There's no doubt about it, laser printers are dominating the printing game. Their quality and speed of printing is a force to be reckoned with and pretty difficult to argue against. However, the one element of purchasing a laser printer which seems to involve continuous disappointment is the astronomical cost of toner cartridges. Toner ranges in price depending on which printer manufacturers you are opting for, but one thing is unanimous - Brother, HP, Lexmark, Epson - no matter what the brand, the cost of toner seems too high. 

So why is toner so expensive? There are many theories floating around on the internet, but here are the plausible reasons why printing companies charge through the roof for their branded toner cartridges.

1. Laser printers are relatively cheap 

Considering the technology implemented within laser printers, the number of functions which they can perform and the quality of the printing job guaranteed when using a laser printer, the actual cost of the machine is extremely cheap. Many of the larger companies such as HP, Brother and Lexmark are actually operating at a loss with the cost of their laser printers when you take into consideration the parts, the technology and the hours required to create one, which is why they make their money from toner cartridges - because a printer cannot run without toner, and you will need a replacement toner cartridge every couple of months or so. 

2. Toner cartridges utililse exceptionally complicated technology

Many printer manufactuers include a special microchip in their toner cartridges which attempts to stop counterfit toner cartridges from working in their printer. This is an added expense to actually make the toner, and consequently the retail cost is much higher. 

So how do we get around the cost of toner?

There are two options. You can try and make your toner last longer by reducing the output resolution, saving your colour cartridges for colour printing, turning on toner save (a function available for most laser printers) and using an eco-friendly font. The alternative is to swap to high-quality alternative compatible toner cartridges, like our exceptional range of cheap toner cartridges by Fotorite. Fotorite make a range of incredibly high-quality toner cartridges and offer different cartridges which are compatible with the majority of printer models and manufacturers. Fotorite toner cartridges offer a significantly lower price without compromising on the quality of your print job. Get your compatible toner cartridges from City Ink Express today. 

In case you hadn't already noticed, here at City Ink Express we are champions of the continuous ink supply system (CISS). We would argue that using a CISS rather than your standard printer ink cartridges is far more efficient, time-saving and will not affect the quality of your printing. As well as a professional and efficient printing job, opting for a CISS system over a standard printer cartridge will save you a very significant chunk of money indeed!

Here are the two main reasons why CISS systems save you money:

1. They last far longer than a traditional ink cartridge 

Your CISS system is a fairly large tank with four separate containers for the different coloured inks. There is significantly more room in each of these containers than in any individual printing cartridge meaning that naturally the ink in your CISS system will last far, far longer than in any ink cartridge for there is simply more of it! 

2. They are much cheaper to refill 

Though purchasing and setting up a CISS system can be relatively costly, once you have your system in place the price of the ink refills are dramatically less than you would pay for a standard ink cartridge. Therefore, with a CISS system you pay out once and then have a stress-free printing life with cheap refills, but with purchasing ink cartridges you pay out a hefty sum every time you're out of ink! 

And there you have it - the lowdown on CISS systems. We know which printing option we'd prefer. 

After our edible ink range was such a resounding success, we decided that perhaps we should offer some other products to compliment this range. Though you can print beautiful and edible images onto edible paper thanks to our edible ink products, we wanted to offer our customers the opportunity to add these gorgeous works of edible ink onto more exciting products, which is where our Silicone Bakeware range comes in handy!

Hearts and Flowers Silicone Mould D7

Our Silicone Bakeware range is a range of novelty silicone moulds in a variety of different adorable shapes for you to create delicious treats which are cute too! Our silicone moulds can be filled with chocolate, fondant, ice, jelly, sweets, candy, soap, resin, mousse, pates and wax so you can make adorable edible treats or even some shaped wax works or soaps! 

Smiling Bear Silicone Mould B8

Silicone moulds and edible ink combine to create thousands of different novelty shaped cakes and sweet treats which make the perfect personal gift for friends and family members. This is a great way to get your childlren involved in baking too - perfect for the summer holidays! If you want to give a personal gift or you're trying to save money, a personalised cake with delicious and detailed sugary treats is a perfect present, plus they're extremely fun to make! Of course, you don't have to give your scrummy treats away - you can keep them all for yourself too! 

Gingerbread Lady Silicone Mould H1

We have over 100 silicone mould designs and thousands in stock as one of the UK's leading retail suppliers so make the most of City Ink Express today and team your edible ink with some gorgeous silicone moulds. 

Heels and Handbags Silicone Mould F4

Here at City Ink Express we are passionate about photography. We love beautiful pictures of moments perfectly captured. We regularly post stunning works of photography across all our social media channels and enjoy seeing how others have captured the world.

7 x 5 Premium Glossy 210gsm 50 Sheets Resin Coated 

Photography allows us to have a visual representation of some of the best memories: family moments, holidays, events and occasions. These photographs should be treasured. With our stunning range of photo paper you can print out your favourite memories in beautiful quality and frame them or save them for a rainy day. 

A4 Matte Photo Paper 110gsm 100 Sheets 

We have an exquisite range of premium inkjet photo papers at extremely low cost prices for you to print your favourite pictures. You can choose from a lightweight 110gsm up to a heavy weight 260gsm photo paper, depending on which sort or size of pictures you wish to print. We also have a range of t-shirt transfer paper for both light and dark garment options so you can print your favourite images on a t-shirt too!

T-shirt Transfer Paper for Dark Garments - 5 Pack

The quality of photography is truly outstanding these days with megapixels on smartphones improving dramatically and cameras getting more and more impressive with every model. It is so easy to capture treasured moments in exceptional quality that it would be a real shame not to make the most of your memories. Choose your compatible photo paper from City Ink Express today to bring your treasured memories to life. 

There are many, many printer companies in the market – Wikipedia lists more than 100 – and so you might think that providing a truly comprehensive range of ink and toner solutions would be a near-impossible task.

But while staying on top of the ever-expanding range of available models is certainly a challenge, we have found that certain brands are mentioned far more frequently than others. There may be 100+ manufacturers in Wikipedia’s list, but the five or six biggest names on that list account for the vast majority of our sales.

With that in mind, here’s our countdown of the 5 Biggest Printer Companies in the World:

5. Samsung

Founded: 1938

Home Country: South Korea

 Samsung is a huge name across dozens of different industries – aside from printers, they also manufacture smartphones, televisions, cameras, kitchen appliances, and goodness knows what else. Why are they only #5? Because, unlike most of the other companies on this list, printers aren’t really Samsung’s main export; they’re just a single string in the company’s bow!

Browse Samsung toner cartridges >

4. Epson

Founded: 1942

Home Country: Japan

Epson is part of the Seiko Group, but while the Seiko brand is synonymous with watches and clocks, Epson have carved out a huge name for themselves in the printing game. As of Autumn 2012, their market share was more than 15%, and they’ve continued to flourish in spite of controversies regarding their ink cartridges.

Purchase toner for Epson laser printers >

3. Canon

Founded: 1937

Home Country: Japan

 One might argue that Canon are better known for their cameras than for their printers, but let’s not split hairs – printing and photography go hand-in-hand anyway, and Canon are international leaders in both markets. They’re also the only company on this list without a blue-and-white logo, so more power to them for bucking the trend!

Buy Canon toner >

2. Brother

Founded: 1908

Home Country: Japan

Brother are by far the oldest company on this list (they were founded almost three decades before Canon, although admittedly they were called the Yasui Sewing Machine Company throughout a large chunk of their early history).  While companies like Canon and Samsung have complemented their printing products with successful forays into other markets, Brother have mainly been all about the printers for some time now. And it’s paid off – their machines are some of the very best available.

Buy Brother toner cartridges >

1. Hewlett-Packard

Founded: 1939

Home Country: USA

You thought Japan were going to run away with this list, didn't you? 'Fraid not - America, as usual, are at the top of the tree, and even though printers are only a part of HP's massive hardware and software range, Hewlett-Packard printers still appear to be the most popular worldwide.

Buy toner for HP printers >

Though we sell a lot of the individual components to make your own CISS setup, we also sell affordable printer bundles that do all of the work for you. With one of our affordable printer bundles, we’ll sell you everything you need to setup your very own continuous ink system!

For those of you new to the idea of CISS printer bundles, the basic principle is this: we will sell you a refillable ink cartridge, along with a quality printer to use it with; as the printers come with compatible CISS systems, you don’t have to do anything except top up your ink reservoirs when necessary – and the biggest advantage of doing this is you can pick up ink refills for a lot cheaper than standard cartridges (both of which we stock, by the way).

We like to think of our affordable printer bundles as a double saving; not only are the printer bundles themselves a seriously good price, but the whole setup is designed to carry on saving you money for as long as you have the printer. City Ink Express know just how extortionate printer ink can be, so by offering affordable CISS packages, we feel we are doing our bit.

Whether you’re after Epson CISS printer bundles, HP printer bundles, Canon printer bundles, or even affordable Brother printer bundles, City Ink Express should be your first port-of-call, and your only one!

Pricing is everything when it comes to running a business, and that obviously stretches to printing costs too. Trying to cipher which is the most economical laser printer will help you keep your costs down by allowing you the most efficient form of printing.

To help you find the most economical laser printer, we have scoured the internet and found 3 of the most efficient machines money can buy today! And here they are:

Samsung Printer Xpress c410w

This awesome colour laser printer will allow you to print 7,000 pages before you need to change your toner cartridges – this massive allowance will allow you to save money to put into other areas of your business. As well as being the most economical laser printer around, this Samsung device is extremely compact, has a massive 32MB of memory, and has an impressive colour resolution of 2,400 dpi.

HP Color LaserJet Enterprise CP4525dn

The HP LaserJet Enterprise is the other most economical laser printer you can buy today with an astronomical toner yield of up to 8,500 pages – this figure really dwarves the rest of the field, and should help you make some important savings. On top of being insanely economical with its toner, this HP model produces super-speedy prints in as quick as 9.5 seconds, and is compatible with just about any operating system going.

OKI Data C C531dn

Our last offering of economical laser printers brings us to this OKI device – the OKI Data C C531dn. With a toner yield of 5,000 pages this printer is still one of the most efficient and economical machines you can buy today! What you’ll also like about this model is it actually uses LEDs rather than lasers for increased print-efficiency, and it only takes 7.5 seconds to warm-up – which is ideal for those looking to print in a jiffy.

We honestly don’t mean to intentionally blow our own trumpets all the time, but we really believe we can offer you the best deal on printer ink refills anywhere on the internet.

For years now we have specialised in CISS printers – Continuous Ink Supply Systems - as well as the printer ink refills to supplement them. The basic principle behind these printer systems is by allowing yourself a continuous connection the ink jets can use a much larger ink reservoir. This then means you can purchase your printer ink refills in larger volumes and save yourselves a ton of money on printing costs.

It’s clear then why you would want to incorporate a CISS printer into your home or office space, but why should you then choose City Ink Express to purchase it from? Well while we’re on the subject of cost, we do offer the most competitive price around, so as well as saving on printing costs in general, you can save on the refills when they do eventually need replacing too – bonus.

Not all printers are able to install a CISS system, but we’ll even sell you a CISS printer bundle which includes everything you need to start saving money today! When you do purchase a printer or printer ink refills from City Ink Express, you’ll also have access to our massive resource of printing-related material, should you have future difficulties installing or refilling your printer.

At City Ink Express, we’re passionate about printing, and we aim to leave a good impression!

The right printer for your workplace will, of course, depend on where you work. Most offices can make do with a basic black-and-white printer (after all, boring work memos are never especially vibrant), but what if you work in a design studio or somewhere similarly colourful?

We can't recommend a printer for everyone, but what we can do is look at the printing requirements of the 'average' office:

• Heavy Usage: Printers aren't the centre of the office like they were in the days before email, but work printers still tend to be very busy machines. Your office printer should be capable of working at a high capacity, and you'll want an appliance that isn't running out of ink every five minutes.
  
  
• High Speed: This is related to the 'heavy usage' thing - your work schedule is probably pretty full, and you don't want to waste any time waiting for stuff to print (especially if your colleagues are waiting for their documents to go through as well).
  
  
• Multiple Functions: While the average office won't necessarily need a colour printer, the scan and copy functions can still be very handy in even the most monotone working environments. An all-in-one printer can solve a lot of problems and save quite a bit of space to boot.

With all of the above in mind, we think that an All-in-One Monochrome Laser Printer is the best choice for the average office. Laser printing is quicker than inkjet printing (you don't even have to wait for the ink to dry), so even on a really busy Friday afternoon, the print queue should never get too hectic.

Moreover, a laser printer is arguably much better value for money. Toner cartridges cost a little more than standard ink cartridges, but they also last a lot longer, saving you money in the long run. Note also that colour printers use four different toner cartridges whereas mono printers use only one - it's best to stick with black and white if your company can manage that way!

So which printer should I buy?

We recommend something from HP's LaserJet Pro range. The HP LaserJet M1536dnf, for example, is a heavy-duty monochromatic laser printer that also functions as a scanner, copier, and a fax machine.

And don't forget, when your office printer needs a new toner cartridge...we can help!

Canon Toner Cartridges make up a large percentage of our toner sales, and when you consider the quality of Canon printers it's not really a surprise is it? Due to the immense popularity of Canon printers, we like to make sure that our range of Canon toner cartridges is well-stocked, diverse and full of compatible and genuine Canon toner to fit a variety of printer models. We also strive to offer competitively-priced Canon toner, offering a Canon toner cartridge to meet every budget! 

Canon MF-4450 - Compatible Toner Cartridges

Where possible, we will always try and offer a genuine Canon toner cartridge and a high-quality alternative replacement toner for each and every Canon printer model we supply toner for. Currently we have toner cartridges available for the Canon CLC Series, Canon Fax L Series, Canon Fax Series, Canon FC Series, Canon FP Series, Canon GP Series, Canon Image Class Series, Canon IR Series, Canon Laser Class Series, Canon LBP Series, Canon MF Series, Canon NP Series, Canon P series and the Canon PC Series.

Of course, there are numerous model numbers within these manufacturer types, so simply head over to our Canon Toner Cartridges page and select your model to see a list of the available toner cartridges. 

Canon Mf8580CDW - Compatible Toner Cartridges

As well as toner cartridges we also strive to offer a variety of general Canon spare parts including feed rollers, fuser units, drums, imaging units and imaging toner drum cartridges to help nurse your printer back to full health! 

If we don't stock toner cartridges compatible for your Canon printer or you are looking for another replacement part for your Canon printer then please don't fear, simply drop us a note over on our Contact Page or give us a call on 01332 832752 and we will do our very best to find you a suitable and affordable toner cartridge or printer part to get your printer working back in tip-top condition in no time!