brightsideoflife

When aftermarket toner cartridges are good, they are very, very good. But when they are bad, they are awful.

I am all about getting the best bang for the buck, which is why I recommend and use aftermarket cartridges in my printers. My last aftermarket cartridge bought for my Okidata 24DX came from Amazon and right off I noticed that my printouts were awful and all the pages had a grey cast. So awful that I all but quit using the printer as I couldn't get something to pass for draft quality.

I didn't want to dump the cartridge because they are so messy, so I decided to print black pages. That sent a signal to my printer that the drum was nearing the end of its life when it was not even close. So I ended up dumping the toner cartridge, cleaning out the toner reservoir, resetting the drum, and replacing the cartridge with a new OEM cartridge. Now I am getting good prints.

My experience is not unique. I was in an office doing some other stuff one day when someone handed me a printout and asked me why it looked so bad. "Aftermarket toner," I said. I pulled the toner cartridge, replaced it with a different manufacturer's cartridge, and problem solved. 

I do want to say that not all aftermarket toner is bad. It's just difficult to determine which ones are good without testing, so my suggestion is to find a reasonably priced aftermarket supplier that supplies good product and stick with them. They will want to keep your business, so they will work to keep quality aftermarket products.