Is laser toner really cheaper than ink?

[Eddles]

I know I'm a bit late to the party, but I also wanted to mention that it also depends on your printer and toner - for example, I have an old Laserjet 4100 that I brought for £50 that still produces pin sharp print-outs, and OEM toner can be brought for £10 giving 10,000 pages.

 

[The Hat]

Hi @Eddles, it’s not that straight forward to answer, because there are so many machines out there in both fields.

With 99% of all Mono laser printers they will print pages at a fraction of a penny to any inkjet printer, now there are expectations regarding coverage, but still the Laser printer will come in cheaper in nearly all cases.

Its not the toner or ink costs that are expensive, when you own a Laser printer then your costs after that are just about zero, not counting the electricity it uses in standby.

but an inkjet printer will cost you when printing and standing still, the maintenance costs on an inkjet printer can be as much as the actual printing costs themselves depending how you use it.

So, pound for pound the running costs on a laser printer are far cheaper than any inkjet printer can ever be, so yes Toner is cheaper than inkjet inks by a county mile...

 

[Artur5]

@The Hat : I guess we live in different galaxies. Not denying the unquestionable advantages of laser over inkjets for speed, durability of prints, convenience, etc.. but as far as cost of ink vs toner is concerned, there’s no contest, Inkjet wins hands down by a nautical mile, For instance, I’ve been buying black pigmented ink for Canon pixmas to the same vendor for some years (with excellent results). One liter bottles cost 15 euro + shipping. Let’s say 20-25 euro total.
I can print 25000 pages with this amount of ink, That makes it less than 0.1 cents/page. Out of curiosity, I did some research on aftermarket toner for entry level laser printers. Those cartridges cost at least 25 euro each, yielding typically 2500-3000 pages, That’s 8-10 times more expensive than my current ink.
Now, if you know of toner cartridges yielding 3k pages for 3 euros a piece...


That said, If my trusty Pixma ip3000 left me for good ( or rather the printhead did..) I’m not at all against buying a laser because current entry inkjets from Canon seem a bad affair. Cheaply built with small and difficult to reset/refill carts. I’ve been considering those megatank G1000 series but dubious availability of spare printheads and relatively high cost (for the features) are almost deal killers for me.

If 'The Hat' doesn’t bans me from the forum after the first part of this post , I’m open to suggestions for compact inexpensive laser models with easy availability of affordable toner and no mess with chips to reset. I’m asking too much ?, I don’t need color for text, so B&W only would do. What about Brother and Ricoh ?, They seem to have a good rep for cost/performance relationship.

 

[The Hat]

@Artur5, Now why the heck should I ban you for such a great success story with your printing, its working for you and maybe others might benefit from your suggestions too.

It’s obvious you have hit a sweet spot with your printer/ink combination and everything is working very satisfactory for you, and it’s as cheap and cheerful as you can get and your happy with that.

Laser printers are more expensive than most little desktop inkjets, but they last far longer, and if you’re a big print user then the use of larger toner cartridges are also available that give must cheaper running costs.

Now Back to your printer, the ink that you have purchased and currently using is most likely not pigment at all, because a litre of pigment black ink @ €15 is just not possible, because your ink supplier would go out of business in no time at those prices.

I use my 14 years old inkjet for most of my daily print usage, but if I need a dozen or more B&W’s then I switch to my 20 year old laser, which doesn’t need several minutes of cleaning and a nozzle check before it will print, so for convenience and speed the Laser is a sure safe bet every time.

P.S. I much prefer and love my inkjets too...

 

[Artur5]

@ The Hat :
I can assure you without the shadow of a doubt that this ink I’m using is pigment all right. After using inkjets since 1990 I can tell apart a black dye from a black pigment at first glance. Not only it’s more dense but the way that the ink permeates into plain paper when you print a wide patch of solid color it’s enough to differentiate both types. Apart from that, the running water test is infallible. If I put a sheet of plain paper printed with my pro9000 under the tap, it smears badly as soon as the water reaches the paper. Instead, text printed with a ip3000 isn’t affected at all.
Last, but non least, the vendor isn’t a nameless fellow from East Asia but a well known firm from Germany. They specify which ink you’re buying. For instance, they sell ink for Pro9500/Pro10 Pixmas saying clearly that it’s dye, but ink for Bci3eBk or PGI-5 Canon black cartridges is sold as Pigment.
I concur that, compared to other vendors, 15 euro for 1 liter of pigment ink is very cheap. It may help the fact they’re not mere resellers but the real manufacturers (or so they claim) selling not only to the final user, but mainly in large quantities to refill shops.

You know, I stand corrected by myself about toner pricing being so expensive. Last night I found in that huge place ( named after a big river in Brazil) a brand of aftermarket toner with a funny name selling super cheap toner cartridges for some Brother and Samsung printers. A pack of two cartridges (yielding in theory 2600 pages each= 5200 pages total ) costs merely 7.99 euro. That’s quite in the same ballpark that my super cheap pigment ink.
Now, I can vouch for my ink after years of use and I’d be a bit dubious about the quality of this miraculous toner but, who knows ? .. buyer’s opinions aren’t bad at all.

@ The user:
I understand perfectly that buying bulk powder toner in large quantities and refilling the cart is much more cost effective than buying aftermarket carts ( like it is for inkjets) but, while I’m not averse to refill ink cartridges, messing with toner powder is not my idea of fun. In my job I used to replace the toners of the office machines and I hated the way the nasty black dust reaches everywhere just holding the cart, not trying to open it or mess with it at all. Dealing directly with the powder must be way worse. No thanks.
Besides, I expect that bulk toner is available for huge office machines but not for those small compact printers of 14x14x7” like the ones I’d be interested.

 

[The Hat]

I can assure you without the shadow of a doubt that this ink I’m using is pigment all right.

You may have proved me wrong and I apologise for that, but it just seemed to good to be true at that price, because I am always wary that it might be the Greek on his horse smiling back at me....

 

[turbguy]

If you refill either toner or ink, the largest cost of document printing becomes the PAPER!