If you have just bought a printer from a brand such as HP, you may be slightly confused about something with the cartridges; you only need two!
Many HP cartridge series only need you to purchase a Black and a Colour cartridge, rather than the Black, Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow colours that are typical of the majority of series.
What Are Colour Cartridges?
Colour ink cartridges are actually Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow inks, but they split the ink wells between them. This means that you only need to purchase and install two cartridges (the Black usually comes by itself in a dedicated cartridge in this system).
What Are the Benefits of Tri-Colour Cartridges?
With Colour cartridges, you only need to buy and install one cartridge rather than three (Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow). This saves a lot of space in a printer, which is why many entry level, compact models use these tri-colour cartridges.
In addition, the fact that you need to buy one colour cartridge instead of three separate ones means that you can save money upfront. It is worth saying, however, that this is mitigated somewhat by the fact that the cartridge needs to be replaced as soon as one single colour runs out (see more about this below).
What are the Drawbacks of Tri-Colours?
The biggest issue that you may run into if your printer uses a combined colour cartridge is that you cannot replace each colour separately if one runs out- you have to replace the whole Colour cartridge.
Not only is this rather wasteful, but it can lead you to pay money for ink that you don’t use.
Can I Use Separate Colour Cartridges If I Prefer?
Unfortunately, you cannot replace Cyan, Magenta, or Yellow individually if one of these inks runs out. Once you have used up one colour, the cartridge is recognised as empty, and you have to replace it. The printer models that run on this system will only allow you to put in one Black and one Colour cartridge.
Which Cartridge Series Have Black and Colour Cartridges?
HP and Canon are the manufacturers who make tri-colour cartridges, Epson and Brother less so.
Common HP Black/Colour lines include the 301, 302, 303, 304, and 305.
Canon inks that use this two-cartridge system include the 540/541, 545/546, 560/561, and 575/576.
We stock all of the above cartridge series in a choice of compatible or original form.
Which Printers Use Tri-Colour Cartridges?
Some popular printer model series that use these types of cartridges are the HP DeskJet, HP Envy, and Canon PIXMA.
In Summary
Tri-colour inks are cartridges where Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow colours are combined into one cartridge. This cartridge has a component for each of the colours. Printers that use this system will then have require a separate Black cartridge.
Whilst these combined Colour cartridges help to save space in compact printers and mean that you only need to buy two cartridges (Black and Colour), rather than four (Black, Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow), the colour cartridge needs to be replaced as soon as only one colour runs out.
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