Laser printer cartridge capacity help

[spartan948265]

Hello all,
please forgive me if I sound like a noob. I'm thinking of buying a laser printer and I see all these types of color cartridges. Colors such as Cyan, Magenta, Black, Yellow etc... Do all of these go inside the printer individually? The printer is this model: Click here

 

[raybay]

Yes, there will be four cartridges... Black, Yellow, Cyan, and Magenta... the printer sorts them all out, but they are darned expensive at replacement time... as much as $130 each... or more, depending on the brand of computer.
HP laser printers will not work with off brands of ink. The new ones will not run unless they have the expensive HP cartridges.

But the ink does last a long time... you can find sources online that will tell you how much... The HP 3600 and similar use way too much ink... compared with Konica Minolta, Samsung, etc.

 

[spartan948265]

But the cartridges are huge. I think only 1 can fit in at a time. These aren't the size of inkjet cartridges. The Dell one has a massive cartridge so only 1 will fit in there. My co worker has a Brother and it has a massive tray that slides out with all the cartidges on one rack. is that how it works?

 

[raybay]

Thre are some color laser printers that use one cartridge... with four different colors installed in it. They are to be avoided because they don't last very long.
The whole advantage of a color laser printer is cost... from getting a lot of perfectly printed pages out of each cartridge set. You only change the color cartridge when that color runs out.
There is NOT ANY ADVANTAGE to a color laser if you do not save money in the inks.
If the cartridges are designed for that computer, they will fit. There is always a system for installing them. You can find the exact description on how to do it at the Brother Website.
Be very careful. Treat it like a precision instrument.
The cartridge numbers should be what Brother recommends on their website, and what is found on the label on the inside panel of the Brother. If the cartrige part number is correct, they will fit. You just have to figger out how by using the diagram on the inside flap of the Brother or on the Brother website. There is a rotating device into which you load all the cartridges. Then the printer puts them into position.
When properly installed, they fit. Most of the laser printer is the cartridge system and the way the paper is fed past all of them.

 

[Tedster]

depends on the brand and model. Some use a multi-color cartridge, some use individual. Individual is far better.

 

[gguerra]

It may seem obvious but I always google for reviews on anything I but that I am not familiar with
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=dell+1320c+review&btnG=Search
It has decent reviews, the printer is relatively cheap but the toner will probably not be so cheap.

And while your at you can shop around for toner.

 

[raybay]

Toner price is about average until you find that it runs out of toner faster than most similarly priced printers... still cheaper than inkjet or the Dell (Lexmark) printer ink... and it has a device that prevents you from using any other ink but Dell's mail order ink.

 

[TorturedChaos]

I wouldn't recommend buying a Dell printer. In most cases you can only order the toner from dell's web site, and it cost quite a bit more than toner for other brands of printers that you can go down to Office Max, Staples, or Office Depot and buy the toner for.
Like other people have said the big advantage of laser printers is the number of pages you get per cartridge. So don't go for anything that has an all-in-one cartridge. You want to be able to replace the just the cyan when the cyan toner runs out, not all 4 colors.
Also, the cheaper the machine you buy, the smaller the toner cartridges will be (usually), which results in a lower page yield per cartridge and usually a higher cost per page.. If you check out the box for the toner cartridges it will usually say something like: 4000 Letter Size Pages at 5 % Coverage Print Yield This lest you know about how many pages you should be able to get out of that toner. you will want to keep in mind the cost per page when buying the laser machine. And keep in mind when printing in color you will almost always have some toner from all 4 cartridges, so figure each sheet uses at least 1 of those 4000 estimated prints from each cartridges.

BTW, That 5% Coverage they refer to basically a standard single spaces page of text. So obviously, printing full page color photo's is going to take more toner than a sheet of typing.
That particluar info was taken from [ame="http://www.amazon.com/Brother-TN-115C-Cartridge-Compatible-HL-4070CDW/dp/B000SAB33U/ref=pd_bxgy_e_img_c#moreAboutThisProduct"]here[/ame], a Brother cyan cartridges for sale on Amazon. If you scroll down to the product description, you will see that information.

But if you compare that to the rating on an inkjet cartridge, they will claim to get about 200 Letter Size Pages at 5 % Coverage Print Yield. Considering the laser cartridges are only 3-4 times the cost for 20x the yield, they prices don't look so bad now.

Another plus of laser machines vs. ink jet, you don't have to worry about your cartridges drying out. The toner laser machines use (instead of ink) is a powder already and can't dry out.

This right here seems to cover a lot of information about laser printers.
What to Look For in Your Next Color Laser Printer

Hope that helps