Fortunately, no consensus, there's a lot of good ones. I use Inktec but they are hard to get except in small quantities (in the USA) and I have no idea about their product in Brother cartridges. I'm sure your get more recommendations.
One thing that is very clear is if you browse ebay for a minute you will be quickly swamped by a huge number of sellers and refill inks. As a rule of thumb you do get what you paid for. Inkjet ink formulation is such a high tech that takes a bit of advanced research by many scientists and chemists of PHDs. The most advanced colorants, dye or pigments, developed for formulating latest inkjet inks are not cheap commodities. The majority of refill inks, however, come from one country in Asia which probably has the lowest cost labor advantage. It really takes not much mind tinkering to understand that their cheap inks are made with cheap colorants. Their low cost inks are not a result of low labor cost but cheap colorants used.
I was once in an indoor flea market held in the convention center in Los Angeles. I picked up a set of 6 BCI-6 compatible cartridges at $0.75 a pop for my Canon ip6000D. I did print a few photos with those cartridges. The colors faded in only 3 months. The manufacturer probably used the cheapest colorants they could find to make the ink.
One thing that is very clear is if you browse ebay for a minute you will be quickly swamped by a huge number of sellers and refill inks. As a rule of thumb you do get what you paid for. Inkjet ink formulation is such a high tech that takes a bit of advanced research by many scientists and chemists of PHDs. The most advanced colorants, dye or pigments, developed for formulating latest inkjet inks are not cheap commodities. The majority of refill inks, however, come from one country in Asia which probably has the lowest cost labor advantage. It really takes not much mind tinkering to understand that their cheap inks are made with cheap colorants. Their low cost inks are not a result of low labor cost but cheap colorants used.
I was once in an indoor flea market held in the convention center in Los Angeles. I picked up a set of 6 BCI-6 compatible cartridges at $0.75 a pop for my Canon ip6000D. I did print a few photos with those cartridges. The colors faded in only 3 months. The manufacturer probably used the cheapest colorants they could find to make the ink.
