Inkjet cartridges contain one or more partitioned ink reservoirs. Some manufacturers also include electronic contacts and a chip that corresponds to the printer. When the ink cartridge runs out, you need to replace with a new one, and this may cost you a lot of money. You can save money by simply refilling the cartridges. Again, some printers contain smart chips that can identify whenever the cartridge runs out of ink.

Why do the cartridges have chips? Well, chips are designed by the printer manufacturer to convey information to the printer regarding the level of ink in the cartridge; however some machine won’t function unless they make out that the cartridge has ink. As the printer cannot indeed see the level of toner or ink in the cartridge, it requires the page yield reading from the chip. So when a cartridge with a page yield reading chip has emptied, the printer identifies that cartridge as empty, and by refilling with toner the printer will still consider your cartridge as empty because it is still reading the previous chip.

Many printers using chipped cartridges will enable you to print, so you can ignore the ‘low ink’ or ‘empty ink’ signal and continue printing until the cartridge is really out of ink. However, some printers will ‘freeze’ or completely stop printing. For those printers, there is either Chip Resetter for resetting the original chip or replacement chips. Again, some manufacturers offer refillable cartridges with an auto reset chip, which means the cartridges hardly ever have to be removed from the printer.