Roberta Groche asked:


Finding the absolute value printer cartridge is easy. All over the Internet, there are thousands of portal offering low priced printer toner cartridges. However, buying expensive or cheap cartridges does not guarantee a quality print. We need to scrutinize the product that we want to buy to make sure it’s worth investing for.

Printer toner is the life of your printer. Poor prints are results of poor quality toner. Cartridges that are shipped with printers are original and are of good quality. Buying these separately is costly, but there are other alternatives that we can do to maintain the quality while spending less. Original cartridges or consumables are hard to find and some times they are only available at the manufacturer’s affiliates.

A cheap alternative to original printer cartridges are the refills. Instead of purchasing a new printer cartridge an owner can simply have the old toner refilled with compatible and quality powders. Refills are very cheap and will surely save the owner some decent amount. On the other hand, refilling original cartridges with poor quality powder may ruin or damage the printer causing it to malfunction. It is strongly recommended to ask for a refill from trusted and reliable stores.

Compatible printer cartridges are also good alternatives. These types are specifically designed to match the original cartridge and fit exactly into a printer. These are very cheap alternatives that can offer the same quality as the original. The downside, some compatible cartridges does not last long enough. A lot of compatibles are filled with less powder compared to the original. Another disadvantage of using compatibles is the maintenance. Most compatibles are disposable. So once empty, one will need to dump it instead of recycling it. There are also compatibles that are perfectly suited to meet the original. They can be refilled and are guaranteed to produce quality prints.

Recycled cartridges are also proven alternatives. These are use original cartridges that were refurbished to look and function like new. Refilled and sold to consumers at prices with great difference from brand new cartridges. Though these are cheap, it is very important to check for the physical structure of the cartridge. A buyer must make sure that there are no leaks or further damages to the cartridge. It is expected that life expectancy of these items are less compared to brand new units.

There is no equal alternative to using original printer cartridge. Aside from the quality prints it produce users are assured that this can not damage the machine since it is designed to work with it. Finding good cartridges can be easy if one is familiar with what to look for. Important factors are quality, life expectancy, cost of refill, and price.

Jim Rjindael asked:


Has anyone seen a photocopier being opened and ink poured in – they all used to be refilled like this – businesses used to buy big bottles of toner ink and simply top up their cartridges. Laser printers where exactly the same – you’d buy a big bottle of ink powder and top up the cartridge when needed. All the laser toner cartridges had little ***** openers so you could refill them easily from ink bought from any printer supplier.

Alas those days are gone – the printer manufacturers realized that it was much more profitable to keep reselling you a new cartridge rather than allowing you to easily refill the laser toner cartridges. Gone went the removable stoppers as they sealed the unit and many manufacturers even started adding a small chip disabling the toner cartridge when it had printed so many pages. They are in fact actively artificially reducing the life of the cartridges in order to sell more replacements.

We have all have been brought up with capitalism so we know how the markets work and the profit motives of these companies. The environmental effect of this is less apparent though.

To produce a new toner cartridge from scratch takes approximately 1-2 liters of oil – so if we you refill a toner cartridge you are instantly saving nearly 2 liters of a limited resource.

Two Liters Doesn’t sound too much ?

Well possibly it isn’t but there are approximately 44 million new laser toner cartridges used every year in Europe – the majority of these can be refilled and used again. Over 73% of these cartridges are used once only ! The environmental impact of this is huge especially as we are discarding cartridges that are easily reused – every time we refill a cartridge we save the environmental impact of producing another one and also save ourselves the cost of buying it!

So how to refill a toner cartridge ?

Well its extremely easy – it varies from cartridge to toner cartridge but generally takes no more than a few minutes and certainly doesn’t require any special skills. It’s important to get the right instructions for a specific printer as this makes it refilling the toner extremely straightforward.

Go to an expert who can sell you the exact kit for your printer and also who will answer any queries you may have about How to refill a toner cartridge.

Apart from the environmental impact – refilling your toner cartridge yourself also save a lot of money – sometimes up to 87% of the cost of a brand new cartridge. The beauty of refilling as opposed to re-manufacturing is you’re actually not physically tampering with the working parts in the cartridge – all you’re doing is pouring in new ink toner into the cartridge.