No third party company so far delivered color ink sets, pigment and dye, that give the same fade resistance in their respective categories. There was a time you could get better fade resistance from third party pigment inks than the OEM dye inks had, but that is more than a decade ago. Mediastreet Generations, MIS 7600 as examples. Faster pigment settling was a real problem with these pigment inks. The black had some dye added for better Dmax. There was even some color deviation between deliveries in our experience.
Since then OEM inks, both pigment and dye, improved considerably in fade resistance, gamut, stability on the printers. I gladly pay the 0,30-0,40 Euro a ML for that quality so I can assure my customers the inks I use are among the best. Give them the link to Aardenburg-Imaging results too. My printers have no issues with the HP inks. It is also nice to know that 90% of ink lands on usable prints and not in the maintenance tank. I am sure the OEM companies make a healthy profit on that ink production, so do I on the prints made with them. I doubt the OEM ink production costs are as low as the Chinese ink producers seem to start from. Sure I check where ink prices are the lowest within the Vivera pigment cartridges category but not beyond.
Alright my officeprinter runs on Vivera pigment MK + PK ink partly diluted with an ink medium to create a quad ink set. For the invoices, letters and so far some special jobs reproducing handwritten A4s. More an experiment that may break even in ink costs on the long run. I have no intentions to do the same for the HP Zs here, not even on the grey inks. Maybe on another thermal inkjet head printer dedicated for B&W prints. Fade resistance and print consistency is more easily kept with PK and MK dilutions than with color ink mixes.
Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst
http://www.pigment-print.com/spectralplots/spectrumviz_1.htmDecember 2014 update, 700+ inkjet media white spectral plots