ink has some of the most detailed videos out of any of the companies as well as an active Facebook group where they do weekly tutorials. In my attempt to call about a question, I noticed that there is no contact info on their website (email or phone number). Leaving the only way to communicate with Cosmos Ink is via social media platforms. | Ink Owl's Customer service is 5/5 and so is their instruction materials! About a year plus ago, I had a wide format printer that I was considering converting to a sublimation printer with Ink Owl's ink. I was way in over my head with the printer(I couldn't even get 6/8 heads to print a clean nozzle check) and the phone reps, were so patient with me and walked me step by step what I needed to order, why and gave me the instructions on all the steps needed to help clean the clogged print heads and get started. I was flabbergasted when I hung up the phone. | InkXPro has a couple videos and weak phone support. | Try The Ink, also known as Inkpro2today is sold on Amazon and their own websites. They have limited instructions on their website and no phone support in my experience. I tried calling before placing my order and they didn't answer or call back. | Printers Jack is sold on Amazon and has their own website as well, but all sales are through Amazon. I have done tutorials on how to set up the ink, but they currently don’t have their own. At this time, they don’t offer any customer service after purchasing. |
| Return Policy | 30-day return/exchange on unopened product. | Exchanges only. | 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Return or replace within 30 days on opened/used items. | 30-day return on unopened product. | 30-day return/exchange on unopened product. | 30-day return/exchange on unopened product. |
| Printer Profiles | Does not require printer profiles | Does not require printer profiles | Provides printer profiles | Provides limited Printer Profiles | Does not require printer profiles | Provides printer profiles |
Color Print Accuracy
Color accuracy and precision are one of the most important aspects of selecting an ink for you. When I was starting out with sublimation, I thought “oh the colors are close enough, what is all the fuss?” That is until I was trying to print a picture of my mom for Mother’s Day, and her skin looked like she had poured a whole bottle of self-tanner on her. Not exactly the look I (or she) was going for. No matter what I tried, I couldn’t get her skin tone to look normal. That is when I realized the importance of color accuracy. You (and your customers) want the pictures to print the way that you expect them to.
Color Test Swatches
For each ink, I printed off 15 pages of the CMYK Pantone Color Book. I then cut each strip apart and pressed them all of the strips for each page at the same time. Following that, I photographed them all together with the page on the Pantone book open. To make it easier (and prettier) I reorganized them in the charts below, but I didn’t edit any color tone. If you want more information on this, visit the behind the scenes post!
Color Swatches Comparison Chart
| Cobra Ink (4.3) | Cosmos Ink | Ink Owl | InkXPro(w/o profile) | Try The Ink | Printers Jack | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Image 1-2U | 3 | 5 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 6 |
| Image 2-4U | 3 | 6 | 5 | 1 | 4 | 2 |
| Image 3-19U | 5 | 3 | 6 | 1 | 2 | 4 |
| Image 4-S5U | 1 | 4 | 6 | 2 | 3 | 5 |
| Image 5-133U | 1 | 3 | 6 | 2 | 4 | 5 |
| Image 6-183U | 1 | 3 | 6 | 4 | 2 | 5 |
| Image 7-237U | 1 | 4 | 6 | 5 | 2 | 3 |
| Image 8-Page1 | 2 | 6 | 5 | 1 | 3 | 4 |
| Image 9-S4U | 1 | 5 | 4 | 2 | 3 | 6 |
| Image 10-S6U | 1 | 3 | 4 | 2 | 5 | 6 |
| Image 11-S7U | 2 | 4 | 6 | 1 | 3 | 5 |
| Image 12-S10U | 3 | 2 | 6 | 1 | 5 | 4 |
| Image 13-S14U | 2 | 4 | 5 | 1 | 3 | 6 |
| Image 14-S15U | 2 | 5 | 3 | 1 | 6 | 4 |
| Image 15-CMYK | 5 | 6 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 4 |
| Average | 2.2 | 4.2 | 5.0 | 1.8 | 3.2 | 4.6 |
Color Swatches Photos
Color Test Image
I often hear about readers wanting vibrant colors. While we all want our images to really stand out and look beautiful, sometimes the “vibrancy” is caused by over saturation. Which can look great in a picture that doesn’t have a lot of depth like the wedding invite, but when you add pictures that have skin tones and depth, those “vibrant colors” become your enemy. At the end of the day, you want dependable accuracy from your ink. Remember you can edit your image saturation on your computer but you can’t edit the way your ink prints nearly as easily.
Color Test Image Comparison Chart
| Cobra Ink (4.3) | Cosmos Ink | Ink Owl | InkXPro | Try The Ink | Printers Jack | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wedding Invite | 4 | 1 | 5 | 3 | 2 | 6 |
| Baby | 5 | 1 | 6 | 4 | 2 | 3 |
| Family | 6 | 3 | 5 | 4 | 1 | 2 |
| Sunset | 4 | 6 | 5 | 2 | 1 | 3 |
| Meadow | 5 | 6 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 3 |
| Roses | 5 | 3 | 6 | 4 | 2 | 1 |
| Lake/Mountain | 2 | 5 | 3 | 4 | 1 | 6 |
| Average | 4.43 | 3.57 | 4.86 | 3.23 | 1.43 | 3.43 |
Color Test Images Photos
Print Accuracy Chart
| Cobra Ink (4.3) | Cosmos Ink | Ink Owl | InkXPro | Try The Ink | Printers Jack | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Average of the Image and Swatch Scores | 3.31 | 3.89 | 4.93 | 2.54 | 2.31 | 4.01 |
Cobra Ink (4.3)
Cobra Ink hands down is an industry leader when it comes to sublimation ink. They were one of the first companies to design an ink that intentionally didn’t require a profile and they have a plethora of instruction materials. With that being said, they are almost double the price (ink per ounce) of the next highest priced ink. My personal opinion of higher priced ink is that you are paying for premium ink and premium customer service. In this case, I’m not sure I think the price meets my expectations for customer service.
Cosmos Ink
Cosmos Ink is a younger supplier that I see a lot of potential in. As far as ink colors go, they offer a similar product to Cobra Ink (an ink the doesn’t require printer profiles) for a fraction of the price. Angelo, the founder, has a Facebook group and a YouTube channel where he is continually posting new content and has extensive instruction materials for his customers. This is a smaller business compared to some of the other ink suppliers so there are apparent pro’s and con’s that come along with that. Right now, they don’t offer ink cartridges outside of the kit and I look forward to when they have their own branded cartridges.
InkOwl
InkOwl goes above and beyond to make sure their customers are satisfied by offering custom profiles (when their provided profile don’t work) and if that’s not enough they have the only 100% satisfaction guarantee return policy. To me, that speaks volumes to the quality of the product. Also, their Epson Sublimation ink is manufactured in the United States.
Edit: InkOwl made a discount code for sublimation studies! Use the code “substudies” for $5 off your orders!
InkXPro
I currently use InkXPro ink in my shop in our Epson Artisan printers (6 colors) and I am happy with it. However the profile that they use for all Mac users whether the printer uses 6 or 4 colors was designed for a 6-color Artisan, I know this because I made the sublimation printer profile here. This means that it is not going to help an Epson 7720, or any 4 color printer, which can be seen in our color print outs. It concerns me that an ink supplier wouldn’t know that they would need a separate profile for each type of ink(4 colors versus 6 colors).
Try The Ink
Honestly, I think their ink needs a profile and isn’t truly designed to be used without profiles. I couldn’t get the black to a true black and I think it is a cheaper entry/hobbyist level ink. I wouldn’t build my business with their ink. With that being said, I am in a Facebook group that highly recommends Try The Ink and the admins get great results, unfortunately, I couldn’t reproduce the same results. I even tried the group’s pressing recommendations. They also run under a couple of different busy names(On Etsy: Printer Ink Store, On Amazon: Try The Ink and their own website Ink: InkPro2day) and as a consumer and business owner, that is a red flag for me.
Printers Jack
Printers Jack is exclusively sold on Amazon. This makes customer service pretty much non-existent but for $26, what can you expect? On a positive note, Amazon has a pretty generous return policy. I have done a couple of tutorials for their ink that you can find here.
2 More Things to Consider Before Making a Decision
Printer Profiles
Something that is really important to consider when selecting a sublimation ink are printer profiles. If you are not familiar with them, I would read this article, on sublimation printer profiles.
In short, the Epson desktop printers we are using are designed to work with specific Epson ink that comes with the printer. When we use third-party inks, they are slightly different, which can change how things print dramatically. The color profile is software that tells your printer how to correctly print the colors for the ink being used, thus delivering the most accurate result.
The downside of the printer profiles is, in order to use the profiles on some printers, they require a design program that allows color management. These are typically paid, high-end software like Photoshop, Illustrator, Corel etc. If you do not plan to use any of those programs to design and want to use some of the more popular, widely-available programs like Silhouette, or even Microsoft Word or Paint, I would recommend an ink that doesn’t require profiles.
Printing Without Profiles
You can print with ink that should have profiles without one, but you will not get superior quality. Printing without a profile when the ink is intended to have a profile, will result in an image that is still recognizable. You are still going to know its a picture of the beach, a baby or whatever it is. The skin tone of the baby is what might be off and seem a little too orange compared to the original picture. In a picture of the beach, all of the different blues of the ocean might appear as the same blue. Profiles provide fine details to pictures with precision and accuracy.
Before making my own sublimation printer profile for the printers at my shop, I printed without color profiles and 75% of the time I was happy. But the other 25% of the time I was going crazy over colors that I couldn’t get accurate!
Ink Cartridges/CISS
This comparison was completed with refillable ink cartridges for obvious reasons. In general, I am not a huge supporter of CISS. I think the systems are cumbersome and unless you are printing around-the-clock, they aren’t worth the hassle. Refillable cartridges have their fair share of issues as well, but they are more user-friendly for beginners.
Just like anything, ink cartridges are not created equal. No matter how great your ink is, if your cartridges don’t work, you won’t be able to print. Quality of your cartridges is important because they have reusable chips in the cartridges. If the chips malfunction, your printer won’t recognize the cartridge, giving an error that won’t allow you to print. Throughout this comparison, the cartridges that had the least issues were Cobra and InkOwl. My least favorite cartridges were the Try The Ink’s and then InkXPro’s.
Another feature to consider when buying ink cartridges is the size of the black cartridge. Some suppliers provide an XXL black version which holds about 3-4 more ink than the other ink cartridges. For me, this isn’t a huge deal breaker. I find that when one ink becomes low, I reset them all and fill all of the colors at once. If I’m going to pull out the ink and gloves, I’ll just fill them all.
Wrap Up
I hope this comparison has helped you have a better understanding of the sublimation inks on the market. Through this process, I have learned so much about each company and the sublimation ink supply industry. There is so much more that I want to share, therefore I will be doing an individual review of each ink starting soon! Additionally, I will continue to update this post as information changes. If you see any information that is outdated please comment below and let me know!
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I seriously wish I would have found your site sooner. I have bounced around with ink suppliers for the last year and haven’t fully been happy with any of them. I started with Cobra (I bought my printer from them with the inks installed, 3 years ago). Their quality and customer service went downhill over the years. I finally bounced over to TryTheInk as it was recommended to me but it has poor consistency and definitely never hits the mark on a true match. Sure, the colors print a great saturation but they clog a TON and I have to change the profile I do use for every image just to get it close to accurate. The owner of TryTheInk is one of the rudest people I’ve ever encountered and the ink itself is more or less trash overall. It clogs constantly and I’m always having to clear my printheads. I left a bad review for them on amazon and get this – they deleted the product listing all together and created a whole new listing just to get out from under that bad review!! Such a massive red flag!!
Now I’ve purchased InkXPro but I wish I would have seen your article first and I would have just gone with InkOwl in my 1430. Hopefully these will suffice since I also use a Mac and that sounds like what you’re using but my next purchase will definitely be Ink Owl. Thanks for a great write up!
Hi Lynn,
Glad you are here now! And don’t feel alone, your story is very similar to so many others! I used in inkXpro in my 1430! I made a printer profile for macs so make sure to download that! Since my 1430 fully retired, I have been using the 7710 with Ink Owl and I have been really happy! I haven’t used their ink for a 1430 but their customer service is great, they won’t disappoint!
Do I need to purge my printer with cleaning fluid if I were to switch out from one of these sublimation inks to another? Thanks.
What type of printer do you have? It depends on the type of printer.
also wondering about needing to purge cartridges if we switch ink brands. I have a WF7710 and currently use INKxpro (they had great customer service when one of my cartridge chips was damaged) but thinking of switching my Black only to PrintersJack. I still have CMY of my INKxPro but I need to purchase black only.
Hi Angela, I wouldn’t recomend using a an old cartridge or mixing different inks. If you are going to switch, I would buy new cartridges and do it all at once.
Hi
Fantastic article, I finally understand this stuff !
I have inkxpro, my 7720 prints better without using there profile , Do you write profiles for this? My current choice of settings that work best are
Epson sRGB
Adobe RGB 1998
Gamma 1.8
Paper I use texprint xphr
Premium presentation matte
High speed off
Thank you
Randy Stein
Hi Randy, I haven’t made a inkXpro profile for macs. But I believe they may have one already, have you checked with them?
Hi
I have windows not a Mac.
Hi Jane,
I had been using Cobra Ink with my 1430 for the past 5 years and decided changed to Ink Owl as they are in Canada, just like me. Sadly, I cannot get any colors right… I thought my printer was just getting too old (got some overspray even after lots of head cleanings using cleaning cartridges) and purchased a 7720… The colors are still off… I spoke with Ink Owl customer service on the phone over 1 hour and they seemed to be satisfied after giving me an alternative profile for the 7720. However, my blacks and greys are green-ish and all colors have a green color cast… I tried all sorts of tests (colorsync, printer controls, photoshop controls, selected different types of papers, etc)… I really don’t know what to do anymore. I use Photoshop CC 2020 and my Mac is on Mojave (too scared to even upgrade to Catalina). I noticed that all of the Ink Owl profiles are ICM (usually made for windows) and not ICC. Could that be the issue? Would it be inappropriate for me to ask for the profile you were using for this test via email?
Hi Kareen, Ink Owl sent me a couple printer profiles that I had to try to get the right color but once I printed/pressed with the correct profile it was a night and day difference. The profile that worked best for me was the “Performance D- Epson 7719 – Ink Owl profile for Sublimation 05- Nov-2018” It isn’t mine to distrubute but you could always ask for that specific one. Additionally, if that doesn’t work, they will make you a custom printer profile just for your printer.
We want to purchase a five color printer but having problems finding a dye sub for photo black. Do you have any recommendations? Our 7210 is getting too old to depend upon.