I need a new cartridge for my HP laserjet 1160 and both staples and office max want $80 for the normal one or $145 for "high yeild" toner cartridge. So after looking online i found some generic brands selling for $25-45 offline. I plan on buying with paypal so i wont have to worry bout my credit card but is it trustworthy to buy a generic product from some offline company? Is it worth the money to buy the "high yeild" version? Or would I just be better off picking up a refubished (refilled, idk) from Rapid Refill for $52?

4/13/2009 11:14:49 AM

Take your empty cartridge across hillsbourgh street to Cartridge World, they'll refill it for cheap and cut you a discount if you are a student.

4/13/2009 11:27:54 AM

Mmm, k here's the deal. The high yield version is going to be cheaper per sheet and will last longer (just look at the number of pages it says each cartridge will print, it should be on the box for a toner cartridge). The normal version will last a really long time anyway unless you're printing out a hell of a lot of paper all the time.

Now, as for their price of $80, see this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817102164

$67.99 with free shipping (very reputable website, btw).

The deal with generic brands is they reuse old toner cartridges and fill them with their own plastic toner rubble. Their toner bits tend not to be as refined as the OEM toner bits, which can lead to reduced print quality. In addition, over time, using the generic ones can be a crap shoot because you don't know what condition the cartridge is in when you buy it. It may have been refilled before, which can mean even worse quality and mean that the cartridge is a liability for your printer.

HP's obviously done some research on this to protect their bottom line.

http://www.hp.com/sbso/product/supplies/supplies_reliability_toner_cartridges.pdf (Though the research is done by a third party that was contracted to do the research.)

If you look at that, you're basically going to have lower quality prints, have a decent chance of getting a lower print yield than the original cartridge would get (which could null out any savings for sure), and you have a much higher risk of getting a cartridge that will simply fail right out of the box.

If you've got your old cartridge though and you want to save money, just take it to cartridge world on hillsborough st if they're still there and get them to refill it. It's less sketchy than ordering generic brands from random sketchy websites on the internet.

4/13/2009 11:39:54 AM

$45 with student discount.... fine by me

thanks!

4/13/2009 11:40:30 AM

jen dear you need slickdeals.net in your life like i need jesus in mine

http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.php?t=1198847

27 dollar bucks shipped...fuck this refill your old cartridge noise

[Edited on April 14, 2009 at 5:37 AM. Reason : yes i know its probably not the one you needed, but deals like this come along often]

4/14/2009 5:25:12 AM