Toner Cartridges: How Well Informed Are You?

Printer cartridges - they’re relatively simple to understand, aren’t they? You buy them, put them into your printer and then you print away. Once they’re depleted, you simply replace them.

Of course, there is actually a lot more to consider when buying toner cartridges; the cost per page, the volume of the cartridge and how much the cartridge costs. However, all of these aspects are usually relatively easy to determine with a bit of simple maths.

Nevertheless, a Lexmark study released last week has revealed that office workers across Europe (including the UK) are actually quite poorly informed when it comes to their printer supplies.

One of the more shocking statistics to come out of the study was that 3 out of 4 office workers don’t know how many pages their cartridge should be printing, an essential part of determining which printer is the best value for you.

To be fair, finding out the page yield of a particular cartridge isn’t always easy, as many manufacturers choose not to include the information on the packaging. Occasionally, you can dig up the information by conducting a search for products, but this is hardly the kind of practice you can do on a whim when out shopping for a printer.

It was also revealed that 84% of workers didn’t know how many more pages they could print after the ‘low toner warning’ message was shown. Of course, there is no definitive number – it depends on the kind of prints you’re carrying out and the size of the documents you’re sending to print – but some kind of indication on the cartridge packaging or on the printer would undoubtedly be welcomed by consumers.

Paying To Recycle?

Given the onus on the importance of recycling from cartridge manufacturers, the fact that 28% of office workers thought they had to pay to recycle their old cartridges suggests that the message surrounding the impact of printer cartridges on the environment needs to be made even clearer, with recycling options like remanufacturing and refilling ink cartridges given more prominence.

3 out of 5 office workers also believed that the output quality of a cartridge decreased as the toner got lower, which makes sense in a strange way (a biro often stops working when ink runs low) but is completely inaccurate. Generally, the level of toner in a cartridge shouldn’t affect its performance, although the cartridge may require a shake to loosen toner.

How Much Does A Cartridge Cost?

50% of those surveyed also believed that the more expensive a cartridge was, the more it cost per-page. This isn’t true; cost per page is dependent on the stated page yield (or volume of the ink) divided by the cost of the cartridge itself. This means that some more expensive cartridges can represent better value overall.

However, with many manufacturers reducing the volume of ink and toner in their cartridges, the value associated with buying an OEM cartridge is beginning to dwindle. Having an old, large capacity cartridge to refill is a good way to get the best value.

For more information on toner cartridges and the remanufacturing process, get in touch with Cartridge World or visit your local store.