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Printers Suck... Period.

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sdifox said:
Third party toners are cheap.
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Yeah, its the reason I switched back to laser. Like 2 brother tn350 compatible carts for $24 on Amazon. I don't print things that often, but with inkjet there is always one of the colors thats empty that prevents basic B&W printing. And with inkjet printers they tend to degrade the print quality when you use 3rd party ink. The last time I replaced a cart immediately the black would be missing lines unless I printed in high quality mode. WTF is that? Its like the printer knew I was using a 3rd party cart and is trying to make me burn through ink even faster. Laser just seems to always work.
 
printer bandit, fearsome lord of darkness
a hellish might, and savage in his starkness
with pure evil and petty theft conjoined
he rests not till all deskjets are purloined
 
brianmanahan said:
printer bandit, fearsome lord of darkness
a hellish might, and savage in his starkness
with pure evil and petty theft conjoined
he rests not till all deskjets are purloined
Click to expand...

3N58ccw.gif
 
sdifox said:
Never had an issue. Been buying third party toner for more than two decades.
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Depends on the printer but reports of 3rd party toner issues are quite common actually.

If you check the reviews on various sites you sometimes see reports of worse print quality, but more importantly, you often see reports of toner cartridges not working at all, with the printer throwing up an error. Or else you'll see reports of inconsistent errors that are cleared by restarts, etc. This isn't a surprise, since toner cartridges are chipped these days too. A replacement toner cartridge will usually work, but the OEM cartridges never have these issues.

I'd hate to be out of toner under a tight deadline, only to find out my backup after market cartridge doesn't work, and I have to get a replacement. Also, if you use 3rd party toner it will sometimes void the manufacturer's warranty.

Overall, I agree all this stuff is largely bogus engineering on the manufacturer's part to get you to buy their toner, but nonetheless it is a real issue, just like it is with inkjets.

How much is the peace-of-mind worth to you? For consumer inkjets I sometimes used to buy aftermarket colour inks for home office printers (for mainly text and diagrams) because otherwise the ink cost was way too much unless the OEM ink was on some major sale. For photo printers I only ever bought the OEM inks though, since the after-market inks caused colour balance issues, or else wouldn't print consistently. With large volume monochrome laser toner cartridges the last one I bought was OEM, since the incremental cost ends up being something like 1 cent per page, since the up front extra cost is amortized over many thousands of pages. My last toner cartridge I bought is a 10000 page one, and I expect to get at least about 6000 pages out of it, based on my previous usage.
 
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Eug said:
Depends on the printer but reports of 3rd party toner issues are quite common actually.

If you check the reviews on various sites you sometimes see reports of worse print quality, but more importantly, you often see reports of toner cartridges not working at all, with the printer throwing up an error. Or else you'll see reports of inconsistent errors that are cleared by restarts, etc. This isn't a surprise, since toner cartridges are chipped these days too. A replacement toner cartridge will usually work, but the OEM cartridges never have these issues.

I'd hate to be out of toner under a tight deadline, only to find out my backup after market cartridge doesn't work, and I have to get a replacement. Also, if you use 3rd party toner it will sometimes void the manufacturer's warranty.

Overall, I agree all this stuff is largely bogus engineering on the manufacturer's part to get you to buy their toner, but nonetheless it is a real issue, just like it is with inkjets.

How much is the peace-of-mind worth to you? For consumer inkjets I sometimes used to buy aftermarket colour inks for home office printers (for mainly text and diagrams) because otherwise the ink cost was way too much unless the OEM ink was on some major sale. For photo printers I only ever bought the OEM inks though, since the after-market inks caused colour balance issues, or else wouldn't print consistently. With large volume monochrome laser toner cartridges the last one I bought was OEM, since the incremental cost ends up being something like 1 cent per page, since the up front extra cost is amortized over many thousands of pages. My last toner cartridge I bought is a 10000 page one, and I expect to get at least about 6000 pages out of it, based on my previous usage.
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Like I said, I never had an issue with 3rd party toners. Mind you I don't buy the cheapest one I can get 😛

Ink is a different story.
 
sdifox said:
Like I said, I never had an issue with 3rd party toners. Mind you I don't buy the cheapest one I can get 😛

Ink is a different story.
Click to expand...
yes, you have never had an issue with 3rd party toner, but as mentioned reports of such problems are quite common. Just check any website that talks about it, and it's filled with reports of third party toners causing problems. It's just that it's less common than with inkjet ink.

The other problem with a lot of low end entry level consumer lasers though is that the toner sizes are sometimes too small, yet the up front costs for toner cartridges and the incremental costs for OEM toner are high. I have no problem spending $70 more for an OEM 10000-page business laser toner cartridge, but I'd think twice about spending $40 more for an OEM 1500-page consumer laser toner cartridge for limited occasional use.
 
Eug said:
yes, you have never had an issue with 3rd party toner, but as mentioned reports of such problems are quite common. Just check any website that talks about it, and it's filled with reports of third party toners causing problems. It's just that it's less common than with inkjet ink.

The other problem with a lot of low end entry level consumer lasers though is that the toner sizes are sometimes too small, yet the up front costs for toner cartridges and the incremental costs for OEM toner are high. I have no problem spending $70 more for an OEM 10000-page business laser toner cartridge, but I'd think twice about spending $40 more for an OEM 1500-page consumer laser toner cartridge for limited occasional use.
Click to expand...

my current printer uses an 8k page toner. I am on toner number 3 now.
 
Eug said:
yes, you have never had an issue with 3rd party toner, but as mentioned reports of such problems are quite common. Just check any website that talks about it, and it's filled with reports of third party toners causing problems. It's just that it's less common than with inkjet ink.

The other problem with a lot of low end entry level consumer lasers though is that the toner sizes are sometimes too small, yet the up front costs for toner cartridges and the incremental costs for OEM toner are high. I have no problem spending $70 more for an OEM 10000-page business laser toner cartridge, but I'd think twice about spending $40 more for an OEM 1500-page consumer laser toner cartridge for limited occasional use.
Click to expand...

There are varying brands of 3rd party toners. If you buy some cheap no name Chinese ones, you'll probably have issues. If you buy an MSE or Xerox compatible, you're getting a quality cartridge.
 
Question: would a color laser printer be the way to go for somebody who does so little printing that the inkjets seem to dry out over time?
 
88keys said:
We have been using the same standarized paper for a very very very long time at this point and I'd say that it's near perfection. So why the fuck can't I set margins on a word document or a spreadsheet and have it actually stay within the page when I print it?...
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PEBCAK

-KeithP
 
AznAnarchy99 said:
There are varying brands of 3rd party toners. If you buy some cheap no name Chinese ones, you'll probably have issues. If you buy an MSE or Xerox compatible, you're getting a quality cartridge.
Click to expand...
How would you even know? Many of the big retailers have compatible toners and they cause problems too.

One of the shops in Canada did a comparative study, and even their own study showed that the print quality for their toner they were pushing was worse, but worked and was acceptable quality. This mini-study didn't address reliability issues though.

Here is a different study for HP lasers:

https://www.qualitylogic.com/tonertestap.pdf

They compared remanufactured toner cartridges vs HP OEM.

Of note were the reliability and quality measures:

HP cartridges were never DOA.
Brand A was DOA 20% of the time.
Brand B was DOA 4.2% of the time.
Brand C was never DOA, but 4.2% of their cartridges failed prematurely.

HP branded toner was considered 96% usable for all uses, including outside distribution.
Brand A scored 77%.
Brand B scored 67%.
Brand C scored 68%.

Now for home use, the latter might not matter that much for many people since they're probably not going to be distributing these pages, but if you value quality, then this may be very important to you.

gorcorps said:
Question: would a color laser printer be the way to go for somebody who does so little printing that the inkjets seem to dry out over time?
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Colour toner gets expensive quick too. Furthermore, black toner in colour lasers may be more expensive than black toner in monochrome lasers.

Is monochrome laser not acceptable for you?
 
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gorcorps said:
Question: would a color laser printer be the way to go for somebody who does so little printing that the inkjets seem to dry out over time?
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Photo quality is mediocre. If that's why you want a color printer, then just get a B&W and print your photos at Walgreens or something.

For anything else? Yeah, definitely.
 
Eug said:
How would you even know? Many of the big retailers have compatible toners and they cause problems too.

One of the shops in Canada even did a comparative study, and even their own study showed that the print quality for their toner they were pushing was worse (but worked and was acceptable quality).

Here is a different study for one HP laser:

https://www.qualitylogic.com/tonertestap.pdf

They compared remanufactured toner cartridges vs HP OEM.

Of note were the reliability and quality measures:

HP cartridges were never DOA.
Brand A was DOA 20% of the time.
Brand B was DOA 4.2% of the time.
Brand C was DOA 0% of the time, but 4.2% of their cartridges failed prematurely.

HP brand printing were considered 96% usable for all uses, including outside distribution.
Brand A scored 77%.
Brand B scored 67%.
Brand C scored 68%.

Now for home use, the latter might not matter that much for many people since they're probably not going to be distributing these pages, but if you value quality, then this may be very important to you.
Click to expand...

That study was done in 2008. Technology improves.
 
Childs said:
That study was done in 2008. Technology improves.
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Technology does improve, but for my printer (which came out in 2013) people still complain about bad 3rd party toner reliability. Ironically, some of the 3rd party toners are better with OLDER printers, because some of the old printer cartridges aren't chipped.
 
Get a Brother laserjet printer for $60. The toner is cheap as hell, they last forever, and 90% of everything you print is in B&W anyway.
 
dave_the_nerd said:
Photo quality is mediocre. If that's why you want a color printer, then just get a B&W and print your photos at Walgreens or something.

For anything else? Yeah, definitely.
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sdifox said:
do you actually print colour? I have never been impressed by home colour laser.
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I like to have the option to print color, it's come in handy a few times but again... it's not THAT common. I definitely don't need photo quality stuff when I do. I'd just like to have the option, but because I print so rarely I don't want to worry about it working if I haven't used it in 4 months (a problem I've run into with inkjets).
 
Eug said:
Technology does improve, but for my printer (which came out in 2013) people still complain about bad 3rd party toner reliability. Ironically, some of the 3rd party toners are better with OLDER printers, because some of the old printer cartridges aren't chipped.
Click to expand...

There is always going to be some issues, even on first party carts. Just buy from someone with a warranty. The last toner I bought was this:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DNB4UB8

Overwhelming positive, and the few people that complained had their carts replaced with no issue. I actually ended up upgrading the printer (a wifi version was cheap) before the I used up all the toner, but even if it did getting it replaced shouldnt be a problem. Before these guys I used to buy generic powder and refill the carts myself, and that worked fine too.

I'd rather take a chance on a 3rd party brand with a good reputation to save 75% or more, but I'm not relying on the printer for much. Just printing out movie tickets or order pickup notifications. If my replacement cart failed for some reason and I was in a pinch, I'd just use our work printers. 😛 These days I use my printer more for scanning.
 
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