Which Printer Ink Refills Can Save You the Most?

No, please do not refill your toner cartridge. Here are the reasons: First, the toxicities of the toner powder are harmful to people's health. Do you know how much the toner powder would go into your breathing system when you doing such action by yourself? You might have abstracted too much toxic air at the time you are refilling the toner powder yourself. Do you know what does them made from and how does them harm you? These toner powder will induce unchangeable harms to your brain and your nerve system. Second, refilling toner powder in to a cartridge can only increase the toner level of the cartridge, but it does not mean the refill toner cartridge's usage life will be increased. This kind of refill toner cartridge have a lot of quality problems. Laser toner cartridge is structured with drum, toner, charger roller, magnetic roller, etc.. If you do not change or replace the necessary parts in the toner, the toner cartridge will not well functioning in printing. More importantly, this worse performance will harm your heath as well. If you read the first paragraph, you must known that the toner powder is toxic. In the printing process, the heating from thr rollers are the critical parts for the toner powder to stick hard on the paper. The usage of the rollers are limited to a certain amount of yieding pages. If the usage is already past, they can not generate enough heat for the printing, thus the toner powder will not be able to stick hard on the paper. Now, you can image who must have the direct touch with this toxic toner powder. It is you, the user. Third, Refill Toner Cartridge just slilly cheaper than Remaufactered Toner Cartridge The remanufactured laser cartridges and compatible laser cartridge are replacement laser cartridges that are manufactured not by the OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer), but by a third party. The are replacement laser cartridges that are similar to the original and meets our stringent quality standards. The factory replaces all warn parts including the OPC drum, rollers, toner, seal, and chips. Make sure you got your toner cartridge from those manufactory certified with international standards (iso-9001 , iso-9004 or iso-4001) Comparing with the Refill Toner Cartridge, the Remanufactered Toner Cartridge are more reliable, safe and they do have much higher quality. Fourth, refill toner cartridge might make your printer usage life ends quicker. The toner powder spread out from the cartridge will have the first contact with your printer. These powders will be distributed to other parts of your printer. Some of these will cause electronic error to your printer. Fifth, the quality of the refill toner is always bad. You will lose more if you are in a business operation. Think about your when your client looks at the text in a bad printing. What will they think? You will first lose your image and then the trust. Do not ignore this specificity of doing your business. Now, what is your choice? Reill toner cartridge or Remanufactured toner cartridge to your health and a better environment. Sources: Remanufactured is the way to go. It has been done proper way. 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. PCWorld did the latter three years ago for
"Cheap Ink: Will It Cost You?"

Birth of a Serial Refiller

Now we're trying a third way--the Serial Refiller way. PCWorld sent intrepid writer Jeff Bertolucci an HP Photosmart e-All-in-One inkjet multifunction printer, a model whose cartridges are popular among third-party ink vendors, and assigned him this mission: Try a bunch of refills and let us know what happens. For each test, he printed a variety of samples repeatedly until streaks began to appear in the output, at which point he could calculate the cost per page and also examine print quality.

The baseline: The HP 60 black and color cartridges that came with the Photosmart e-All-in-One produced 132 fully printed pages. At $35 for both cartridges (when purchased separately), the cost per page works out to a high 27 cents. (HP's 60 Ink Cartridge Combo Pack, priced at $32, saves a few bucks.)

So far we've found that the bigger the hassle involved, the better the savings--but output quality varies. The best balance we've discovered has come from Costco: Its in-store refilling service is convenient, and it delivers acceptable print results for half the cost of HP's own inks.

What Are the Risks?

Ink spillage during refill or use is probably the biggest risk, creating a mess at best and possibly damaging the cartridge or printer at worst. We have also had to endure a lot of pop-up dialog boxes and control-panel warnings. Such messages can be intimidating and persistent, but usually you can click OK to dismiss them.

The Serial Reviler's short-term experiences are anecdotal, and they do not test the durability or achievability of third-party inks, nor how the printer will fare after repeated use with them. Nevertheless, our hands-on tests offer a taste of what you can expect if you try a third-party alternative with your own printer. For more of the Serial Reviler's adventures, check out the following "Portrait of a Serial Refilled" articles.