If you use your printer a lot, and even if you don’t, you know that printing can be an expensive job. Ink can be a large part of that cost, but it doesn’t have to. This guide will help answer questions about compatible printer products and can help you save significant money by using compatible and or remanufactured ink cartridges and toner over OEM products.
What are Compatible Ink & Toner Cartridges?
When you buy a new printer it usually comes with an OEM (which stands for Original Equipment Manufacturer) inkjet cartridge if you purchased an InkJet printer, or a LaserJet toner cartridge if you bought a Laser printer. Most of the Compatible ink and toner cartridges sold on ForMyDesk.com start out life as OEM products but the remanufacturer acquires empty cartridges, inspects them for quality assurance, then carefully recycles & refills them. Much like rebuilt parts available for automobiles the resulting compatible products are significantly cheaper than what you would find with an OEM product.
What about the quality of compatible or remanufactured InkJet and LaserJet cartridges?
Many OEM producers would have you believe that ALL remanufactured ink and toner produces inferior results. This is simply NOT true. There is a wide range of companies producing remanufactured and compatible ink and toner products for sure so it’s important to buy remanufactured products with good 3rd party reviews and a long history of producing quality products. As a consumer, it is smart to investigate the reputation of the company selling compatibles for quality standards and remanufacturing processes that strike the right balance of cost savings without giving up a quality result. You can be sure that ALL of the remanufacturers that we source our compatible products from have in place a very specific quality control process that allows for you to save significant money without giving up a quality result. As a matter of fact, many of the compatible products we offer are produced by names you already know and trust.
What are the differences between the ink in OEM and Compatible InkJet cartridges?
The actual ink in the remanufactured or compatible cartridges themselves is very similar to that found in OEM cartridges. Every company has their own proprietary ink formulas so if you were to take the ink to a lab and test it there would certainly be differences in the chemical composition of the two different inks. However, what is important to most consumers is the image that that ink produces on the page. ALL of the remanufactured and compatible producers that we sell on ForMyDesk.com conform to the widely accepted ISO 9001 standards which provide guidance and tools for companies and organizations who want to ensure that their products and services consistently meet customer’s requirements and that quality is consistently improved.
Is using compatible InkJet or LaserJet cartridges “good” for the environment?
The short answer is “it depends”. Most of the compatible cartridges we sell on ForMyDesk.com are remanufactured meaning that the company that produces the cartridge is using a recycled OEM plastic container that is inspected for quality then refilled. So by the fact that remanufactured compatible cartridges are being used, and thus keeping them out of landfills, they do offer some benefit to the environment. Other compatible cartridges start from scratch and manufacture everything from start to finish so there would be no difference in that instance.