Should you buy bulk printer ink and toner? Nowadays printer ink and toner is known to be expensive. Consumers are now smarter by purchasing generic ink and toner which is priced at a great discount. In addition, you can take advantage of further discount offered by vendors for bulk printer ink or bulk toner purchase. Here what we mean by bulk purchase is buying the same cartridge in larger quantities. Before consumers jump on the deal, they should consider the following factors:

1. Product shelf life of bulk printer ink

In general, you can store unopened ink cartridges for a year and they are still in good condition. Unopened toner cartridges can be stored up to 2 years. The storage condition matters though. Unopened toner and ink cartridges need to be stored in cool and dry place. If you can use all your cartridges within their shelf life, you should be fine and there will not be wastage for your bulk printer ink or bulk toner purchase. If you find that you need to store opened toner, this can be done as well, after resealing and placing the cartridges in a dark and cool area such as a cabinet. However, opened cartridges cannot be stored over an extended period of time.

2. Product usage

How fast you replace the ink or toner cartridge determines whether you should buy the same cartridge in bulk quantity. For real estate agents, accountants, and home businesses that print high quantity documents, advertising fliers or mailers, it is wise to purchase bulk printer ink or toner for convenience and reduced printing cost. The page yield of each cartridge gives you the cartridge capacity and will tell you the number of pages that can be printed with a specific toner or ink cartridge. It is usually expressed as “number of printed pages at 5% coverage”. Sites such as HP and Epson might serve as reference points. We provide the page yield information at the individual product page. This information together with your usage rate will help you decide how many replacement cartridges you will need in a year.

3. Color printer limitation

For most of the models nowadays, the color printer will stop printing when one of the toner or ink cartridges runs out of toner or ink. You will not be able to print in black color only when it is the yellow toner or ink that runs out. So it will help if you know what color is more frequently used. You can then purchase that color in bulk quantity. Inkjetstar.com offers value packs such as combo color laser toners for Brother TN210 and combo color inkjet ink for Epson T078120 etc.

4. Life of the printer

Nowadays, you may be buying a new printer every two years because of new functions and affordable pricing of the latest models. So it may not make sense to overstock toner or ink cartridges. For the life expectancy of HP Color LaserJet printers, check out HP printer resource page.

5. Refill system

When you google search for bulk printer ink or toner, you will find suppliers who offer ink and toner for refilling the cartridges. Though this may also help reduce the printing cost and allow you to reuse the empty cartridge, the process and handling is rather messy. The process takes meticulous cleaning, refilling and resetting the cartridge. Household refilling may also lead to your warranty being voided if your printer is manufactured by HP. While Epson does not void your warranty for using refilled cartridges, it will refuse to cover the cost of repairs following a failed refill. For most consumers, it is better to recycle the used cartridges and replace with high quality remanufactured or compatible cartridges.