Printer running costs and parts
The printer is cheap. The cartridges are not.
Find the exact cartridge, toner, drum or ink bottle your printer takes, from the manufacturer's own compatibility lists, and work out what a page really costs before you buy.
Every question on this site
13 guidesEach answer comes from the maker's or the standards body's own published documents, listed at the bottom of its page with the date we read them.
Which cartridge, toner or drum
The exact part number for the printer you own, from the manufacturer's own compatibility lists.
- Which cartridge does my printer take?
How to go from the model number on the machine to the exact part number to order, why a family number like "63" is not enough on its own, and how to confirm the fit with the manufacturer before you pay.
- Will a TN770 fit my Brother, or only a TN730 or TN760?
Brother lists the 4,500-page TN770 for six of the sixteen printers that take the TN730 and TN760. Find your model in one table and see what came in the box.
- Brother says Replace Drum after new toner: what now?
Tell a drum message from a toner or cleaning problem, match the DR730, DR630 or DR830 to your model, and reset the counter only when a new drum goes in.
- 502, 522 or 542: which bottle does my EcoTank take?
Epson's own model lists for its 502, 522 and 542 bottles, the neighboring models that take different ones, part numbers, and the yields Epson states for each model.
- Which Epson cartridge number fits my printer?
Epson's own printer lists for the 288, 202, 212, 220, 222, 232 and 802 cartridges, which of them come in XL, and the one-digit model traps.
- Canon PIXMA says black is empty: PGBK or BK?
Tell the pigment black (PGI-280, PGBK) from the dye black (CLI-281, BK), see Canon's order numbers and rated yields, and read what the ink-out codes mean on your model.
- Why does HP suddenly reject a cartridge that used to work?
What HP's dynamic security actually checks, why a working cartridge can stop printing after a firmware update, and what to ask before you reorder.
- Which Brother LC number fits your printer?
See which models take LC3033 or LC3035, how their declared page yields compare, and which nearby INKvestment numbers are for a different machine entirely.
- Does HP+ force you to buy Original HP ink?
Find out whether your specific HP+ printer is actually enrolled, what it blocks if it is, and what the separate chip check still blocks even if it isn't.
- Does your ink tank printer need a maintenance box?
See which ink tank printers list a customer-replaceable maintenance box on Epson's own pages, and which handle waste ink internally instead.
Running costs and choosing a printer
What a page actually costs, and which kind of printer suits how often you print.
- Is the XL cartridge actually cheaper?
How to turn a price and a page-yield into a real cost per page, what the ISO yield figure does and does not promise, and how to compare an inkjet against a laser or an ink tank without fooling yourself.
- The printer that sits idle
If you print a handful of pages a month, the failure mode is not running out of ink — it is the machine not working when you need it. What manufacturers actually document about idle behavior, and what that implies.
- Is XL Always a Fixed Multiple? What to Buy for Each Color
See Brother's and Epson's own declared yields for standard vs. XL cartridges and bottles, and a rule for deciding which colors are worth the upgrade.
Five things worth knowing first
Most printer advice skips the part that costs the money. Each of these comes from a manufacturer's own documentation or the ISO standard it cites.
The page count on a cartridge box is a test result, not a promise. Mono toner yields are declared under ISO/IEC 19752, color toner under ISO/IEC 19798 and inkjet cartridges under ISO/IEC 24711, using a fixed five-page suite (ISO/IEC 24712 — four typical customer pages plus one diagnostic page) printed continuously until the cartridge reaches end of life, in a lab held at 23.0°C ±2.0°C. Lexmark states plainly that in real use "the actual page yield will vary considerably higher or lower depending upon factors such as page coverage, job size, media type, environmental conditions, end-of-life determination, and duplex or single-sided printing."
The manufacturers say the same thing about their own numbers. HP's yield document states that ISO standard page yields "should be used only as a starting point for comparison purposes, and not to predict the actual yield you will get from your HP printer and cartridge." Use declared yields to compare cartridge A with cartridge B. Do not use them to budget.
Published yields are not always measured the same way across brands. Epson declares EcoTank replacement bottle yields "based on the ISO/IEC 24712 pattern with Epson's methodology" — that is the test pattern, not necessarily the full ISO/IEC 24711 procedure. So an Epson bottle yield and an HP or Brother cartridge yield are not strictly like-for-like, and a cost-per-page comparison across those brands carries that caveat.
A cartridge family number is often not enough to identify the right part. HP runs its own Printer Cartridge Lookup, which asks for your printer model, your printer's serial number and the cartridge number, and then tells you whether that machine takes newer-generation HP cartridges (warranty dates after 15 August 2019) or both older and newer generations. If the manufacturer needs your serial number to answer, a marketplace listing title cannot answer it either.
On a laser printer the toner cartridge is usually not the only thing you buy. Brother rates the TN760 toner at approximately 3,000 pages under ISO/IEC 19752; the DR730 drum unit that holds it is rated at approximately 12,000 pages, is purchased separately, and Brother notes "Drum yield is approx., and may vary by type of use." That is roughly one drum for every four toners, and it belongs in any cost-per-page figure.
Who this is for
People choosing or resupplying a printer for a home or a one-to-ten-person office, who already know roughly what they need to print and are now facing a consumables decision: which cartridge to buy, whether the high-yield one is actually cheaper, or whether an inkjet will survive the way they actually use it. Not print-shop operators, not photographers chasing color accuracy, not IT buyers specifying managed fleets.