Are Colour Toner Cartridges More Expensive?

Colour printing, as a general rule, is significantly more expensive than black-and-white printing. For one thing, colour printers cost quite a bit more than their monochromatic counterparts; you can get a B&W printer for next to nothing nowadays, but you still have to fork over quite a bit of cash for a colour machine.

But what about the toner? Are colour toner cartridges more expensive than standard black ones? And if so, how much more expensive?

Let's look at two examples from City Ink's toner department:

• The HP LaserJet 4000 is a mono printer, only capable of printing in black and white. A compatible toner cartridge for the HP 4000 costs £30.30 (at time of writing); an original HP cartridge costs £95.40.
  
  
• The HP LaserJet 3600 is a colour printer, and so it requires four toner cartridges (cyan, magenta, yellow and black) to print properly. The compatible cartridges for this printer are £37.57 apiece, although the black cartridge - being slightly larger - is more expensive at £43.38. Original cartridges for the HP 3600 are £86.97 each - slightly cheaper than the LasreJet 4000's original cartridges, but also offering a lower page yield (4-6,000 pages vs. 10,000).

So there you have it - now you know why colour printing is so much more expensive in your local library!