Travel Technology - Non-HP toner cartridges?

HP toner cartridge for my laser printer is about double replacement carts from Nu-Kote.

Opinions on using non-HP cartridges? And on Nu-Kote or others?

Thanks in advance. The combined opions of this group have been very valuable for me.

Personally, I'm a stickler for the real live HP cartridiges. In our office, we've used some remanufactured brands in the past and didn't find them to be worth the savings. The printers got dirtier and smudged the pages more and so forth.

Do some digging to find the best HP prices. Depending upon which model you have, it might be advantageous to order from somewhere like Office Depot and use a $$ off coupon to bring the price down to something a bit more reasonable. Or, there may be even better options than that.

Heck, HP toner is a bargain compared to the cartridge for our Canon laser fax. That thing goes for about 90 bucks at Office Depot, and it only prints 2500 pages! :eek: Some of the HPs are similar price but print well over twice that many.

I dislike non-HP toner cartridges. The toner quality is variable and if they're refurbs the quality of the refurb job is also wildly variable even within the same brand. It's just not worth it. At best you save a few bucks. At worst, you trash your printer.

Personal or business use? I refill HP carts at home, but would never do it for the volume in the office. We only buy HP's there.

No refurbs, no off brands, etc.

I can't help but think most of the off brands are making their carts from other carts people tossed, using used stuff. Don't believe HP does that, they say they shred their returns and don't reuse them (or they did, haven't read the small print in ages)

My company's had bad luck with refurbs. Between toner leaking on to pages, low # of pages / cartridge and actual damage to the printer, we stick with HP cartridges. For every good refurbed cartridge, there were at least 3 that didn't meet expectations.

Find a good local referb place. they work fine for hp, which is garbage anyway. note the print migrates to the folded part of the paper. hp is the cheapest in cost for good reason.

Find a good local referb place. they work fine for hp, which is garbage anyway. note the print migrates to the folded part of the paper. hp is the cheapest in cost for good reason.

Modern printers? I agree. Toner cartridges? I haven't noticed a drop-off in quality. I refuse to buy anything new HP anymore. Our last purchase was two HP9000 printers that have constant issues with jamming, etc etc. I've been buying 8150 refurbs for $600 or so from various sources. Got three now and the difference in design and quality is readily apparent. The most extensive repair I've had to make is replacing a fuser. Now, no one uses the 9000s we bought and everyone prints to the 8150s.

Thanks for these great replies. Opinions started out very consistent, then diverged.

I think I'll just bite the bullet and go with HP :(

FWIW, this is at home, a LaserJet 2100.

My previous HP laser printer lasted a very long time until I started using three-hole punched paper. Never again...

Thanks for these great replies. Opinions started out very consistent, then diverged.

I think I'll just bite the bullet and go with HP :(

FWIW, this is at home, a LaserJet 2100.

My previous HP laser printer lasted a very long time until I started using three-hole punched paper. Never again...

If it were an hp 2,3, or 4, it would still be running, like every other one.

Much of the issue depends on what type of printing you're doing. If you're doing graphics, super high resolution, then originals may be the only thing good enough.

If you're just doing mostly text printing, and small graphics, an aftermarket, or refilling your cartridges is fine.

I've found that Costco has some good aftermarket types that are about 30-40% less than the new hp. (I have a 4050) New at Costco they run $105-$110 each, the aftermarket are $70. I can refill a new or aftermarket one with toner 2-4 times, so the cost for the cartridge and refill is about $30 a pop. Much better than the $130 a piece I used to pay at CompUSA.

I print 200-300k pages per year, and it's been working fine for 6 or 7 years. I've replaced the rollers and the other thing (imager?) once.

My HP 2100 uses a $100 cartridge!

Once, I refilled it and it worked OK for awhile but now streaks.

I used www.pricewatch.com to shop around and found a new (real) HP cartridge for ~$83 delivered from www.pccdepot.com

Look for the shipping codes that end in "PW" for the free shipping.

I was VERY hapy with this vendor and price.