Toner Cartridges Reviewed & Rated
Replacement Toner Cartridges...
Hello, I'm Karin. When it's time to replace your toner cartridge you have many different alternatives. You can by from the original manufacturer, purchase from a generic manufacturer or refill it yourself.
Check out our site to learn more about these alternatives so you can decide which toner cartridge is right for you. Please feel free to check out some of our adds to learn more about refilling or replacing your toner cartridges.
Re-Manufactured or New?
When laser copiers and printers first came into existence, you were required to obtain your replacements for the toner cartridges from the Original Equipment Manufacturer, OEM. The OEM's were the exclusive providers available for toner cartridges, and they realized this. The OEM's would sell their printers for almost cost and then earn a great profit from their toner cartridge replacements.
After some time, other businesses realized the
chance for remaking the toner cartridges at a much
smaller price to provide owners of
printers with more
inexpensive alternatives. Sadly,
these early companies who remade the cartridges
would merely refill them and then sell the
cartridges. The companies gained a reputation as
"drill and fill companies" since a lot of the times
they needed to drill a hole in the cartridge before additional toner
was poured into the
cartridge. There were not any parts that were changed
or inspected.
Original providers of toner cartridges frequently offered a generic toner for all types of refills, despite the fact that every model of cartridge really required a specific blend for best output. No one wanted to buy the inferior products from drill and fill businesses for fear that the inferior products. toner cartridges, might do damage to their printers or even make their warranty invalid.
New companies are springing up that do more than fill toner cartridges. They are now filling a market need for replacement of drums, wipers, and mag rollers. People are demanding quality and these new companies have been running tests to make sure there's a consistently high yield and quality of print from their toner cartridges. Now you have options and do not have to purchase refills for the cartridge from the OEM.
When it comes time to buy another refurbished printer ink cartridge, you will want to seek out a business that stands behind their service, takes care to use the proper toner formation, and changes out any defunct pieces. Your reward will be a more affordable ink cartridge that produces sharp prints and won't damage your equipment.
Recycle Your Cartridges!
Did you know that over 350 million used printer
toner cartridges are thrown out every year? That’s 350
million cartridges sitting in landfills across the
country each and every year. Since those
plastic
parts take at least 500 years to degrade, these
toner cartridges will be polluting our lands for
generation to come. If you also consider that the
residual toner left in these cartridges also
pollutes the environment then I’m sure you will
agree that recycling is necessary. But it takes more
than sending in your toner cartridge to be recycled, you
also have to buy and use recycled cartridges to keep
that market going. And if all of that doesn’t
convince you, then how about this? Turning in and
then purchasing recycled cartridges can save you up
to 50% of the cost of new toner cartridges sold by the
original equipment manufacturers!
There are two basic ways you can recycle your printer toner cartridge. One way is to refill it yourself. You can do this by purchasing a kit that contains the replacement toner and usually some disposal gloves and a bag to shake out and dispose of the remaining toner. For some toner cartridges you may also have to purchase a chip and a tool kit that burns a hole into the toner cartridge for you to pour the toner into. It is not as difficult as it seems and you can save the most amount of money recycling this way. Since none of the moving parts are replaced, you can perform about 4 – 7 refills before the toner cartridge wears out. The second recycling method is to use a recycling company that will take in your old cartridge for a credit and then even sell you a newly remanufactured cartridge.
Not all used laser printer toner cartridges can be recycled and there are some limits as to what cartridge your recycler will accept. Most companies will not accept damaged cartridges or cartridges with missing parts. Inspect your cartridge closely before sending it in to make sure that there are no cracks in the casing and that there is no toner leaking out. You will also need to check with your retailer to see if they accept non OEM, Original Equipment Manufacturer, cartridges. Some only accept used toner cartridges made by the OEM.
How to Reduce your Printing Costs
Providing toner for my laser all in one printer seems to be an endless, ongoing task. And the price of the toner cartridges makes me even more uncomfortable. This is why I made it a personal mission of mine to cut down on the money that I spend on toner. I figured if I focus on three main areas I could begin to feel some relief. These areas are (1)the amount of printing that I did, (2)recycling applicable items and (3)refilling the cartridges on my own.
I needed to exercise greater caution over what I was printing. By merely keeping track of what I was printing, I ended up being able to reduce a fair amount of pages. First, I would determine if what I was going to print really had to be printed. If I really had to print it, then I would determine whether I required every one of the pages, or if I could merely print some of the pages to achieve my goal. I learned that by utilizing a no cost Firefox program to take screen shots, I would be able to decrease the amount of pages I had to print by a lot when I was printing off web pages. Before, when I was printing web pages, I'd always print at least one page that I didn't need.
The next thing I evaluated was the amount of paper I was utilizing. I believed that if I was able to reuse the side of the paper I hadn't already used, which I used to throw away, in addition to lessening the print resolution, I would save paper and toner on each of my drafts. It's a small amount of hassle, switching the paper out when I desired to print a draft, but then I came to the realization that I would be able to put the paper I had used in the second paper tray and then merely choose it when I desired a draft print.
Finally, I opted to attempt to refill my toner cartridge on my own. I purchased a refill kit which claimed it would create the same amount of pages as my original toner cartridge created. The refill kit included a tool kit, some gloves, and the toner. The refill kit's directions were clear and I was able to get through them alright. It will be much simpler the next time. So far, the print quality appears to be the same as before and I saved a lot of cash.
If you are careful about your printing, occasionally recycle and fill up your toner cartridges again, you can save a lot of money through the year. Also you will be saving the environment because your use of paper and toner will decrease.
A Case Study in Remanufactured vs. New Cartridges
In 2007, Hewlett-Packard commissioned a study to determine the quality and reliability of remanufactured laser printer toner cartridges compared to the new toner cartridges that they produce. For the study, HP picked 2 laser printers: the HP LJ2300 and the HP LJ4350. The cartridges used in these printers are the HP10A and the HP42A, respectively. The comparison was to be made with 9 different brands of remanufactured toner cartridges as supplied by the likes of The Office Depot, OfficeMax, Dataproducts, and Elite Image among others.
The results of the reliability testing were quite impressive for Hewlett-Packard as 100% of their toner cartridges passed all of the reliability tests. The other manufacturers were not so impressive, however. The average total failure rate for the remanufactured cartridges was 33.8% While only 3.7% of the remanufactured cartridges were DOA, one third of all of the remanufactured cartridges failed the reliability test! The best performing remanufacturer still had over 16% failure rate.
Hewlett-Packard also out-performed the competition in the print quality testing. Over 96% of all pages printed by the HP toner cartridges passed all of the usage tests. Only 2.8% of all hp pages were categorized as limited use for internal distribution. The remanufactured laser printer toner cartridges only produced 65% usable pages. Those are pretty impressive results for the HP printer cartridges.
Reviewing the study, I feel that even though Hewlett-Packard commissioned the effort, it is still essentially valid. The only caveat I have is that there was no mention of comparing results against the best performing remanufacturers. The chosen competitors were primarily the most popular or widely used companies. Although it is certainly a safe bet to only purchase authentic HP toner cartridges, they are very costly and I think there are precautions you can take to make sure you are buying a remanufactured cartridge from a reliable company that produces a top performing product. You should make sure that the company you select tests their cartridges after they are manufactured and that they do yield and density testing. So, do your homework before you buy remanufactured laser printer toner cartridges. You can save a lot of money and help the environment.