There can be one of three primary styles of printing technology utilised in a HP Printer and, as such, selecting the one that best suits your needs is important in order to get the best value for money from your prints.
Some HP Printers rely on a printer head inside the actual cartridge itself and although this does mean that every time you get a new cartridge you also get a new print head, this can also present a number of disadvantages:
- These printers tend to use just one black and one colour cartridge. The result of this is if you were to exhaust just one of the colours from within the cartridge you would have to replace the entire unit.
- The printer head is potentially an expensive piece of technology and as such the replacement costs for these cartridges can be high.
- The print head is a unique piece of technology, hence it is copyrightable. Users wishing to purchase a cheaper alternative to the HP originals would be required to purchase either refilled or remanufactured cartridges rather than new, compatible cartridges available for several other machines. Although remanufactured cartridges are often substantially cheaper than their original counterparts they are usually still much more expensive than buying compatible ink tanks.
Some machines rely on a removable printer heads in the machine which are often replaced several times during the printers life. In many respects these printers offer the best of both worlds although these are usually high specification machines that command a higher initial price tag. Those users with these machines usually benefit from the ability to change cartridges individually (so, if the yellow runs out you just replace the yellow) and typically speaking the capacity of the ink tanks are usually fairly high.
As the ink tanks are simple pieces of technology they are usually easy to create compatible versions of without infringing copyright meaning that incredible cheap compatible cartridges are usually available for those looking to save money compared with the HP Originals. The printer heads are tightly copyrighted and as such only HP originals are available and since they are considered consumable units you would be advised to check out the price of replacing these before purchasing your new printer.
The third printer style which has become quite popular recently is a machine which has a fixed print head designed to last the life of the printer in to which simple ink tanks are placed. With the printer industry on the whole moving towards a system of allowing users the ability to replace ink tanks individually the traditional approach of HP integrating the print head in to each cartridge isn’t really practical any more.
It is especially important to consider the cost per page of these individual cartridges before making a purchase as a common sales technique is to sell the printer and quote the cost of the low capacity original cartridges. Although these are typically very cheap they yield few pages so always base your ongoing running costs on purchasing high capacity cartridges. As an alternative, compatible cartridges are also usually available for these machines and as well as often being substantially cheaper, they sometimes contain more ink than the HP original cartridges.
Hewlett Packard are probably the most popular brand of laser printer available on the market today and, as such, there is a thriving market for both original and remanufactured toner cartridges for these machines. Remanufactured cartridges in particular seem to come to market extraordinarily quickly due to the large HP user base then competition drives the prices down quickly.
As with any other laser printer it is important to check the page yields of the cartridges before committing yourself to ownership as they can vary wildly. A cyan C9721A cartridge for a HP LaserJet 4600 printer for example will typically yield 8,000 pages at 5% page coverage, whereas the same colour CB541 cartridge for a HP LaserJet CM1312 will print just 1,400 pages.
