In 2007, Quality Logic, one of the world's foremost quality assurance organizations, tested the performance of Hewlett Packard Black LaserJet toner cartridges against several remanufactured toner brands. The study found that more than 1/3 (33%) of all black remanufactured toner cartridges included in the survey had some problem, such as premature failure or low-quality pages, whereas every single original toner cartridge tested worked perfectly, with no failures (0%).



Remanufactured laser toner brands claim their product is as reliable as original cartridges, but the numbers tell a different story. The study showed that one out of every three (33%) pages inspected from the remanufactured cartridges tested was of limited or no use. All but one out of twenty-five (4%) pages inspected from the original cartridges tested were acceptable for all uses. In a separate study of Hewlett Packard Color toner cartridges versus several remanufactured toner brands, the performance of the remanufactured toner was 74.7% versus Hewlett Packard's 98.3%.

Besides print quality, the reported problems with remanufactured toner included toner leaking into the shipping container, toner leaking into the printer immediately after insertion, and a broken wiper door on the toner cartridge.

Even though the price of remanufactured cartridges may seem lower, when you factor in the unusable or low-quality pages, the problem cartridges and poor text quality, the cost for using original toner cartridges may actually be lower than that of remanufactured cartridges.

Business users report problems with remanufactured toner

In an independent survey, Lyra Research interviewed customers who have used remanufactured cartridges and have experienced problems with those cartridges. What they found was that 30% said that the problematic remanufactured cartridges leaked into their printer, over 50% of monochrome laser users complained of poor print quality for text, and on average, customers lost use of their printer for nearly a day and a half per problem.

Users of other printers and plain paper faxes such as Panasonic, Toshiba, Xerox, Canon, Sharp, Ricoh, Savin, and Brother have reported similar anecdotal results with remanufactured toner cartridges rather than the original toner cartridges for their printers and fax machines. In 2007, Staples chose to discontinue the sale of Hewlett Packard-compatible and Epson-compatible ink and toner cartridges.

As you can see, the true cost of using remanufactured toner cartridges is not only the very tangible waste of money and paper, it's also the extra time spent dealing with problems that arise from using unreliable remanufactured cartridges. Quality Logic tests found every 100 remanufactured toner cartridges generate 5 extra support calls, 23000 extra reprints, and 3.75 additional cartridge repurchases.

Just in case you feel the need for more reasons to use original toner cartridges instead of remanufactured one, Hewlett Packard, and perhaps others as well, have an internal remanufacturing system if you send back your used cartridges, and, lastly, you won't get those little automatic alerts when the printer supplies are low with the use of remanufactured toner cartridges.