A Quick Guide to Toner Cartridges

What is a toner cartridge?

Toner cartridges are a type of printer cartridge that uses toner powder to produce a print. Cartridges can come in four colors: black, cyan, magenta and yellow.

What type of printer do they work with?

Toner cartridges work with laser printers. Monochrome laser printers use just the black cartridge and only print in black. Color laser printers use all four cartridges and can print in black and color.

What is inside a toner cartridge?

Toner powder is the dry, powdery material inside the cartridge that creates a print. Unlike the ink inside an ink cartridge, toner powder will not dry out if used infrequently.

How do they work?

Laser toner printers use static electricity and heat to bond dry toner powder to a page.

Who uses them?

Large businesses, schools, or consumers with a frequently high print volume.

How many pages do they print?

Look for the page yield! A cartridge's page yield is the estimated number of pages you can print. Page yield is based on 5% page coverage. This means that the quoted page yield is based upon printed pages where only 5% of the page has been imprinted with toner. For example, a short memo has approximately 5% coverage. If you have a cartridge that has a yield of 500 pages, it can print 500 pages of that short memo. If you are printing letters, photos or graphics, your coverage will vary greatly and your page yield will drop significantly.