Printer Ink Cartridges:
Benefits and Savings of
Buying Compatible Printer Ink

ItÕs that time, you are out of ink and your looking online at all the ink available, or maybe you are just researching printers and want to get a jump on finding out what the ink is going to cost for that printer. Something striking comes to your attention; the brand name ink cartridges are so much more expensive than the compatible ink cartridges that fit the same machine. What is that about? Does that mean the brand name product is better quality? That it fits in the machine better? That it has a better warranty than the other cartridge? The answer to all of these questions is no, no, and no. Learn more about common myths about compatible ink cartridges.

Whether you are a small business that uses multiple machines or a family using a single in-home printer, it is always good to evaluate what printer to invest in. Not only does one consider the up-front printer cost of different types of printers, but it would also be wise to look at the long term cost that the replacement ink cartridges will run. Need help on how to choose the right printer?

Calculate Your Ink Costs

DonÕt have the time to count the amount of pages you are currently getting from the printer and ink you are using now? Or donÕt even have the printer yet and there are not studies out that show the exact pages for your printer? No Problem, we can use the expected output of an ink cartridge, otherwise known as the page yield.

By dividing the cost of an ink cartridge with the expected page yield, we can calculate the estimated cost per page printed. LetÕs emphasize the word estimated cost; this is because even though the page yield is set per cartridge, the amount of pages that will actually be printed may vary based on many different factors. We wonÕt dive into the factors in this article, but this link will help you learn about what determines the actual page yield of an ink cartridge. Want to know the page yield of your cartridge? Use our search by either typing in your printer model number or the part number of the ink cartridge that goes to that printer.

How Can I Save On Ink and Toner Cartridges?

*Price Taken from HP on 9/15/13

Okay, so from the table above we see that there is a $0.02 savings on the black cartridge and a $0.04 savings on the color cartridge. DoesnÕt sound like big savings? LetÕs look at it in perspective. LetÕs assume that on average your household prints 5 pages a day, which is 150 pages a month, or approximately 1800 pages per year. Based on that output you would need about 4 black ink cartridges and 6 color cartridges to cover your printing needs. LetÕs take a look at how the cost per page translates into your costs:

That is $108.00 savings over the course of a year. If your print volume is higher than that you have the potential to save even more. Just multiply your cost per page with the amount of pages you believe you need to print. The above example is if you own an inkjet printer but if you are following the trend of more and more household purchasing laser toner printers based on the cheaper cost per page, we will give you an example of that next.

Second Example: Brother TN450 Toner Cartridge. (Also known as TN-450)

In this example we will go ahead and take the cost per page to the third decimal point to show real cost savings.

*Price taken from Office Depot on 9/15/13

The cost per page differs by 1.9 cents. Notice the cost per page of the compatible toner; it cost less than 1 cent to print a page. Even at 2.6 cents for the brand name toner there is a noticeable cost savings over using an inkjet printer.
If we use the estimates from the first example above, with the estimated pages printed of 1800, we can see there is a substantial price savings in using the laser toner cartridges with a laser printer. The nice thing is if you were to go this route, laser printers are not much more expensive than an inkjet printer. Of course it just depends what you need the printer for.

But letÕs assume you are a small office, and print in larger quantities. Perhaps, the monthly estimated volume is not 150 but letÕs say 1000 pages. So that would be 12,000 pages over the course of a year, easy math. This is what the savings would look like in that scenario:

In the table above we can see, especially for those that pretty very high volumes, using compatible toner cartridges increases the savings very significantly over using name brand product.

Try Compatible Ink For Yourself

Using compatible printer ink cartridges can really help save you money and keep money where it should be, in your wallet. With no real print quality difference and the same page output, why not try a compatible cartridge today?