Remanufactured vs OEM toner cartridges - when it comes to print consumables like ink and toner, both OEMs and cartridge remanufacturers claim to offer the better deal. Each option cites its research and makes a convincing argument, leaving its enterprise and government customers in a bind. Let's see which choice is the best option for you:
OEMs charge higher prices for toner cartridges, but have a distinct branding advantage – who knows better how to make print cartridges than the manufacturer of the printer itself? On the other hand, remanufacturers can operate with lower overhead costs because they don't dedicate resources to building print equipment.
But other factors fit into the value equation. Quality, reliability, and environmental concerns combine with up-front costs to make choosing your imaging supplier a complex decision. Identifying the right choice for your organization requires determining the role these factors play in your daily workflows.
When it comes to the cost of purchasing printer consumables, remanufacturers routinely beat even the most competitive OEMs. Whereas OEMs have to source expensive raw materials to build print equipment, remanufacturers enjoy a comparative advantage in exclusively offering ink and toner cartridges.
Printer manufacturers have to keep equipment prices low to remain competitive in the hardware market. More often than not, that translates to higher prices on printer consumables – a strategy that has led to unsustainably low printer prices for many years.
All other things considered equal, there is no sustainable way for a global OEM to beat a reputable cartridge remanufacturer on price. This is why the OEMs never try – instead, they focus on reliability and quality.
Both reputable OEM and cartridge remanufacturers support their claims with independent studies showing that their respective cartridges perform best. Typically, these studies focus on average continuous yield figures and the number of pages each cartridge produces before requiring replacement.
However, OEM studies don't always tell the whole story. There is a world of difference between a reputable cartridge remanufacturer with stringent standards of quality control and a fly-by-night compatible cartridge operation. But in the interest of showing impressive figures, laboratories will seek out the lowest quality cartridges possible and rate them against the OEM's cartridges.
In many cases, these studies don't even specify where the non-OEM cartridges came from. Under these circumstances, it should come as no surprise that OEM cartridges outperform the competition.
However, when you take high-quality cartridges remanufactured in a state-of-the-art facility and subject them to independent testing, you may find that the remanufacturer's average continuous yield figures exceed the OEM's. In the remanufacturing industry, like in every other industry, there is a marked difference between no-name bargain products and reputable brand-name ones.
The truth is that the best-remanufactured cartridges on the market perform at least as well as OEM cartridges. In some cases, greater efficiencies in the remanufacturing process can lead to better average continuous yields than the OEM product.
For enterprise and government customers with an eye for savings, remanufactured print cartridges can be a significant cost-saver. So long as you invest in quality remanufactured cartridges that offer the same or similar yields as the OEM, you will virtually guarantee lower overall costs.
This is why reputable brand-name cartridge remanufacturers have such a pronounced market position. The value local providers like ASE offer simply outclasses what OEMs and bargain cartridge manufacturers can provide. High-quality remanufactured cartridges consistently remain the best choice.
Organizations that attempt to compromise on quality to achieve huge cost savings rarely get to enjoy the fruits of their labors. Quality control is of supreme importance in the remanufacturing industry, and remanufacturers who skip important parts of the quality assurance process cannot guarantee the quality of the results their cartridges will yield.
It is from these bargain cartridge dealers that OEMs get their horror stories of non-OEM cartridges damaging or breaking printers.
High-quality remanufactured cartridges bypass all of these dangers. Each cartridge is a genuine OEM cartridge that has been depleted, recycled, refilled, verified, and shipped back out for re-use. Thousands of large-scale organizations across the world rely on remanufactured cartridges to deliver value daily.
This process generates cost savings and environmental benefits that OEMs cannot reproduce. While they build new cartridges from scratch, we recycle old ones to save our customers money and keep used cartridges out of landfills.
Interested in learning more about remanufactured printer cartridges? Speak to one of our specialists and we'll run an assessment for your business or department.