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Good budget toner cartridge brand?

Posted: Wed Feb 20, 2013 12:35 am
by MadManOriginal
So the 'starter' toner cartridge on my inexpensive personal laser printer (HP P1006) is finally running low. The genuine HP cartridges run like $100...lol. (I almost wanted to use it as an excuse to get a Brother printer, and still might, but non-OEM cartridges are in the sub-$20 range) I've searched for replacements and found lots of brands, read some user reviews, but quite frankly when a company's products all have 1 user review of GREAT! on Amazon I get suspicious :P So what's a known good brand for non-OEM toner cartridge? The toner I need is HP # CB435A .

Re: Good budget toner cartridge brand?

Posted: Wed Feb 20, 2013 12:43 am
by FireGryphon
Not that this is much help, but if the toner is really $100, you could buy a whole new laser printer for less than that...

Re: Good budget toner cartridge brand?

Posted: Wed Feb 20, 2013 1:25 am
by Diplomacy42
... and it's not uncommon to get a free cartridge when you buy a new laser printer(although not a full one)

Re: Good budget toner cartridge brand?

Posted: Wed Feb 20, 2013 1:29 am
by MadManOriginal
Yeah, I wrote that in the post :) There are always sales on Brother printers for like $70-80...in fact Staples has a good deal right now on a similar basic printer for just $60 so I almost just went there and bought one, but then I realized the non-HP branded cartridges are pretty low price. (There is actually another reason I'd think of replacing the HP...it's quirky under Windows 8 but I know what the quirks are now so I'm semi-OK with it but don't like HP for STILL not having Win 8 drivers.) BUT in the end I'm cheap...so unless there's a printer for ~$20 I'm going to look for toner :)

Re: Good budget toner cartridge brand?

Posted: Wed Feb 20, 2013 1:34 am
by JohnC
I'd go with a new printer which uses original but less expensive cartridges... HP's prices were always crazy. Brother is an excellent alternative, even their cheaper units (which may cost less than the price of single cartridge for HP) can last for several years and are pretty fast for in-home needs... As for aftermarket cartridges - in my unfortunate experience they all have the same potential of breaking up or having bad toner quality (which doesn't fuse to the paper properly or "cakes up" the fuser assembly or inside the cartridge itself)... I just don't deal with them anymore, not even for personal needs (I don't print a lot of text at home anymore, so even the cheapest OEM Brother cartridge can last for about a year for me).

Re: Good budget toner cartridge brand?

Posted: Wed Feb 20, 2013 1:51 am
by MadManOriginal
I take it back, Amazon has genuine HP cartridges for $60 as do some other places...still a lot. Toner cartridges for lower-end lasers all seem to be $40+ except for the cheapest remanufactured ones. But I read enough comments on non-OEM cartridges about problems that I am leaning a little bit toward a different printer. I was 0% that way but am now maybe 25%.

Re: Good budget toner cartridge brand?

Posted: Wed Feb 20, 2013 2:42 am
by Welch
Getting my customers to drop their horrible HP 2035/55dn printers that run about 97 bucks for 2k or was it 2.5k toners for Kyocera FS-1370 printers where the toner is $89 for a 7.3k toner.... huge difference in cost. So far kyocera takes the gold over HP and Xerox and most other Laser printers. I've always liked Brother printers but never did a toner cost comparison on them because there aren't any official dealer/techs here for them unfortunately.

Re: Good budget toner cartridge brand?

Posted: Wed Feb 20, 2013 2:45 am
by JohnC
Just go for new printer... It will be faster than yours (even the cheapest Brother model), have warranty and have a new cartridge included (though it will be a "starter" version with less toner)... Brother's model with duplexing and networking, including WiFi, is like $77 now, with free shipping:
http://www.amazon.com/Brother-HL-2270DW ... ther+laser
Do eeet! You know you want to! :evil: :wink:

Re: Good budget toner cartridge brand?

Posted: Wed Feb 20, 2013 3:30 am
by MadManOriginal
lol...evil. So yeah, I checked out that 2270DW printer, scanned the manuals, and decided I'll get it - partly to say screw you to HP for poor driver support. Duplex is nice for printing out junk stuff. The networking will be a nice bonus, I won't need to power on the PC it's attached to to print from wireless things on my network. I came back here to post and there's all this peer pressure! :P

I ordered from Newegg though because I get stuff by UPS in one shipping day from their NJ warehouse.

Re: Good budget toner cartridge brand?

Posted: Wed Feb 20, 2013 11:52 am
by ludi
If you decide to rescue the HP as a backup, note that the Xerox remans are decent quality for B&W use. Here at work we've had nothing but trouble using third-party color cartridges in HP printers, though. One of the cost-drivers on HP cartridges is that you're usually replacing the print drum as part of the cartridge, and most of the third-parties (with the possible exception of Xerox, from what I've seen) use low quality drums. This is an HP pecadillo, their inkjet printers are designed with a similar philosophy: every time you replace an ink cartridge, you're also replacing the print head. The cost adds up.

No idea what Brother does, but the printer you selected is not that pricey in the first place, and the OEM cartridge is less than $50.

Re: Good budget toner cartridge brand?

Posted: Wed Feb 20, 2013 2:13 pm
by MadManOriginal
True, I'm not certain whether this HP printer has the drum and cartridge as one unit. I'd guess no since the cartridge is pretty small but I didn't look at it or search to find out. That sort of justifies the price if it is both but it's also a waste to replace the drum as often as the toner cartridge. It looks like in the Brother 2270DW (and probably lots of their printers) the toner cartridge is separate from the drum. I found this Brother new original replacement cartridge+drum: ~$50 and 12000 pages. So clearly consumables will not cost as much and a 12000 page cartridge would last me ages.

At least the HP was super cheap. Got it during the peak of the inventory blowouts during the recession, like early 2009, and between a Staples discount coupon and a 'recycle your old printer for $50 credit' (I gave them a 20 year-old HP inkjet that 'worked' but just didn't feed pages well, lol) I think the net was around $20.