HP Color Laser 4500N Toner Refill Quality Questions

[A. Loring]

Hello,
I have purchased a HP Color Laser 4500N and am absolutely thrilled with the
quality it produces. However, I will be needing to stock up on toner for the
machine and I have a few questions that someone more educated than me in
this area may be able to help me (and porbalby others).

First, Are the Toner Refill Kits (seen several from different companies,
specifically was looking at www.4inkjets.com ) for this printer -( the ones
that you dump the toner into the old cartridge yourself) - of the same
quality or reasonably acceptable as HP's. Is the color output affected
negatively or significantly to want to avoid at all costs, these refill
kits?

Second, What is the most "economical for best quality" choice.
Remanufactured Toner Cartridges, or the Refill Kits .As well, the best
source for decent quality toner refill kits or toner cartridges.

If someone could enlighten me onto the good and bad of these refill kits, it
would be most appreciated Reply by email and the group would be awesome.
I'm sure I'm not the only one with this question!

Thanks in advance!

Arthur

 

[bob]

Hello,
I have purchased a HP Color Laser 4500N and am absolutely thrilled
[...]

First, Are the Toner Refill Kits (seen several from different
companies, specifically was looking at www.4inkjets.com ) for this

[...]

I've got a 4500 here at the office. I asked a similar question about a
month ago and didn't get any opinions.

The 4500 is different from most printers in that the toner is in a
seperate unit than the drum.

FWIW, our average cost to print for all consumables (excluding paper) is
around us$0.057 (almost 6 cents), with about 1/2 our pages being color;
most of those with I'd estimate 50% coverage, and the rest just a spot.

A good portion of the consumable cost is accounted for in the fuser kit,
the drum kit, and the transfer kit. It seems like it *always* needs
something.

If you're printing in a windows enviornment, get the Postscript driver
from Adobe's website, and the PCL driver from HP. Some things just wont
print right with one driver or the other. I always shut off all the color
matching and color management options, which only serve to restrict the
colors available to the printer.

Bob

Bob

 

[FF]

Arthur;
As a servicer of HP printers, and this printer in particular, I would
not recommend using off-brand toner cartridges. First of all, if you
use a non-HP cart. if the printer is still under warranty, HP will not
service the printer. You are just asking for trouble using non HP
carts. especially in this printer.
When this printer first came out, even HP had problems with cartridges
mainly with the Magenta cart. The cartridge dumped toner on the inside
of the printer, and we were called in to clean the printer, and
install new HP supplied cartridges.

Hope This helps.

Paul




->Hello,
-> I have purchased a HP Color Laser 4500N and am absolutely thrilled
with the
->quality it produces. However, I will be needing to stock up on toner
for the
->machine and I have a few questions that someone more educated than
me in
->this area may be able to help me (and porbalby others).
->
->First, Are the Toner Refill Kits (seen several from different
companies,
->specifically was looking at www.4inkjets.com ) for this printer -(
the ones
->that you dump the toner into the old cartridge yourself) - of the
same
->quality or reasonably acceptable as HP's. Is the color output
affected
->negatively or significantly to want to avoid at all costs, these
refill
->kits?
->
->Second, What is the most "economical for best quality" choice.
->Remanufactured Toner Cartridges, or the Refill Kits .As well, the
best
->source for decent quality toner refill kits or toner cartridges.
->
->If someone could enlighten me onto the good and bad of these refill
kits, it
->would be most appreciated Reply by email and the group would be
awesome.
->I'm sure I'm not the only one with this question!
->
->Thanks in advance!
->
->Arthur
->

 

[The ICT Man]

I wouldn't put an expensive printer like this at risk to save a few pennies.
Toner is the least of your problems. We have two of these printers in
school, and they are brilliant! One of ours is in our ICT suite and is used
at least once by 300+ pupils per week (usually about 50% colour A4 - You
know what children are like with clipart!) and reception and our nursery
classes print hundreds of photographs each time they do something different
(you know what teachers are like with cameras!)
Up to now, that machine has used ONE cartridge of each colour EACH YEAR,
plus two black ones!!
I couldn't believe it, and I would never risk wrecking it.

Dave

 

[Dave]

When this printer first came out, even HP had problems with cartridges
mainly with the Magenta cart. The cartridge dumped toner on the inside
of the printer, and we were called in to clean the printer, and
install new HP supplied cartridges.

Having spent a fair amount of time cleaning out magenta toner spills on
the 4500's (and some cyan, but never yellow or black) I can only agree
with the sentiments above.

dave