Question Laser Toner Advice?

[sao123]

I was gifted a small Lexmark Color Laser for home use in 2018 and thus far the starter cartridges have lasted me over 18-20 months, but now they all are in need of replacement... holy sticker shock...
The cartridges are over $125 each for regular yield and $200 for high yield... so almost $600 for a new set of cartridges is somewhat out of my budget at the moment.

Now I realize I could spread that cost again over several years, but I keep wondering if the cheaper generic re-manufactured cartridges are worth checking in to. Like Amazon has Print Save Repeat brand for $80 regular yield each or $99 for the high yields...

I know all about Lexmarks battles with remanufacturing companies considered over whether they can remanufacure original lexmark cartridges and resell them, but I dont really care about the legalese arguments.
I simply want to know peoples experiences in defect rate, or if they are consider problematic or a great way for relatively inexpensive home laser printing.

Any thoughts or experiences would be beneficial.

 

[mindless1]

I had a large Lexmark Color laser and not only was there sticker shock, there was a much greater shock that the printer massively wasted color toner even printing only B&W text pages around 5% coverage. I'd barely printed anything with color on it and still needed $800+ worth of new carts in all colors.

Therefore I suggest that you look in your printer menu (or through HTTP webserver page in your browser) for the printer's tally on how many pages you've printed for each color and how low each is. This will tell you if you're getting your money worth out of the cartridges or essentially burning money.

I was not aware that any 3rd parties had gotten around Lexmark's microchip protection without them being sued out of the market, but perhaps there are some fly by night companies (sellers) that pop up and change names as needed? I mention this because my main concern would be how long the seller has been around and will they continue to be around a bit longer.

They need not be around much longer because typically a 3rd party replacement cart either works fine when you receive it or has a problem right away. If it has a problem, often the seller won't even ask you to return the bad cart, instead just issuing a refund. This is more likely on ebay, or you might get a free return if it has free prime shipping, and of course you have prime.

Usually the biggest problem with the reman carts is when they have the drum built in and it has bad spots on it. Some aren't even the original drum, like they took a 3rd party drum that already had defects, or had already been used at least one tour of duty then reused. 3rd party drums tend not to last as long as the OEM drums but for practical purposes the main concern is does it work fine on arrival because unless it is damaged during shipping or installation, they tend to wear gradually while in use and can often be adjusted for by setting the toner darkness a little higher.

Similar can be true for the adhesion properties of the 3rd party drums and/or 3rd party toner, that you have to bump the darkness up a notch or two to get it as dark as the OEM carts did.

Anyway, if it were me, I'd first look into getting the chips and bulk toner and refill your starter carts, even if it means you have to take a soldering iron to burn a hole in the toner chamber and plug it with a rubber stopper or tape to close it up, though often it just needs a screwdriver to open or maybe melt off plastic weld-tabs then put in a screw where those tabs were before melted off. Depends on the model and I never had a smaller color laser lexmark so your needs may vary.

The shorter more direct answer is yes the 3rd party carts can be problematic. Read their return policy statement and be sure to check it when it first arrives. If there's printing defects they may require you to take a good picture of the printout problem to submit to them. I'd estimate that roughly 2 out of 3 carts I received were acceptable quality and I always got either a replacement or refund for the other 1/3, BUT most often I instead buy bulk toner with a new chip or reset gear, whichever that particular printer needs, and refill the OEM carts until they start leaking or have drum problems if the drum is built in, then I buy a new OEM cart, use it then refill it with bulk toner and new chip or gear again a few times till it needs replaced.

 

[Muadib]

It would be cheaper for you to just buy another printer. Take a look at these:

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[JWade]

I have a Dell color laser printer, i buy generic cartridges off ebay for it, not from Dell, fraction of the cost. they work well and last just as long from what i can tell. ( i have kids, they and the wife like to print alot of stuff).

 

[sao123]

I had a large Lexmark Color laser and not only was there sticker shock, there was a much greater shock that the printer massively wasted color toner even printing only B&W text pages around 5% coverage. I'd barely printed anything with color on it and still needed $800+ worth of new carts in all colors.

Therefore I suggest that you look in your printer menu (or through HTTP webserver page in your browser) for the printer's tally on how many pages you've printed for each color and how low each is. This will tell you if you're getting your money worth out of the cartridges or essentially burning money.

I was not aware that any 3rd parties had gotten around Lexmark's microchip protection without them being sued out of the market, but perhaps there are some fly by night companies (sellers) that pop up and change names as needed? I mention this because my main concern would be how long the seller has been around and will they continue to be around a bit longer.

They need not be around much longer because typically a 3rd party replacement cart either works fine when you receive it or has a problem right away. If it has a problem, often the seller won't even ask you to return the bad cart, instead just issuing a refund. This is more likely on ebay, or you might get a free return if it has free prime shipping, and of course you have prime.

Usually the biggest problem with the reman carts is when they have the drum built in and it has bad spots on it. Some aren't even the original drum, like they took a 3rd party drum that already had defects, or had already been used at least one tour of duty then reused. 3rd party drums tend not to last as long as the OEM drums but for practical purposes the main concern is does it work fine on arrival because unless it is damaged during shipping or installation, they tend to wear gradually while in use and can often be adjusted for by setting the toner darkness a little higher.

Similar can be true for the adhesion properties of the 3rd party drums and/or 3rd party toner, that you have to bump the darkness up a notch or two to get it as dark as the OEM carts did.

Anyway, if it were me, I'd first look into getting the chips and bulk toner and refill your starter carts, even if it means you have to take a soldering iron to burn a hole in the toner chamber and plug it with a rubber stopper or tape to close it up, though often it just needs a screwdriver to open or maybe melt off plastic weld-tabs then put in a screw where those tabs were before melted off. Depends on the model and I never had a smaller color laser lexmark so your needs may vary.

The shorter more direct answer is yes the 3rd party carts can be problematic. Read their return policy statement and be sure to check it when it first arrives. If there's printing defects they may require you to take a good picture of the printout problem to submit to them. I'd estimate that roughly 2 out of 3 carts I received were acceptable quality and I always got either a replacement or refund for the other 1/3, BUT most often I instead buy bulk toner with a new chip or reset gear, whichever that particular printer needs, and refill the OEM carts until they start leaking or have drum problems if the drum is built in, then I buy a new OEM cart, use it then refill it with bulk toner and new chip or gear again a few times till it needs replaced.

i have already turned off the use color when printing B&W. I have used Lexmark printers in the large enterprise environment, so I am well aware of many of their "gotchas"... but @ work, they only buy genuine Lexmark cartridges, so i have no experience with generics/remanufactureds.

Unfortunately, I don't believe I can refill my starting cartridges, as they seem to have a page count built into the firmware... I believe there is still some ink/toner inside them, but they register as 0 pages left based on a counter of some sort.
Fortunately these cartridges do not have any rollers built into them at all, they are little more than a bag of toner, and some sort of metering out hardware.

 

[mindless1]

The counter should be reset with a new chip, essentially how it knows you have a new/genuine Lexmark cart, though in some cases to try to get the last bit of toner out of a nearly empty cart with optical toner level sensing, you also have to put a piece of tape over the cart sensor window to trick it into thinking there's more toner in it.

 

[Charlie98]

It would be cheaper for you to just buy another printer. Take a look at these:

Although it sounds quite absurd and wasteful, that is sometimes true. My last laser I bought was a color Canon, total cost out the door was almost exactly the cost of a complete set of Canon brand replacement carts.

I have a Dell color laser printer, i buy generic cartridges off ebay for it, not from Dell, fraction of the cost. they work well and last just as long from what i can tell. ( i have kids, they and the wife like to print alot of stuff).

I do the same for both my color Canon laser, and my trusty B/W Canon laser... but Canon doesn't seem to mind generic carts so much as others. My last inkjet printer (a Canon, I believe...) absolutely refused to work with generic carts... but I don't know if it's because they were defective, or a software issue.

As far as quality of generic reman carts? Some are hit and miss. I get mine off Newegg, although the last set may have been Amazon... it's been a while. Total cost savings is about 3:1 reman over OEM... so even if one is faulty, or doesn't last as long, money-wise it's not that big of an issue. I did have a problem with 2 Rosewill reman carts for the B/W Canon... they made me jump through a few paperwork hoops, but in the end they sent me replacement carts without making me send the bad ones back.

 

[sdifox]

Go with third party toner.

 

[Paperdoc]

OP, I have a Lexmark C543dn colour laser printer that looks a LOT like the photo you posted above. It uses type C540 toner cartridges that appear to be what your photo shows, and you're right: these are toner carts only with some level sensor in them. They are separate from the toner distribution rollers and imaging parts. I buy the High Yield variety - they're a much better deal than regular. And the Black is larger and therefore lasts for more prints that the colour toners.

I have not found a way to tell it automatically to use only black when no colour is called for. BUT I ALWAYS use the Printer Properties box on every print job to specify whether to use only Black, or all colours, depending on the job. I've had this one since the start of 2012, and keep records of toner cart changes. I'm almost to 10,000 printed "sides" (it can do 2-sided printing), of which about 7200 are black only and 2800 full colour. Typically each toner cart has lasted about 1000 sides. Since more Black gets used than colours in most of my work - even on full colour sheets with text - the larger Black carts still only last as long as a smaller colour one. However, Yellow seems to last less copies - I think yellow is such a weak pigment that more of it is used on a typical print.

I have been buying third-party compatible carts almost always with no real problem. ONCE I had a bad-print issue and Lexmark Tech Support told me it might be caused by use of non-Lexmark carts so they could not really fix the problem that way, so I bought a genuine Lexmark cart that did not solve it. Then their Tech support people DID identify the real cause and fixed it by supplying replacment parts for other items. Once since then I had another mis-print problem that they also fixed by sending me parts, and once they gave me good advice on how to re-calibrate and adjust to improve print quality.Overall I have found their Tech Suuport to be very good. But I don't seem to need their genuine toner carts.

A note of caution here. Recently in planning a system upgrade I went searching for the latest device drivers, and found some for Lexmark colour lasers. The newest FIRMWARE UPDATE for my printer specifically says it now improves the printer's ability to detect non-genuine Lexmark parts and toner cartridges, to protect you and your printer from damage. I did NOT download that Firmware Update! No thank you! But it is possible that a newer model may already have such firmware in it.

The source of my third-party carts in Canada is

https://www.123ink.ca/

They list and sell both genuine Lexmark and third party units.NOTE also that Lexmark themselves run a toner cart recycling program, so you can buy genuine Lexmark refilled Return Progam cartridges (under which you return your old empty cart) as well as their totally new ones, or you can get third-party "remaufactured" carts NOT by Lexmark.

 

[paperfist]

Just my own experience with my Brother laser, I use mine for business so results matter.

I bought several different brands of 3rd party toner and they all sucked badly. I wasted a ton of money on them. From color being way off to toner leaking all over the bloody place to lines all over the prints. At one point I thought something was wrong with the printer as there was no way all these highly rated reviews on 3rd party replacements could be wrong so I replaced the drum and tray and cleaned the whole printer and the results remained the same, terrible.

I gave up for a while and bought an inkjet, the 3rd party replacements were great. Trouble is it got to be a lot more expensive constantly replacing ink so I finally bit the bullet and got all new Brother replacements for $200 after searching around for a while and went back to laser printing.

I will say this, mine has a simple gear reset so even when the printer said it was out it lied. So after resetting there was still 3 months of printing left. Also, with the gear buying actual refill toner off of eBay yielded higher quality results then 3rd party replacements. It’s also a bloody messy job, but for once a year it was worth it.

Youtube your model with hacks or refills and you might find ways around resetting your printer.

 

[sdifox]

Lol paperdoc, paperfist posting one after another is throwing my brain for a loop.

 

[paperfist]

Lol paperdoc, paperfist posting one after another is throwing my brain for a loop.

lt’s fitting considering the topic is about printing on paper 😀

 

[13Gigatons]

B&W Laser Printers are great work horses and usually cheap to run if you can buy one every Black Friday.

The Toner is a complete ripoff.

 

[Ready4Droid]

I have a Samsung color laser and I just used a cheap refill kit from Amazon. Came with the refill ink(powder), small chip to reset page count and funnel, etc. Pretty simple if you go slow and saved a lot of $. I was concerned with buying cheap knock off cartridges because a lot of people (Amazon reviews) say the quality isn't as good as originals. For me I mostly just print out forms and stuff, so quality didn't have to be super great, but this way I am able to use the OEM cartridges and not chance it.

 

[mindless1]

B&W Laser Printers are great work horses and usually cheap to run if you can buy one every Black Friday.

The Toner is a complete ripoff.

?? That's not cheap at all in the monochrome laser world. Until recently I was just buying bulk toner at about $6 for 10K pages worth, then a whole cart once in a blue moon when the drum started getting spotty. What changed recently was I just don't print much anymore, use my AIO as a network scanner more than anything else.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Since more Black gets used than colours in most of my work - even on full colour sheets with text - the larger Black carts still only last as long as a smaller colour one. However, Yellow seems to last less copies - I think yellow is such a weak pigment that more of it is used on a typical print.

No, the printer uses up more Yellow for micro-dots.

 

[Soulkeeper]

Carefull buying the cheap chinese knockoffs, I've bought HP clones that didn't work before.

 

[Thump553]

Paperfist: I also print B&W in business, per my records I go through 50-60k pages per year (at least pre-COVID). My projects require laser printing. I've been using various Brother printers for years because they allow third party toner. I've tested out at least a half dozen different brands of third party toner until I ran across Linkyo a few years ago. IMO they are pretty indistinguishable from the official Brother toner but cost a third as much.

I've never found a decent third party drum though, and have given up looking.

For those of you using color lasers, I ask if you really do enough printing to justify the jacked up prices. On the rare occasions I need color printing I head off to Staples or FedEx Office to do it there.

 

[Ready4Droid]

Paperfist: I also print B&W in business, per my records I go through 50-60k pages per year (at least pre-COVID). My projects require laser printing. I've been using various Brother printers for years because they allow third party toner. I've tested out at least a half dozen different brands of third party toner until I ran across Linkyo a few years ago. IMO they are pretty indistinguishable from the official Brother toner but cost a third as much.

I've never found a decent third party drum though, and have given up looking.

For those of you using color lasers, I ask if you really do enough printing to justify the jacked up prices. On the rare occasions I need color printing I head off to Staples or FedEx Office to do it there.

Yes, I almost never print so the color laser was for sure worth it! Everytime I needed to print my inkjet ink was always dried out, so paying $30 a cartridge (times 4, but it was like $100 for a pack) every time I wanted to print was stupid. I paid $200 brand new for my Samsung color laser (from Staples), got so many more pages out of just the starter cartridges. Would have cost me about $100 just in ink to replace my inkjet and get way less pages. I found refills (like, pour in the new powder refill) for my laser as it finally (3 years of use) ran low on toner, which cost like $30 for all 4 colors. Which will last me at least another 3 years. This has been the best printer I've had, and I've owned and tossed many inkjets by now and has been a great investment (especially since it barely cost more than a descent inkjet honestly).

 

[GrumpyMan]

I use inksell.com for knock offs, never had a problem on my brother lasers and hp at work. Recommended by someone here long time ago. I still use them.