When it comes to choosing the right toner cartridge for your laser printer, there are a few things you might want to bear in mind.
Price is important, but there's little point in cutting corners if it means noticeably skimping on print quality.
A recent BT Business Direct blog post took an in-depth look at the various pros and cons of using original and third-party compatible toner cartridges for a Hewlett-Packard printer. While the latter tend to be somewhat cheaper, you may also find that print quality is notably poorer - so it's up to you to weigh up the advantages and disadvantages when you come to buy a new cartridge.
Our blogger cited a study from QualityLogic which found that original HP LaserJet cartridges scored far higher for reliability than compatibles - and in fact, 41.7 per cent of the third-party cartridges demonstrated some sort of failure. What's more, the research also revealed that the original HP cartridges also comfortably beat compatibles on print quality, with 97 per cent of printouts considered acceptable for all uses as opposed to 61 per cent for the non-HP compatible cartridges.
"For me it has to be Original HP Toner every time as I often print documents that are going to be sent externally and that's just for black and white printing," the blogger noted. "Colour lasers have even more going on inside, with four different toner cartridges mixing colours to print on the same page."
Dual pack HP LaserJet 126A black toner cartridges are available from BT Business Direct for ?61.32 excluding VAT, compared to ?34.21 for single cartridges. What's more, HP currently offers ?15 cash back when buying two dual packs - resulting in a total cost of just ?27.54 per cartridge.
About BT Business Direct:
BT Business Direct, part of the BT Group, offers essential business computing products ranging from business servers to business telephone systems. We have more than 20,000 products including voice and data solutions as well as IT services such as hardware configuration, installation and deployment, all of which are available from our specialist Business-to-Business (B2B) website.
Currently, BT Business Direct is running promotions for HP toner cashback and HP printer cashback, helping you to run your HP printers more efficiently.
