My bid for the dullest post of the day.

So my trusty laser printer is running low on toner.

I last changed the cartridge in 2016 when it was £54 for the Samsung one. Now it’s about £64, or I could get a high-capacity “compatible” version for roughly half that price.

Obviously I’ve got good value out of the OEM one, but wouldn’t mind saving a few quid.

Your experiences?

Had no issues on a big Brother colour laser for years. It’s been kaput about four years now and we went to HP Envy inkjet with InstantInk. Also faff free but a bit more spendy, but photos better than laser ever could manage.

Ta for that.

I must say my laser has been totally trouble-free for about eight years – and follows a string of short-lived inkjets.

I only need B&W printing, so there’s no way I’m ever going back.

Aftermarket toner cartridges have always worked okay for me.

I’m struggling now to get some compatible toner cartridges to work on my Brother laser printer. Black- AOK. Magenta-detected fine. Yellow – not seen. Cyan – not seen. Reset the print counters for cyan and yellow. Did a test print – only black and yellow. Oh dear.

I should’ve paid full price and got the brand ones. Though my experiences of compatible cartridges for a Dell laser printer were very good. Can’t say the same about HP-compatible toner cartridges. First one I tried in there after years of buying brand ones and the printer broke irreparably.

Cheers, so I think we’re at “probably be OK for B&W”.

Hmmm.

Maybe.
I’ll be buying brand cartridges from now on.

I’ve always found Cartridgesave.co.uk work well.

I’ve used there 3rd aprty cartridges for the following machines without issue.

Ricoh 4501, Ricoh 4503, Ricoh 4504, Ricoh 2003, Ricoh 2004, Ricoh 3504, Ricoh 2500 (All Colour toners)
Epson DFX 9000 (Ribbon)
Brother MFC J5320DW, Brother MFC J615W (Ink)
Brother L2370 DN (Black Toner)
Samsung Xpress C1810W (All Colour Toner)

Quite a significant saving over branded, although they do sell both.

I’ve generally found compatible ones ok (Samsung C410 laser thinger here) but I did get a couple of dodgy black toner ones that caused the printer to go beserk and brick the half full colour cartidges that were in there meaning I had to buy a full set of colour as well as replace the black one that was empty. You can run a toner catridge down pretty far though unless you’ve got an annoying updated printer driver that won’t let you.

elderly Kyocera colour laser here – not had a problem with any off-brand toner cartridges, always get them from the best value place and they seem to work just fine. been a mixture of new and refurb/refilled ones

oh – and yes – i’ve used cartridgesave a number fo times and they’ve been bob on

My Laser Samsung was nightmare – it jammed all the time – and then was impossible to dismantle without breaking stuff.
It got binned ….

I buy inkjet cartridges from people with a reasonable feedback score on Amazon. They have always worked for me – sometimes with a bit of wiggling.
I don’t find OEM replacements offer added value for the added cost.

We moved two years ago to an HP – with 18 months free posted HP ink service, it was cheaper to buy the new printer than pay for replacement ink.
We now pay £7 a month and they just post new cartridges direct to us, with freepost recycle bag to send them back.

I buy Yellow Yeti compatible ones from Amazon (Samsung colour laser printer) – never had any trouble with them.

They will break your printer eventually! (QC is not as good and at some point you’ll get one where the toner clumps up too much). Although most people printing at home (4-5 years for one cartridge from the OP!) probably won’t do enough volume that they’ll “lose” the compatible-cartridge lottery before they end up getting rid of the printer for another reason. And even then, the saving might well outweigh the cost of a new printer! So for a cheap, home machine I’d probably just get compatibles.

We used to have a HP inkjet (I think). One set of “Compatible” cartridges were ok, the next set were poo and we binned the lot.

Now have a Canon and will be buying official cartridges.

Not 100% relevant to what you’re after but for a trouble free life and reducing waste I’m sticking to official parts now.

My Laser Samsung was nightmare – it jammed all the time – and then was impossible to dismantle without breaking stuff.
It got binned ….

I ended up binning mine too, again claiming paper jam, it simply wouldn’t feed paper from the tray. Tried taking apart but a bit of ‘mare compared to Ricoh’s. Should have been a simple solenoid fix. I find there’s nothing that makes me see the red mist (except noisy eaters), than a printer not working correctly in some way. They just seem to make the most irritating noises!

There may be a reason Samsung don’t make printers any more.

As I said, eight years of trouble-free service from my Samsung.

Hope I haven’t jinxed it now though.