As mentioned in part 1 of our series on laser and LED printers and toner cartridges, toner is the powdery substance that is used to build up the image on laser printers. It comes in large cartridges, which either contain the toner on its own, or combine the toner reservoir with a disposable print drum. (Having the drum and cartridge together does mean that you get a new, high-quality drum each time, but it also increases the price.)

Toner cartridges (including laser toner, LED toner, photocopier toner and laser fax toner cartridges) do cost significantly more than most inkjet cartridges, but they also last much longer, generally in the thousands or even tens of thousands of pages, rather than the low hundreds.

When it comes to replacing your toner cartridge, you have four options as follows.

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If you own an inkjet printer, you’re probably well aware that the ink for most models (especially the “cheap” ones) is horribly expensive- at least if you stick to the manufacturer’s original cartridges.

You’ve probably also noticed that “compatible” inks are available at much lower prices. In some cases, you can be talking about £1 for a compatible cartridge instead of £8 or more for its official equivalent. Too good to be true? After all, there’s surely no way anyone can sell decent ink that much cheaper and still make a reasonable profit- right? Wrong.

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If you have an inkjet printer, you might be confused by the amount of different ink cartridges out there. Why are there so many, and which ones are suitable for your printer?

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