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Time to fine a/c refrigerant leak in your Prius. As a repair shop owner which one is the best to use? some shop owners the question is which one is the cheapest, two completely different mind sets. As a customer which shop do you think you should stay away from?. If you are new young TECH just entering the automotive repair industry stay away from a cheap boss they will slowly turn you into a bad TECH and will not always do what is good for customers. Back to dyes, there is no just (one) answer to that question. There many, I have and will show you photos of many dye and oil manufactures, some are the dye manufactures them self and some just have just any one throw a dye in a oil or (solvent! base) and relabel it and sell it? some are ok some are not!. The good ones last years in a a/c system the not so good ones start fading with age fast. There is still the old mineral oil based for the old CFC R12 refrigerant that was used in the 1950's - 1994 EPA phaseout date. I was still seeing shops using and installing the old mineral base oil dye into the PAG oil R134a cars a decade later, when I ask why they were using that day I got different answers , from "I did not know"- "whats the difference?"- " But I still have so much and it cost a lot so I will use this up" and many more. WHATS THE DIFFERENCE ? compressor manufactures designed the durability around the oil they will be using or vice-a-versa and the viscosity. Types or oil used 1# there are three types of mineral used. A: Paraffin free (wax free) mineral. B: Paraffin added mineral. C: Low surface tension mineral. and back in the 1950's it was 1000 viscosity the mid 60's it was 500 viscosity. D:then there is the ESTER OIL compressor some on European model cars and some US cars, this is NOT! the same ESTER base oil used in electric compressors today!. I still find shop sticking this old ester oil in new Prius it will some times set a short CODE. F: PAG oils there are many different additive packages to the base stock and many base stock (not the same but carry the same ESTER name). 68 VIS (viscosity) 100vis-150vis-200vis-300vis ect. G; PAG oils Base and additives too many to list here. 46 vis- 68 vis- 100 vis- 125vis- 135vis- 150vis- and others not so common. Back to the dyes , dye for mineral oil CFC, dye for R134 old ESTER oils, dye for R134a PAG oils, dye for R134a new electric ESTER oils!. BUT WAIT THAT'S NOT ALL ! now we have the introduction of R1234yf NEW refrigerant with new oils and new dyes coming and some are here now in two Cadillac's the ATS and the XTS . I will say one of the best oils I have used is by TRACERLINE and for the PRIUS the part # TP-9775-0104 for hybrids. IT is one of the only few properly packaged oil for electric compressor I have seen.