Inkjet printers use liquid ink. You can always tell if it is ink by its liquid form and just after printing the paper may be slightly wet, especially with full color pictures. The cartridges used by inkjet printers are called ink cartridges. Most inkjet printer cartridges use around 10-15 milliliters of ink (around 1/2 ounce) of liquid ink for each color. Some of the older cartridge styles hold more ink. The ink may not shake like a liquid in some inkjet cartridges, since the inkjet ink is saturated into a sponge inside the inkjet cartridge.

The main ink cartridges brands (manufacturers) are HP, Brother, Canon, Dell, Epson, Lexmark and Kodak. Some of these inkjet cartridges have printheads on the cartridge, some have printheads in the printer. The printheads are significant because they can clog, and so knowing where they are located will help in troubleshooting clogging issues, which present themselves as quality print issues.

Laser printers use toner powder and the cartridges used are called toner cartridges. Toner is a heat transfer process so the paper usually comes out of the printer warm. Laser toner powder cartridges are usually as wide as an 8 1/2″ sheet of paper (whereas inkjet cartridges are usually only about 1″ wide) and travel back and forth across the paper to print. The major toner cartridge manufacturers include HP, Brother, Canon, Dell, Lexmark, Samsung, Xerox, Minolta, Okidata and many more.