Top 4 Things to Consider When Buying Ink or Toner

If you are shopping around for replacement ink or toner for your printer, there are a few criteria that should be considered as essential.

Before you buy any inkjet or toner cartridge, you should be thinking about :

1. Cost of the ink / toner
2. Quality of the printouts
3. Convenience of getting the ink or toner that you need
4. The Environmental impact of your purchase / use of ink or toner

Depending on where you buy your ink and toner cartridges, you may be trading off some of the above considerations, but you don't necessarily need to.  

Buying original brand cartridges (such as Original brand name HP cartridges, Epson cartridges, Lexmark cartridges, Dell cartridges etc) will probably yield the best overall quality, but the cost will be much higher than other alternatives.  Convenience of ordering original ink or toner cartridges may be about the same as compatible alternatives, but the environmental impact of OEM (original equipment manufacturer) brands is surely higher than refilled / remanufactured equivalents.  It takes hundreds or thousands of years for an empty cartridge to decompose, and it takes lots of oil to manufacture a new one.  

Buying professionally refilled or remanufactured cartridges will save you usually 30-50% as compared to buying original brand printer ink cartridges.  Quality could be equivalent, or below the original brand quality standards, depending on where you buy your refilled ink cartridge or refilled toner cartridge from.  The quality of 123 Refills brand refilled or remanufactured cartridges is held to very high and rigorous standards, ensuring that the quality of the ink or toner cartridges is as close to the original as possible.  DIY Refill Kits can save you even more (often around 40-70% off original cartridge prices, even more depending on the model), and quality is only slightly less than professional refills because the parts of the cartridge have wear and tear.  Typically, quality is around 95% to 100% on the 1st refill (not noticeable), and drops by around 5-10% per additional refill, so we recommend refilling the same cartridge 1-2 times before switching to a new cartridge (or professionally remanufactured cartridge), and then starting the refill process again.  Some customers even refill their cartridges 3-5 times with no significant or noticeable quality issues.  Of course, the number of refills you can get before noticing a drop in print quality depends on the type of cartridge you are refilling, and the wear and tear of parts inside your cartridge - some cartridges wear out faster than others.

Convenience is an important part of buying any product.  Finding the printer ink supplies you need quickly and accurately, and having them delivered to your door as fast and economically as possible is very important.  123 Refills offers fast and accurate shipping options, including free shipping on US orders for ink or toner (currently free shipping is offered on orders over $60).  123 Refills also offers ink cartridges, toner cartridges and ink refill services in store, see www.123refills.com for locations.  

Finally - consider the environment before you buy a new inkjet cartridge or toner cartridge. It takes thousands of years for an inkjet cartridge or toner cartridge to decompose, and millions land up in landfills. US consumers also use over 700 million gallons of oil a day.  Considering that it takes around 3.5 quarts of oil to manufacture a new toner cartridge, and 2.5 ounces of oil to make a new inkjet cartridge, buying refilled cartridges (or doing your own ink refills or toner refills) will help save the environment and conserve valuable natural resources. 

123 Refills has been saving its customers on ink and toner for more than 7 years and helping to save the environment at the same time.  Rethink how you ink...