Why do toner cartridges cost so much

When you shop through retailer links on our site, we may earn affiliate commissions. Learn more. There's no joy in shopping for printer ink. It's expensive to buy, little fun to use, and before you know it—it's time to purchase it again. And that's a constant cause of frustration among printer owners.

In CR's annual printers survey, the expense of ink or toner replacement is the most common pain point for printer owners—affecting the owners of 1 in 5 printers.

One reason for the complaints could be that people underestimate the engineering that goes into printer ink, says Rich Sulin, who leads CR's printer-testing program. The oldest ink drawing in the world was created 73, years ago, according to archaeologists.

The ink used in early printers occupied the far opposite end of the longevity spectrum. Scott Williams, a chemistry professor at Rochester Institute of Technology, says that early printer inks were essentially a mix of food dye and water that would fade in just a few months.

Today's inkjets have a tough job: firing thousands of drops of ink per second, representing four different colors, with tremendous accuracy. And it needs to be quick-drying and water- and smear-resistant, and avoid making the page curl up—while also preventing the tiny jets from clogging.

All of that research and development, of course, costs a lot of money—and that's where the price comes in. According to IHS Markit, a global information provider, the cost to build a printer is higher than the retail price of most—if not all—consumer printers. IHS says it created the estimate by disassembling the printer and tallying the price of every component, including the monochrome display, enclosure, the included cartridge, the scanning window glass, image sensor, and so on.

Selling a product at a loss is not a strategy exclusive to printers. When the filament is heated, the ink bubbles, and the buildup of pressure propels a droplet from the ink cartridge, through the print head, and onto the paper.

Epson and Brother printers use a piezoelectric process, where an electrical charge varies the shape of piezoelectric material inside the cartridge. This caused a pulse of pressure to expel ink through the print head and onto the paper.

Inkjet troubles? Find out how to clean a clogged print head! Regardless of which machine you own, and which process you use, the most important components — ink cartridges — must be well-designed in order to prevent malfunctioning. Genuine OEM ink is still the highest quality and safest option for printer owners, but with quality comes higher prices. For example, a new set of cartridges for your high-end inkjet printer can cost as much as the printer itself, if not more.

Ink is specifically formulated for each type of machine, which is one of the reasons it is so expensive, according to printer companies. Almost every office — including your home office — has at least one printer, if not multiple machines. With the rise in home office use and homeschooling, domestic printers are taking on a bulk of workforce printing tasks.

The demand for ink is consistently high with minimal fluctuation. As a result, the prices for OEM ink will remain high as well. Printer owners are left with the task of finding the best prices available for genuine replacement ink, which typically does not come from big-box retailers.

If you want the best price on replacement printer cartridges, you have to look online. Ink cartridges are not one-size-fits-all. In addition, almost every cartridge comes in an XL, or high-capacity version. If you do a lot of printing, these high-capacity cartridges can help lower your overall cost per page. Most inkjet printers use four separate color ink cartridges: blue C , red M , yellow Y , and black K. Try to avoid printers that use all-in-one tri-color cartridges.

They waste ink when only one color runs out. Printers using separate color ink cartridges CMYK are more cost-effective when it comes to ink and toner prices. Some high-end inkjet printers and photo printers use more than the standard four ink cartridges.

Technicians add specialized ink to a modern printing press. Sure, printer companies can build electronics that last for decades, but where is the profit in that? Make sure your electronic waste gets properly recycled! He admits that industry methods for measuring page yield are confusing to consumers, and claims that some vendors but not HP, he says fudge those test numbers. Furthermore, there are no photo page yield standards at all.

All the more reason to fully disclose the unit volume of ink cartridges. Assuming the average number of picoliters per drop for a given ink jet print head, the cost per page should be relatively easy to figure from there. More information is always better. By not disclosing ink volumes on cartridges it looks like HP -- and other vendors -- have something to hide. Robert L. Mitchell writes on a wide range of topics, including analytics, emerging technologies, green IT and data centers.

Here are the latest Insider stories. More Insider Sign Out. Sign In Register. Sign Out Sign In Register. Latest Insider. Check out the latest Insider stories here. More from the IDG Network. Ink wars: Kodak vs. HP in the ink-jet consumables battle.

Why are they acting this way? Simply because their maximum long-term profits come from the sale of their own original expensive cartridges.

So ends the mystery of the high cost of the original cartridges. Yes, we must say that the original cartridges set standards for quality, for yielded pages, for consistency. A cartridge or a ongoing running model of cartridge prints approximately pages: that means about as per estimated market price. What does it mean?