Laser printers are very popular in offices and homes, and have become an indispensable part of our daily lives. However, their toner cartridges usually run out pretty fast, and in most of the cases, at the most inopportune moment. To try and keep the cost of printing low, the primary question that people have been asking is: “What are the best ways to extend the life of a toner cartridge?”
To help answer the question, mrdepot.ca has the answer for you. Keep reading to discover the seven best tips to help you extend the life of your toner cartridge.
1. Go for High-Quality Toner Cartridge
The journey to making your toner cartridge last longer starts with what you buy. To make the toner cartridge last longer or achieve a higher page yield, it is important to ensure you go for quality. Here are some useful tips to help you identify the best cartridge.
- Buy only the toner cartridges designed for your printer. You can do this by checking the toner cartridge number or asking the manufacturer to give you the right number.
- Only buy from a trusted dealer. Because of the large number of online dealers out there, the risk of buying from a bad seller and getting poor quality toner cartridge looms. So, carefully vet the dealer to ensure that he is committed to delivering quality to clients. For example, were previous clients satisfied with the cartridges that they bought from the supplier?
- Go for toner cartridge that comes with a user warranty. When a manufacturer attaches a warranty/ guarantee to a toner cartridge, it is an indication that all efforts were directed at ensuring the cartridge is of high quality.
2. Ignore the “Low Ink” or “Out of Toner” Printer Warnings
It is not uncommon to see the “low ink” or “out of ink” messages when using your printer. When most people see this message, the first thing they do is rushing to buy new toner cartridges, but this is not the right thing to do!
Tests done on toner cartridges that gave the “low ink” or “no ink” revealed that they still had 8-45%. So, when you see the low ink message, simply ignore it and continue using the toner cartridge. The best sign to indicate that the toner is running low is light printouts.
3. Use Smaller Fonts
If you use bolt texts and large fonts, they can deplete the toner cartridge pretty fast. This is why you should consider going for slimmer fonts, such as New Courier and Arial that take less ink. If you want to save ink even further and extend the life of your toner cartridge by a significant margin, consider downloading and using Ecofont, a font style that helps to cut down toner use by up to 20%.
4. Adjust Your Printer Setting
source:pxhere.com
When you install a printer, it automatically picks the default settings, which involve using maximum ink. However, you do not have to use these settings, especially when printing something such as draft documents. The good thing is that you can change the printer settings and use the preferred printing preferences. Here are the steps to follow if you are using Windows on your computer: Start>Select printers>Right click printers>Select printer preferences. From there, you can select any of the following preferences:
- Print in Draft Mode: This mode is designed to help you print fast but with less precision, giving you an option to see where the draft can be edited before printing the final copy. Note that although the quality might be lower when compared to the regular print, it should be okay for most office work where further review is needed.
- Select Print in Grayscale: If you want to print a colored document, selecting grayscale means that you only print black and white. This will go a long way in helping to extend the life of the toner cartridge.
- Use Documents Options: This is another great option to save toner cartridge by condensing your work and printing in one sheet. The method is very effective, especially when you are making presentations and only summarized points or condensed versions of the documents are printed.
5. Proofread Your Work before Printing
The more you print, the faster the toner cartridge gets diminished, right? Whether you are printing memos for the whole society membership, working on your dissertation, or a book, mistakes that are noted too late can force you to reprint the entire batch, meaning that the toner will get depleted fast. Can you imagine having to reprint the entire dissertation of 500 pages? Well, you can avoid this by proofreading your work carefully before hitting the print button. You could even ask a close friend to help you with proofreading to ensure only the best is printed and reduce the risk of having to redo the job. This can help to extend the life of the toner cartridge with a huge margin.
6. Save Your Work Instead of Printing
If you print a lot of materials for storage, one of the best methods of extending your toner cartridge’s life is shifting to digital storage. Indeed, most of the people who print documents still keep soft copies on their computers. So, why keep two copies when one can do? When you save your documents, here are the main benefits to anticipate.
- You can access the documents easier and faster.
- The documents can be edited easily.
- You can carry a lot of documents around in a tablet or laptop.
- Sharing the document is pretty easy.
7. Print Preview Your Documents
When printing documents, from the personal letters to CVs, it is not uncommon to find some minor errors in the final print that force you to print again. All the unnecessary printouts take ink that could have helped to extend the life of your toner cartridge. For those who have the latest version of Microsoft Word, it provides an awesome print preview that you can use to check and ensure everything is okay before hitting the print button.
Final Thoughts
If you have a laser printer and the high cost of toner cartridge has been worrying you, you have a reason to smile because the tips we have discussed above have been tested and proven to work. In addition to the seven methods that we have discussed above, you should also keep your printer in good condition to extend your toner cartridge’s life.
Kim Marks 
Nicola Holder