Which ink/toner does the Brother MFC-L2750DW use?

The MFC-L2750DW is a mono laser multifunction and its supplies are a black toner, either a TN-730 or a TN-760, plus a DR-730 drum unit that is bought and replaced on its own schedule.

The single biggest lever on running cost is which of the two toners you order. A TN-730 is rated 1200 pages for $54.99, so 4.58c a page. A TN-760 is rated 3000 pages for $84.99, so 2.83c. The larger cartridge is 38 percent cheaper per page for roughly half as much again in cash, and there is no scenario in ordinary use where the small one is the better purchase. Over the 12000 pages a DR-730 is rated for, the difference compounds: ten TN-730 cartridges and a drum come to $679.39, while four TN-760s and the same drum come to $469.45. That is $209.94 for the same 12000 pages, decided entirely at the moment of ordering.

Counting the drum, a page here costs 3.91c on the TN-760 and 5.66c on the TN-730, once the DR-730's own 1.08c a page is included. Almost nobody quotes laser printing that way, though it is the figure that matches what leaves your account.

This toner is about as commodity as printer supplies get. 9 machines in our catalogue take the same TN-730 and TN-760 pair, which is why compatible versions are cheap, plentiful and generally sound, and Brother places no firmware authentication on this model to stop you using them. If you go that way, buy a known brand of drum rather than the cheapest listed, because the drum is the part that decides whether a page comes out clean and it is the more common cause of print quality complaints.

On an all in one, work out which half is failing before you spend. Marks that appear on printed pages but not on copies point at the toner or the drum, while marks that appear on copies and scans as well point at the scanner glass or the strip of glass the document feeder passes over, which cleans in seconds with a soft cloth. Toner Low arrives early, and rocking the cartridge gently end to end buys real extra pages. Replace Drum is a page counter and resets from the control panel once a drum has genuinely been changed.