What toner colors are typically used in a laser printer?

Laser printers use either black-only toner or black and color toners. Unlike some inkjet printer cartridges, each color for laser printers is sold in a separate cartridge. The standard colors for a laser printer are cyan, magenta, and yellow. When combined, these three colors can create almost every possible color on the spectrum.

There are two primary kinds of color laser printers: four-pass and one-pass printers.

Four-pass printers use the four cartridges that are mounted to a carousel by applying each color is one at a time and very slowly.

One-pass printer systems use four separate lasers and four photo conductor drums so all of the colors can be applied at once, making it a much faster process.

The cost of a single toner cartridge is much higher than that of a single ink cartridge, but for good reason. The print yield of a toner cartridge is typically much higher than an ink cartridge. This generally makes purchasing toner cheaper than purchasing ink.