Choosing the Right Toner Cartridges for Your Printer

If you do not have much experience with printers and toner cartridges, the first step of choosing the right toner cartridge is to identify your printers brand and type and to see which toner cartridges are compatible with it. After these short and easy steps, you should set a budget and find out where you can make your purchase.

First of all, toner cartridges are not the same as inkjet cartridges - even though they are both used for printing - it is important to know that toner cartridges cannot be used on inkjet printers and toner cartridges cannot be used on laser printers. Usually, toner costs more but can print more pages and last longer. As opposed to that, inkjet printers are used at home or in small offices where the need for printed material is lower.

Typical toner cartridges are designed for color printing, meaning that they include black, yellow, cyan and magenta colors which are combined in the printing process to produce all other combinations of colors. If you don’t need colors in your printing, you can simply purchase a black toner cartridge which is cheaper.

There are three kinds of toner cartridges: original equipment manufacturer cartridges, which are made by the company which manufactured the printer. The company will then without exception recommend and encourage the usage of those cartridges - for example, HP will always promote a HP toner cartridge as the best solution for HP printers. It is fair to say that OEM cartridges are best in terms of quality, which is important if your printing material includes high resolution photographs or documents. Compatible cartridges are made by the companies which were not involved in manufacturing the printer and are usually cheaper but still reliable, although producing less quality prints than OEM cartridges. There are also remanufactured cartridges, made out of old empty cartridges which are refilled and used again. Your choice of toner cartridge thus depends on the material you will be printing; if you only plan to print simple text, even remanufactured cartridges should suffice.

Some cartridges even come with a warranty. If you’re going to buy a large cartridge with a capacity to print a thousand or more pages, having a warranty is almost obligatory - so aim for cartridges which come with warranties. You even can purchase packs of cartridges instead of buying a single cartridge if you’re going to print in mass quantities, or have a large number of printers at your workplace, buying them in bulk will make you save money in the long run.

If you are not sure whether a cartridge is compatible with your printer you should simply find out the model of your printer and find the information on the Internet or in a printer toner catalogue if one is available to you. You can check the cartridge you already have in your printer and try to find the same. Once you are sure which cartridges are compatible with your printer, you can make your choice, bearing in mind your planned budget and the type of material you’ll be printing in order to find the toner cartridge that is fitting your needs.