TR Forums

I am once again looking at compatable toners for lasers. They are very attractive price wise. But I also see a lot of manufactures saying it will void the warranty etc. So If your laser is out of warranty, how harmful is using a compatable toner cart. If you have done this for a number of years with no problems, what vendors do you recommend?

best to avoid the compatible toners and go with an original from the printer manufacturer if you can afford it. I have used many many compatible toners in a ton of different laser printers and they all worked fine, but it is not like getting an original. they usually run out way before their estimated number of pages printed. You get about half of the life you should from a compatible toner. the original toner will last very close to the estimated number of pages.

so if the compatible toner is much cheaper (like a third of the price) than the original then i say go for it. you will replace it a few times but still end up spending less.

if this is for a company, just get the original. you will save yourself time and the effort of replacing toners more frequently. and someone else is footing the bill...

If it's a black and white printer, and especially if it's a low volume unit, then third party cartridges can be okay, but the cheapest remanufactured cartridges tend to use low-quality components (especially the print drum, if contained in the cartridge rather than in the printer). The Xerox-branded cartridges I've seen appear to be somewhat better quality but my experience with them is limited.

If it's a color printer, and especially a high-volume office printer, third-party cartridges are a source of all kinds of problems. At work, we had to fight with our corporate overlords to get back to using HP OEM cartridges in our HP 55xx printers because although the four cartridges costs a whopping $350-400 each from HP, the third-party cartridges caused so many problems that the cost savings were totally lost in downtime, service calls, and cartridges that had to be prematurely replaced. My favorite was the cartridge that was somehow running out of synch with the other three, creating a color skew that looked like a belt problem.

The printer in question is a high volume black/white laser. I have stuck with oem toner down through the years. I never paid that close attention, but I started recording the page count and noticed on a 10K cart. I was only getting a little under 5K. When that happened twice in a row I contacted the manufacturer and they said I should contact support. The laser is clean, and prints fine, but I would expect a little closer to 10K than 5K. It's at a legal office and they are almost exclusively printing text. That's why I started looking at alternatives, if I'm not going to get the volumn promised, I'd at least like to get a better price. The laser is a Samsung ML-4050.

bigjohn888jb wrote:

The printer in question is a high volume black/white laser. I have stuck with oem toner down through the years. I never paid that close attention, but I started recording the page count and noticed on a 10K cart. I was only getting a little under 5K. When that happened twice in a row I contacted the manufacturer and they said I should contact support. The laser is clean, and prints fine, but I would expect a little closer to 10K than 5K. It's at a legal office and they are almost exclusively printing text. That's why I started looking at alternatives, if I'm not going to get the volumn promised, I'd at least like to get a better price. The laser is a Samsung ML-4050.

Curiously, what print quality is the printer set at?

You cannot take manufacturer print volume claims with a grain of salt; you need a friggin cowlick. Usually their estimates are at the highest "toner saving" settings, and they always say "up to" ##### sheets. Of course 5000 pages is still "up to 10,000" kinda like my toilet bowl cleaner lasts "up to" 2000 flushes...

Go here and find your toner.

Based on the (USD) prices I can find, your toner cost per sheet is in the range of three to four cents. If this legal office is producing a lot of material for internal review that eventually ends up in the locked shredder box, I would focus more on saving money on paper suppliers, because lower-quality paper is less likely to create downtime.

You might find that some third-part replacements are adequate, but I would have at least one OE cartridge on-hand in case it doesn't "take."