Can a Laser Printer Print in Color?

Quick answer: Yes. Color laser printers are common, and they use four toner cartridges — black, cyan, magenta and yellow — instead of ink. They are excellent for color text, charts and marketing pages, weak for photographs, and they carry more consumables than toner alone.

How a Color Laser Prints Color

Four toners, laid down in sequence and fused to the page with heat. On an HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP 4301, for instance, the supplies list is exactly four cartridges: HP 210A black at about 2,000 pages and cyan, magenta and yellow at about 1,800 pages each, or the high-yield HP 210X at about 7,500 pages black and 5,500 per color.

Where Color Lasers Win and Where They Lose

They win on crisp color text, on charts and diagrams, on volume, and on pages that sit in a drawer for years without the print bleeding. Toner is a plastic powder fused to the sheet; it does not run if the page gets damp, and it does not dry out if the printer sits unused for a month. That last point matters more than most buyers realize — an inkjet that prints once a month spends a lot of ink on head cleaning.

They lose on photographs. Laser output on glossy photo paper does not match a good photo inkjet, and cheap color lasers are noticeably worse at skin tones and smooth gradients. And they lose badly on running cost against a modern ink tank printer: HP publishes about 0.4 cents per black page and 1.7 cents per color page for its Smart Tank line, which no cartridge-based color laser approaches.

Toner Is Not the Only Consumable

This is the part that surprises people who move up from an inkjet. Using Brother's own published figures for its color laser line:

Brother's error messages treat all four as separate items, with their own warnings: Drum End Soon, Belt End Soon, WT Box End Soon.

Separate Drums or Not? It Depends on the Brand

There is no general rule here, which is why so much advice online is wrong.

• Brother uses four separate drums. Its user guide has you remove the toner and drum assembly for the specific color shown on the display and reset that color's drum counter individually — only possible with independent drums.
• HP's consumer color lasers do not. The Color LaserJet Pro MFP 4301 supplies list contains only the four 210A/210X cartridges. The drum is built in.

One number to read carefully: Brother's drum yields are quoted per drum, not for the four-drum set. A DR223CL is rated at roughly 18,000 pages per drum. If you budget as though 18,000 covers all four colors, your cost-per-page math will be badly off.

What Happens When One Color Runs Out

On Brother's color lasers, the message Replace Toner means the cartridge is at the end of its life and, in Brother's words, "the machine stops all print operations." Low toner is different — at that stage you can keep printing.

Brother does provide an override called Continue Mode, which forces the machine to keep printing past Replace Toner. Brother is candid about the catch: poor print quality may occur, and print quality cannot be guaranteed in this mode. Once the display reads Toner Ended, the cartridge has reached its maximum operational life and must be replaced. Continue Mode switches itself off when you fit a new cartridge.

Save on Color Toner at Castle Ink

Castle Ink stocks compatible color laser supplies:

• Brother TN227 Toner Cartridges – BKCMY 4-Pack — $249.95
• Brother TN223 Toner Cartridges – BKCMY 4-Pack — $139.95
• Brother DR223CL Color Drum Unit – Compatible Replacement — $69.95
• Brother DR221 Drum Units – 4-Pack Compatible Set — $109.95

All Castle Ink orders ship free in the U.S. and are backed by a one-year quality guarantee.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can a laser printer print in color?
Yes. Color lasers use four toner cartridges in black, cyan, magenta and yellow.

Are color lasers good for photos?
Not really. They are excellent for color text, charts and business graphics but do not match a photo inkjet on glossy paper, skin tones or gradients.

Does a color laser need a separate drum?
It depends on the brand. Brother uses a four-drum set such as the DR223CL. HP's consumer color lasers build the drum into the toner cartridge.

Will it still print in black if a color toner is empty?
On Brother machines, Replace Toner stops all print operations. Continue Mode can override it, but Brother warns print quality is not guaranteed in that mode.

What else will I have to replace besides toner?
On Brother color lasers, a drum set, a belt unit and a waste toner box, the last two rated around 50,000 pages each.

See Also

• What Toner Does the Brother HL-L3290CDW Use?
• Brother Drum Unit vs Toner Cartridge: What Is the Difference?
• What Is a Monochrome Printer?
• Find Ink by Printer Model
• Best Printers: Top Picks for Every Use Case and Budget

By William Elward, Founder of Castle Ink — 20+ years helping people solve printer and ink problems. Last updated August 24, 2026.