Six Brother color laser printers run on this cartridge family, and Brother sells the toner in two fills: the standard TN310 and the high-yield TN315, both working in the same DR310CL drum. The shelf in this store holds a surprise that shapes everything below — the two fills are priced exactly alike. Single for single, set for set, pack for pack, TN310 and TN315 carry the same tags to the cent, even though Brother rates the high-yield cartridges for well over twice the pages. So this guide is organized around the only question that actually separates the tiers: how many pages each dollar buys. Every card is priced per page, both tiers are shown in full, and the one part of the platform this store sells only as a genuine Brother part — the drum — is dealt with openly rather than dressed up as something it is not.
The short answer: start with the TN315 4-color set at $71.24. It costs precisely what the TN310 set costs, and a full-color page from it works out to about 2.04¢ against the standard tier's 4.75¢. Both tiers sell single cartridges in all four colors at $28.33 for black and $30.38 for each color, so a single empty slot never forces a set. Keep reading into the TN310 section only if your ordering paperwork names the standard code itself — on value, the high-yield tier wins every shared offer.
Replace what ran out, and let the per-page figures pick the tier. A whole-printer refill belongs to the TN315 4-color set at $71.24 — the same money as the standard set, rated for about 6,000 black pages and 3,500 from each color. Black-only restocking is cheapest per page inside the TN315 multi-packs carded in that section; a single color on its own is $30.38 in either tier. The TN310 cards further down carry the identical prices with the shorter ratings, kept complete for offices whose systems reorder by the standard code.
Six machines, two tiers, one drum
Brother's own compatibility lists settle the fit question quickly for this platform. The “Use with” list printed on Brother's pages for the TN310, the TN315 and the DR310CL drum is the same six machines every time: HL-4150CDN, HL-4570CDW, HL-4570CDWT, MFC-9460CDN, MFC-9560CDW, MFC-9970CDW. No tier is restricted to certain models and the drum serves the same six, so the fit check on this page reduces to one line: find your printer in those six names and every card below applies to it, in both tiers.
Do not be misled by longer lists elsewhere. Product descriptions and category names in this store attach nine to fourteen model names to this family, including variants Brother USA does not carry at all — the HL-4140CN, DCP-9055CDN, DCP-9270CDN and MFC-9465CDN have no pages on Brother's US site, and one store list even misspells a model name. This guide takes its compatibility from Brother's published six and links only to those six categories; where a listing's own text promises more machines than Brother does, the listing is repeating copy, not a compatibility ruling.
Neighboring Brother platforms are covered on their own pages, because cartridges never swap between platforms: the earlier TN110 generation has Best Brother TN110 Toner Cartridges, and the TN331 family — whose listing copy borrows this platform’s machine names, which is one reason the model lists above need care — has Best Brother TN331 Toner Cartridges.
Two fills, one price list
Page ratings are Brother's published approximate yields for this family, stated in accordance with ISO/IEC 19798 (Letter/A4) — the test basis Brother prints on its own pages for these cartridges. Every price is the figure on that offer's product page today. Read across any row and the offers line up; read down the price columns and the two rows are the same row. The only column that changes between the tiers is the rating.
| Tier | Brother rating | Black single | Color single (each) | 4-color set | 5-color set | 8-color set | CMY 3-set | CMY 6-set | Black packs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TN310 (standard yield) | Black about 2,500 · each color about 1,500 | $28.33 | $30.38 | $71.24 | $83.49 | — not sold | $58.99 | — not sold | 3-pack only, $52.82 |
| TN315 (high yield) | Black about 6,000 · each color about 3,500 | $28.33 | $30.38 | $71.24 | $83.49 | $126.40 | $58.99 | $101.91 | $40.58 / $52.82 / $87.60 |
The genuine shelf, for scale: genuine TN310 cartridges bought singly add up to $424.56 and the genuine TN310 set is $364.90; genuine TN315 singles total $682.90 and the genuine TN315 set is $580.20. Brother's own store prices the same cartridges lower than our genuine shelf on every code — genuine TN310BK is $98.91 here against $74.49 at Brother, its colors $108.55 against $82.99, genuine TN315BK $163.03 against $131.79, its colors $173.29 against $143.29, and the genuine drum $256.39 against $214.79. Wherever a genuine figure appears on this page it is the price on our own shelf, labeled as ours.
TN315: the high-yield tier, at standard-yield money
This section leads the guide because the pricing leaves nothing to argue about. The set above is $71.24, the singles are $28.33 and $30.38, and the black packs step through $40.58, $52.82 and $87.60 — every one of those figures is also the TN310 figure for the same offer. Brother's contribution to the high-yield tier is the fill alone: about 6,000 pages in the black cartridge and about 3,500 in each color, where the standard cartridges hold 2,500 and 1,500. Same shelf price, more than double the rated output — the per-page numbers printed on the cards are that single division, offer by offer.
Everything this guide recommends flows from one flat fact: this box costs what the standard-yield box costs. There is no upsell to resist and no trade-off to weigh, because the shelf never attached a premium to the bigger fill — just two ratings at a single price. A buyer who worries that high-yield means a different cartridge shape can set that aside here: on this platform the TN315 is the same form, for the same six printers, holding more toner. When the whole printer is due, this is the purchase the numbers land on.
Shop the TN315 4-Color Set →
TN310: the standard tier, complete and unhidden
TN310 is the code the platform takes its name from, and the cartridges the six printers were introduced with. They are filled to the standard rating — about 2,500 pages for the black, about 1,500 for each color — while the shelf charges them at high-yield prices, a pairing this guide has already shown in the table above rather than softened. Unlike the platform covered by the TN110 guide, this family's standard tier does sell singles in every color, at the same $28.33 and $30.38 as its bigger sibling; what it lacks is pack depth, and the gap is itemized under the cards.
The standard tier gets its complete shelf on this page, because hiding it would turn a guide into a funnel. Its honest standing is easy to state: the cartridges are sound, the fit is identical, the prices are identical — and the ratings are less than half of the high-yield tier's. What remains is a real but narrow constituency: purchasing systems, stock cards and service paperwork that name the TN310 code itself, plus printers that run so few pages a year that a standard cartridge is effectively a lifetime supply. If that is your situation, everything the tier sells is carded below at the same figures as the tier above.
Shop the TN310 4-Color Set →
The missing offers, named so nobody searches for them in vain: TN310 has no black 2-pack and no black 5-pack — the 3-pack above is the whole ladder — and no 8-color set or CMY 6-color set; those four offers exist only as TN315 cards. One catalog quirk is also worth flagging here: the TN310 4-color set's own listing is not shelved under any of the six model categories in this store, unlike its TN315 counterpart, so browsing from a printer category page will not surface it — the card above is the dependable route to that listing. Neither fact changes what the cartridges are; both are the kind of thing a buyer should learn from the guide rather than from a fruitless search.
DR310CL: a genuine-only drum, priced in the open
Both toner tiers ride in a single drum unit, the DR310CL, which Brother rates at approximately 25,000 pages. Brother gives that life as one approximate figure that may vary with the type of use, and publishes no separate rating for short or long jobs — so this page repeats the one figure instead of importing a split rating from a different family's drum. At roughly ten standard sets or four high-yield sets per drum, it is a once-in-a-while purchase, which is exactly why it is never bundled into the sets above.
In this store the drum exists only as a genuine Brother part: no compatible DR310CL is stocked, at any price, so there is no card to build and no compatible figure to quote. The genuine unit sells on our shelf at $256.39; Brother's own store lists the identical unit at $214.79, and the difference is printed here rather than left for checkout to reveal. At our shelf price the drum works out to about 1.03¢ a page across its rated life. No multi-pack of the drum is sold, and no toner-and-drum bundle exists for this platform.
When a drum is changed, its counter is reset so the new unit starts from zero; the drum messages these printers show, and the reset routine itself, are covered on our Brother Color Toner & Drum Compatibility page. A page that comes out faded or streaked in even bands, and stays that way through a fresh toner cartridge, is usually the drum signaling near its end rather than a faulty cartridge.
Chips and firmware — the evidence, such as it is
No sentence on this page claims that these cartridges carry a particular chip, and the census behind that silence is short enough to show in full. The word “chip” occurs in 9 of this family's 37 listings — every one of them inside a single repeated sentence that lists new internal components (OPC drums, wiper blades, a smart chip and other parts), and every one inside the same block of listings. The remaining listings, the older block and all eleven genuine ones included, never use the word at all. The word “firmware” occurs in none of the 37. A parts list copied across one block of listings is not evidence of how any individual cartridge is recognized by a printer, and this guide builds no claim on it.
The one statement that can be sourced properly comes from Brother rather than from listings: Brother says publicly that its firmware updates are not a tool for excluding third-party cartridges. The practical questions for this generation — a recognition prompt after a cartridge change, the toner and drum counters, resetting the drum counter — are gathered on our Brother Color Toner & Drum Compatibility page. Fit, rated yield and price are the things this guide can document to the cent and the page, so those are what it documents.
Before you order: the TN310 platform checklist
Frequently asked questions
It is how this shelf is priced, verified offer by offer: singles at $28.33 and $30.38, the 4-color set at $71.24, the 5-color set at $83.49, the CMY set at $58.99 and the black 3-pack at $52.82 in both tiers — even the stock counts match. Brother rates TN315 at about 6,000 black pages and 3,500 per color against TN310's 2,500 and 1,500, so a full-color page from the high-yield set costs about 2.04¢ against about 4.75¢. Nothing about the choice turns on fit — all six machines take both tiers — so it turns on paperwork and print volume alone.
It can be, and the guide does not pretend otherwise. A printer that runs a few hundred pages a year may never reach even the standard rating of about 2,500 black pages, and if your stock system or a service agreement names TN310, ordering the standard code keeps records clean. What light volume does not change is the arithmetic: TN315 costs no more and carries no penalty for being under-used, so TN310 is a paperwork choice or a habit, never a savings.
Not by Brother USA's published lists. Brother's compatibility for TN310, TN315 and the DR310CL names six machines — HL-4150CDN, HL-4570CDW, HL-4570CDWT, MFC-9460CDN, MFC-9560CDW and MFC-9970CDW — and the HL-4140CN, like the DCP-9055CDN, DCP-9270CDN and MFC-9465CDN that also appear in store copy, has no product page on Brother's US site at all; those are variants from other markets. Listing descriptions here name up to fourteen models. Where copy and Brother disagree, this guide follows Brother, and it links and recommends only for the six.
There is not — not in this store, at any price. The DR310CL is stocked only as a genuine Brother unit, at $256.39 on our shelf; Brother's own store lists it at $214.79, and both figures are printed in the drum section rather than one being hidden. Brother rates the unit at approximately 25,000 pages as a single figure that varies with the type of use, with no second rating for longer or shorter jobs. Some other Brother platforms do have a compatible drum on this shelf; this platform is not one of them.
Because of how that one listing is shelved: unlike its TN315 counterpart, the TN310 set's listing sits in none of the six model categories in this store, so category browsing never surfaces it even though it fits all six machines. The listing itself is live and verified at $71.24, and the TN310 section above cards it directly. It is a shelving gap in the catalog, recorded here so the absence is not mistaken for the product being discontinued.
Three listings in this platform's categories are titled by printer model instead of by cartridge code — for the HL-4150, MFC-9460 and DCP-9055 names — each priced at a flat $28.33, which is exactly the black single's price, and their specification fields point at the TN315 codes while their text also mentions TN310. Because the title never says which cartridge is being sold, this guide does not card them; the code-named black singles in both tier sections are the same money with the cartridge named outright.
This page makes none, deliberately. The family's entire chip evidence is one component-list sentence repeated across a single block of listings; the word firmware appears in no listing at all. Nothing that thin can carry a promise, so none is made. Brother's own public position is that its firmware updates are not a means of blocking third-party cartridges, and questions about recognition prompts, counters and the drum reset are handled on our Brother Color Toner & Drum Compatibility page.
Compatible cartridges are covered by this store directly: a twelve-month warranty, and twelve months to return a product that turns out not to be right for you. Genuine Brother items sit under Brother's own warranty, and OEM returns close at 30 days instead. Parcels leave from whichever of our four warehouses — Illinois, Pennsylvania, Georgia and California — is nearest the delivery address, and the support desk keeps weekday hours, 9 AM to 5 PM Central.