My HP 1012 needs a new toner cartridge.  I've seen real HP cartridges for about $69 and 'compatible' ones for half that.

Can someone clue me in on the 'compatibles'? Are they as good? Should I stick with the real HP?

Does anyone have a place that they recommend?

I've used compatible ones at work before... they seemed to work just fine. I know the mfg's say that the other toners are not "formulated" the same, but I can't say that I've seen horrible quality or damage done to a printer because a compatible toner was used.

Refillable inks however, are a different story.

-d

As long as you get it from a reputable company that will stand behind their product.  And also understand that there's a world of difference between a remanufactured cartridge and a refilled one.

skimp here pay more later for the repairs.


its all about quality control


cheaper paper more paper dust.


cheaper toner   more likely to have problems

JME  (just my experience)   from the printer guys i work with

One of my duties in my office is to stock toner cartridges for everything.

The remans are not as good.  If there was a problem, we just went to the next cartridge.

For a home user that would be difficult and expensive.

We only use new cartridges from the printer manufacturer and have very few problems.

I feel the extra $$ spent on new factory units is worth it, especially if you have a reman leak in your printer.

Seen it before and the time/effort spent in clean up and get a NEW cartridge are not worth it.

I used to remfg toner cartridges, and I would not use them in my own printer. Mostly due to the posible leakage of toner incured by the process of taking the ctg apart and putting it back together again, thus making the joints prone to leakage.

We would replace the drum, toner and wiper blade if it had one.

If you want to get the most out of your printer then use new toners and new paper, not recycled.

Recycled paper is more abrasive, so it wears the feed tires/rollers faster, it is dusty so it clogs what crepe is left on the tires and the moisture content is not consistant so it will cause misfeeds due to static cling.

just make sure the compatible ones aren't refils
the bank I work at the helpdesk for went cheap and started using refurb lexmark cartridges. started getting incompatible error messages and they started leaking
cost the bank way more in tech calls than the price difference between the cheap and new lexmark cartridges