HP Ink Cartridges Versus Toner Cartridges
Although the company manufactures printers that employ inkjet and laser technology, HP ink cartridges differ significantly from the toner cartridges used by their range of LaserJet printers. The ink used for HP InkJet printers, in HP ink cartridges, is a pigmented liquid with the viscosity of water while LaserJet printers use toner to produce the image on the paper. Toner is an ultra-fine dry powder made up of tiny particles of polymer (plastic) mixed with dry pigments. Inkjet printers “spray” wet ink onto the print surface in a highly controlled manner to produce an image where laser printers use heat and pressure to “melt” (fuse) the fine plastic particles in the toner to the paper. Both these technologies have a place in the market with the general rule being that inkjet printers are better at high-quality graphic output, such as photorealistic prints, and lasers are better at text documents.
With both technologies, it is considered best to use original equipment manufacturer (OEM) cartridges when the units supplied with the printers run out. In other words, use genuine HP ink cartridges in HP InkJet machines and genuine OEM toner units in their LaserJet printers.
How to Make Your HP Cartridges Last Longer
Due to the fact that consumables for both inkjet and laser printers are relatively costly, it is prudent to try and maximise the yield obtained from your HP ink cartridges where possible. This is particularly true where a high volume of prints are produced. There are a number of ways to get more out of each replacement without negatively affecting the quality of the prints produced.
An indication of what yield can be expected from specific HP ink cartridges will be available. Typically, a page count, page size, and a coverage allowance will be given. HP ink cartridges will, for example, specify X-thousand, A4 size prints at Y-percent coverage. The yield figures provided will be printer specific as each printer produces a different quantity of prints per replacement unit. Yield is affected by cartridge size, printer resolution, and the nature of the surface being printed on. Despite the variables, it is possible to get a good idea of what yields should be reasonably expected and this can be compared to what is happening in reality.
The default settings that new printers ship with are often factory set to deliver the best possible print quality and the highest possible resolution. This is fine if the nature of the print output required demands this level of quality. If the type of output needed doesn’t justify the highest quality level, ink can be saved and print speed may also be increased. Good savings can be achieved by tailoring printer settings to suit the average quality that most output needs to have. It makes no sense, for instance, to print e-mails on photo quality!
Another good practice when buying HP cartridges is to buy the highest volume replacement unit offered. Some printers can take high-volume, XL-sized units. They contain as much, or more, ink than two standard HP cartridges for the same printer but can cost significantly less. Sometimes, replacement units are sold by the OEMs in multiple unit packs (also called multi-packs), which are priced to make the cost per unit, in the multi-pack, less than the price of buying a single cartridge.
Be mindful that documents that appear to be black and white may often have been set up as CMYK or RGB colour documents. Where this is the case, not only black is used to produce a print, which is unnecessarily wasteful. Selecting the grayscale option in the print menu, when printing the document, forces the printer to use only black when producing the print.
When setting up internal company documentation, try to design documents that, while still serving the intended purpose, are ink-usage friendly. Select fonts that are frugal on ink utilisation. Some popular fonts use close to 30% more ink than an acceptable alternative that has been optimised to save ink.
Purchase printers that utilise a one-cartridge-per-colour system as opposed to those that combine more than one colour in a unitary cartridge. Unitary replacements usually contain cyan, magenta, and yellow inks in one container which results in significant waste. When one of the colours runs out, the remainder of the other two colours end up being thrown away. Finally, only print hard copies of documents that are really needed in hard copy format. For the best advice on anything to do with printers and printing, talk to us at Raydian. We have expertise on all the leading printer brands.
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