New printer time...

[Jonj1611]

Actually for that printer, toner is pretty well priced. I would go with the XL pack which gives up to 3000 pages

[Saracen999]

Wow, so 507 pages later and we're out of toner! My other half's printer at work is out of action so this one has taken a bit of a beating in the last couple of weeks. I didn't expect we'd be hitting that page count for a long time but there we go. Official statement on the bundled toner was "upto 700 pages" so all things considered (and looking at the slides which have been churned out) I don't think it's done too bad.

Replacement toner time, let's see just how horrific official ones before shopping around.

That sounds like the old "starter carridge" trick .... i.e. keep the printer price down but put a tiny amount of toner in, meaning the buyer will be buying more soon. Very prevalent on low-priced colour lasers and a full set can easily be several hundred pounds.

It sounds like time to investigate 'official' cartridges, but keep an eye on "good" 3rd party ones too.

I'm out of touch with printers in general, but I'm a bit surprised at Brother pulling that trick. They used to be a favourite of mine for bog-standard 'workhorse' lasers. I guess it's larely about focussing on the consumer market where price, generally, is king. But it's .... deceitful, IMHO. Most companies publish figures for 3000 to 5000 pages per cartridge, but then fail to mention, or at least give due prominence, to "starter" cartridges.

Over quite a few years, I kinda came to the conclusion that you either pay for your ink/toner up-front, or pay (often, 'through the nose') later on. The antics with cheap consumer colour printers could be nauseating, like £30 for a colour printer, but you get about 100 pages out of the starter set, and even that only if they're 'typical' pages and certainly not photo-heavy, and then a new set of cartridges comes in at £55 or similar. The solution was (for me) usually buying 'business' printers, where cartridge capacity is much higher, but cost per page way, way lower.

The whole printer-buying thing is a minefield these days, especially with some of the 'tricks' being pulled with subscription models, and software locking printers etc, where it seems more like you rent the hardware if the manufacturer can effectively remote-kill it.

The good news is that Brother always used to be reasonable, even for official toner. Then again, I haven't looked for several years. Good luck.



P.S.

Actually for that printer, toner is pretty well priced. I would go with the XL pack which gives up to 3000 pages

Sounds good. In my day (and not specifically for Brother), 3000 pages was standard though, and XL could be anything from 5000 to 10000. Looks like times have changed.

[Jonj1611]

Yeah I agree with that. For my printer, 2100 is for normal toner and I get 4000 pages with the XL toners but those genuine toners are also £100 each! Thanks HP!

The full set for my printer is knocking on £400 which is why I buy compatible toner for like £30 each

[jimbouk]

They were at least upfront with the 700 page starter toner bundled, better than nothing I guess!

I was thinking there must be some balance of how much extra people are willing to pay for genuine supplies. 20% more then I probably wouldn't bother with compatible, 3 times the price and they can take a hike. But I'm guessing most businesses just pay full whack and a number of consumers are either being pushed to subscription or just follow the instructions so they just don't bother. I'm guessing like car parts / servicing, there are people who will just go to the dealer and people who won't so why bother competing on price when you can just provide the illusion of quality.

[Saracen999]

They were at least upfront with the 700 page starter toner bundled, better than nothing I guess!

I was thinking there must be some balance of how much extra people are willing to pay for genuine supplies. 20% more then I probably wouldn't bother with compatible, 3 times the price and they can take a hike. But I'm guessing most businesses just pay full whack and a number of consumers are either being pushed to subscription or just follow the instructions so they just don't bother. I'm guessing like car parts / servicing, there are people who will just go to the dealer and people who won't so why bother competing on price when you can just provide the illusion of quality.

Yeah, if they're up-front about it then, I guess, fair enough.

Consumables have always bee a contentious issue, though. I once id a tour round the Epson cartridge manufacturing plant in Japan. It's relatively small, with IIRC the bulk manufacturing being in .... Malaysia? But, I guess the reasons for the line in Japan are partly to do with developing the rootics the line uses (which is all Epson'e own tech) and partly for small-scale manufacture of cartridges for printer development use, on new models. Either way, it's a complex automated facility with everything done inside a large clean room.

The point? It's not clear t consumers why manufacturer-own ink and toner is usually so much more expensive, but standards are certainly part of it. QC will also be a large part. With 'refillers', you never quite know what standards are are in my (limited) experience, some of them are pretty good, but others? A joke.

So I guess you pay your money and take your chances. Businesses, typically, won't much care about consumables cost as much as buying consumables that just work, work well and especially work consistently. They won't want staff spending time away from their actual jobs trying to unjam printers or clean up leaking ink.

I guess we all get to pick, pay and take our chances. So far, I've never had an issue (that I remember) with genuine inks and toners but I sure can't say the same for 3rd-party ones (though, as I said, there are 'good' ones out there.