Toner Talk

OEM Toner Products
OEM is an abbreviation for ORIGINAL EQUIPMENT MANUFACTURERS. You might ask yourself, "What does that mean?" Well...it means that it is the toner the manufacturer created to work with the machine you are currently using. It is the "Real McCoy!"

Compatible Toners
COMPATIBLE TONERS are OEM products that are made by a nationally known company, and carry their own label. Apple, Canon and Hewlett Packard, for example, all have compatible or interchangeable toner cartridges.

Buying a compatible or interchangeable toner cartridge is like buying a battery for your flashlight. If you use the right size battery, and choose one made by a nationally known company - such as Duracell - you can feel secure knowing that it will do the job properly. The same is true with Toner Warehouse compatible cartridges.

Generic Toners
GENERIC TONERS are newly manufactured products. They are made by using the same state of the art technology that goes into making name brand OEM products. Often times, the generic brand is manufactured by a nationally known company, for a smaller company. After the manufacturing process, the smaller company simply puts its own label on the product and sells it.

The easiest way to understand how buying a generic product works is to think about buying a pain relieving product such as Advil. When you are in the store you can purchase the "Real McCoy"-Advil- or you can purchase a generic product under the name of IBUPROFEN.  You can get the same high quality from a generic product as you would from an OEM product

Remanufactured Toners
When a company REMANUFACTURES toner, they do not simply drill a hole in the cartridge and refill it. A quality remanufacturer rebuilds the toner cartridge much as an auto mechanic rebuilds a car engine. It is a very precise, technical procedure that involves testing to determine worn parts, disassembling the cartridge to clean and to examine each component to determine which parts need to be reconditioned or replaced, tracking cycles of critical components for future replacement, and then reassembling and testing to examine print quality. They are good for "Mother Earth" as they reduce the waste in the landfills.

Some signs of poor quality from a remanufactured toner cartridge are:

1. Blasting - which is fuzz around the text letters.
2. Hollowness - text letters are not filled in.
3. Ghosting - you have a repeated image of the print
4. Backgrounding - you have a gray haze on the page
5. You have repetitious spots or marks -- or black sidebars running up or down most of the page.
6. You have excessive toner build-up in the machine.