Frequently Asked Questions

Our blues have gone dull and the greens look muddy — is cyan where we look first?

Usually, yes. Cyan is the cartridge behind every blue and green the machine prints, and as a GPR-51C runs low those are the colors that lose strength first — skies wash out, charts go flat, greens turn brownish. Black text stays perfect the whole time, which is why a fading cyan hides so long on a production machine. If blues and greens are drifting while text is crisp, cyan is the slot to check.

Why is this color cartridge rated higher than the black?

It simply is how the GPR-51 family is built: the color cartridges — this GPR-51C, the GPR-51M magenta and the GPR-51Y yellow — are each rated at 21,500 pages, while the GPR-51 black is rated at 19,000. We quote the family's numbers exactly as they stand rather than rounding them into line. In practice it means your color slots need attention a little less often than the black, not more.

What does cyan cost us per page?

At $90.69 for a cartridge rated at 21,500 pages, about 0.42 cents per page at standard coverage. Color pages on a production machine are usually the billable or client-facing ones, so that figure is worth knowing precisely — it is the cyan share of every color page you produce, and heavy-coverage work will run above it while light charts run below.

Do we have to replace all three colors when only cyan is low?

No. Each color slot on the machine runs independently, and swapping only the GPR-51C is the normal, economical move. A full color change makes sense when the three cartridges are close in age and you want them back in step — that is what the 3-color set is for — but nothing about a low cyan obliges you to touch a healthy magenta or yellow.

Is this an original Canon cartridge or a compatible?

A compatible — built for the Canon imageRUNNER machines running the GPR-51 family, and rated to the same 21,500-page class as the original GPR-51C. The saving against the Canon-branded version is the point of the listing; the yield class and the slot it fills are the same. If you would rather refresh the whole color side at once, the same cartridge is one of the three in the GPR-51 3-color set.

What cover do we get if a cartridge is faulty?

A one-year warranty and one year of free returns, the same as every compatible we sell — a GPR-51C that streaks, leaks or dies early is replaced or taken back. The full terms sit on our shipping and returns page, and orders ship from the closest of our Illinois, Pennsylvania, Georgia and California warehouses, so a replacement is never far away.

About This Canon GPR-51 Cyan Toner Cartridge

One Canon GPR-51C cyan cartridge, rated at 21,500 pages, for $90.69 — the blue-and-green slot of the GPR-51 production color family, alongside the GPR-51M magenta, GPR-51Y yellow and the 19,000-page GPR-51 black. Buy it singly to replace a faded cyan, or as part of the 3-color set when the whole color side is due. More of the family lives in our Canon toner range.

This cyan cartridge (GPR-51C) is built for the ImageRunner Advance C355i, ImageRunner Advance C355iF, ImageRunner Advance C250iF, ImageRunner Advance C255i, ImageRunner Advance C255iF, and ImageRunner Advance C350iF. Rounding out the GPR-51 range are the black cartridge (GPR-51BK), the yellow cartridge (GPR-51Y), and the magenta cartridge (GPR-51M).