Printer Cartridge Single Color Vs. Tricolor

The one drawback to inkjet printing is that on a cost-per-page basis, ink is often more expensive than laser printer toner. However, given the high cost of color laser printers, if your business requires only occasional color output, you can come out ahead using inkjet printers. When choosing an inkjet printer, pay attention to whether it uses single color ink cartridges, or cartridges that contain multiple colors of ink in one unit.

Tricolor Cartridges

Tricolor cartridges in inkjet printers contain cyan, magenta and yellow inks. When mixed together and used with a separate cartridge containing black ink, these printers can represent a similar number of colors as a professional four-color press. The advantage of a tricolor cartridge is that it is smaller than three separate color cartridges, so the printers that use them can also be smaller. However, tricolor cartridges have a key drawback: if you, for instance, print a lot of light blue-shaded material, you can run out of cyan ink and have to replace the cartridge even if you have a great deal of magenta and yellow ink left.

Single Color Cartridges

Single color cartridges are an answer to the problem of tricolor cartridges running out prematurely. Printers that use these cartridges have a cyan cartridge, a magenta cartridge and a yellow cartridge. The key drawback to single cartridges are their size: printers that use them cannot be as small as tricolor printers simply because they need to have room for three separate cartridges.

Benefit of Single Color Cartridges

The biggest benefit of single color cartridges is that you can replace them individually. For example, if you use lots of light blue in your printouts, you can keep replacing your cyan cartridge while holding onto your yellow and magenta cartridges. Over time, this can save you a great deal of money. This is particularly important with photo printers that can take up to nine different cartridges.

Benefit of Tricolor Cartridges

Tricolor cartridges have one key benefit: they are cheaper than single color cartridges. For example, while a tricolor HP 57 cartridge costs around $45, three separate 940 color cartridges cost closer to $60. In addition, while a tricolor cartridge does not contain as much ink of each color as single color cartridges, if your business does not do a great deal of color printing, a single color cartridge might dry out before you use it up anyway.