W2111X cyan · XL

The high yield cyan for the Color LaserJet Pro M255dw and the MFP M283fdw is the W2111X, rated at 2450 pages against 1250 on the standard W2111A.

The saving is modest but real: 5.10c a page against 6.00c, about 15 percent, for $50.00 more at the till. That is better than the colour step on some older HP colour lasers, though still nothing like the gap on the black cartridge in this same family, where the X version takes about 26 percent off. Across all four cartridges, a four colour page costs roughly 19.43c on the X set against 23.56c on the standard set.

Whether that justifies the outlay depends on how much colour you actually print. A high yield cyan in a machine that prints colour once a week will sit there for years, and toner that old prints perfectly well, but the money spent early has bought nothing except fewer trips to the supply cupboard. After a few months of use, the supply status page shows how fast each colour is really moving.

HP's dynamic security notice covers this printer, so a compatible W2111X can be blocked by a firmware update rather than on the day it is fitted. Level reporting is also the first thing that goes unreliable on third party colour toner, so treat a compatible that reads full for an implausibly long time as a chip quirk and keep a spare before the cyan starts going pale.