Should Cost Be Your Only Concern When Buying Printer Cartridges?

We’re dedicated to saving you money here at Cartridge World; whether it be via our wallet-friendly compatible ink cartridges, our quick and easy refill service or our useful blog posts on cost-effective printing practices, nothing makes us happier than seeing our customers saving a bit of dough.

However - as any movie based around a Wall Street investor who neglects his family in favour of his career only to have an epiphany later on would tell you - money isn’t everything and this is certainly true when it comes to print cartridges. Ideally, the cheapest toner cartridges would also be the best but life is often far from ideal.

Basing your printer or office supplies buying on cost alone often means that you're missing out on the best value. ‘Best value’ is often mistaken for meaning ‘cheapest’ but in actuality, value is also determined by the operational life of a cartridge, it’s capacity and how well it works.

With that in mind, we’ve compiled a wee list of things other than cost to look out for when shopping for your print cartridges!

Page Yield and Cost per Page

Page yield is one of those terms that a lot of people are familiar with but aren’t necessarily clued up on it’s exact definition. In simple terms, page yield is the amount of pages you can expect to get out of an ink or toner cartridge before you’ll need to replace it. You can usually find this information on the cartridge packaging or on the manufacturer’s website.

You might think that the more pages a cartridge can yield, the better value that cartridge is but that isn’t strictly true. For instance, a cartridge that yields 200 pages but costs £40 would represent worse value than a cartridge that yields 100 but costs £15.

You won’t find cost-per-page on most cartridges but there is an easy way to calculate it. For black and white cartridges, simply divide the cost of the cartridge by it’s page yield. For colour cartridges, the process is slightly more difficult as there are four different cartridges to consider. To get the overall cost-per-page for colour prints, figure out the cost per page for each of the colours and then add these to cost per page of a black and white cartridge. You should arrive at the cost per page for colour printing!

Performance

Performance is a slightly more difficult metric to measure as, unlike cost-per-page, there isn’t any definitive answer. However, you can get an idea of how well a cartridge performs by looking at reviews online. While most cartridges will probably have the odd bad review here and there owing to experience (to be honest, most people are happy if their cartridge simply prints), a raft of bad reviews should be taken as a warning sign.

Environmental Impact

While it won’t save you any money, it’s important to be aware of any environmental impact your cartridge may have had during production. Most manufacturers will outline their environmental procedures on their website, but if you can’t find any information it’s always worth asking either the manufacturer or the store you're purchasing from to give you peace of mind. Also consider purchasing remanufactured toner and printer ink cartridges instead of new cartridges!

You should also consider what happens to your cartridges after you’ve finished with them. Most major manufacturers will have procedures in place for the easy recycling of cartridges but if they don’t, you can always bring your cartridges along to Cartridge World for a refill!

Printer cartridges aren’t cheap but cost definitely should not be your only consideration when buying a new cartridge. Keep in mind some of the steps above and you should find you have a cheaper, more fulfilling printing experience! Oh, and don’t forget to pop along to your local Cartridge World, where you’ll find plenty of good value cartridges for jaw-dropping prices!

Image credit: Rawpixel