Brother TN430 Standard Yield Toner Cartridge - Retail Packaging

 (24 customer reviews)

The perennial favorite Brother 1240HL works hard for the modest price that fetches one of these machines. One of the most important reasons I originally decided to purchase this machine was to escape the netherworld of inkjet cartridges. With a rating of 1.6 cents per sheet, not only do you save money in the long run but you avoid scrubbing and cleaning and cursing every three months. Being that some competitors cartridges fetch upwards of 100$ this tidy component suits me fine and often I get more than my 3000 sheet rating.

I own a Brother HL-1240, so of course I have to use this toner cartridge. But if I had a choice, I'd try someone else's. The problem is always the same. After a few months of great printing (and, BTW, I print maybe a couple dozen sheets a week, if that), a vertical line develops down the left side of every page about three-quarters of an inch from the paper's edge. Don't bother with tech support. They'll tell you to clean the corona wire and drum, which I did a million times to no avail. Eventually I gave up, went out and purchased another cartridge, and voilà, problem solved -- for another couple of months anyway. And then you have to trash the old cartridge which, as you'll be able to tell from shaking it, still has a heavy load of toner left in it. Great little printer; lousy little cartridges. Suppose that's how they make their money, though.

This is a more expensive way of buying toner initially. But as someone whose bought off brand cartridges in past; I wouldn't go back to that. It's tempting to save the money up front but you lose that savings when the cartridge craps out well short of its projected output. My experience with Brother toner has been very good, and lastly they give you a prepaid Fedex return sticker that allows you to return your empty cartridge for recycling. That sticker allows you to return several Brother toner cartridges by taping the boxes together with the one box with a sticker on it. A nice touch.