My cartridge makes fewer copies, understand the 5% page coverage

Whether you’re buying a new printer or cutting back on printing costs, it’s worth considering the capacity of ink or toner cartridges. Each printer ink or toner cartridge you purchase has a page capacity, called page yield. So why does my cartridge make fewer copies? We will help you understand the 5% page coverage.

What does “page yield” or “capacity” mean?

Page yield indicates the number of pages the ink cartridge will print. For example, the print volume of the HP Q2612A cartridge is 2,000 or 2,000 pages. This means that the toner cartridge will print 2000 pages at 5% coverage per page.

What does 5% coverage mean and where does it come from?

If you have purchased printing consumables in the past, you may have noticed that there is a small disclaimer in the page yield of the toner cartridge, i.e. all ratings are based on 5% coverage. The 5% A4 page coverage is the average commercial letter calculated by the International Standards Organization (ISO). Let’s say you want to print a business letter with an average coverage of 5%, you can print all 2000 pages.

How to get the most out of ink cartridges

Okay, so now you know how many pages you can get per toner or ink cartridge, and you know what 5% coverage means, so how do you make sure the ink cartridges are fully utilized?

Well, there are many small factors to consider when trying to achieve an average ISO coverage of 5% and get the most out of the cartridge.

Here are our top tips:

• The type of font you use; a simple font change can give you more words.
• Font size; reducing the font size can give you more words.
• The graphics, images or single lines use a lot of ink, please ask yourself if you really need to print the image.
• The width of the page border; using a smaller border increases the amount of ink used per page.
• Did you know that converting fonts to Calibri will automatically save you money? When comparing a set of popular fonts between 9 and 12, Calibri has 5% more word coverage than Arial, Comic Sans, Tahoma and Times New Roman.

Examples of page coverage

The exact number listed next to page yield / cycle in a cartridge’s product description will be based on “page coverage“. A measure measured by the Office of Fair Trading, this is the amount of ink or toner used on a page, based on the type of text, images, borders, etc. Thus, the yield is based on a page coverage of 5%.

What does this look like? Here is an example of different types of coverage.

What does it look like when I print on a sheet of paper with 5% toner?

If you have purchased printing consumables in the past, you may have noticed that there is a small disclaimer in the page yield of the toner cartridge, i.e. all ratings are based on 5% coverage.

 

What does this mean? Why is this important? How do you know the average print job coverage?

When we talk about laser printing, toner coverage is just the percentage of the page covered by toner. Some documents require more toner than others, so the coverage will be higher.

The coverage is important because it affects the life of the toner cartridge. A toner cartridge contains only a limited amount of toner, so the number of pages a given toner cartridge can print depends on the amount of toner used per page. Most documents require 5% coverage, so that’s the basis used by the printing industry to evaluate page performance.

What if your average coverage is 10% instead of 5%?

If the average coverage is 10%, the amount of toner used per page will be double the original, so the print volume of the page will be cut in half. Similarly, with an average coverage of 2.5%, each page uses half the toner, so the page output will double.

What do you think your coverage rate is? Is it 5%?

One way to find out is to ask your printer. Most laser printers come with a set of built-in reports that can tell you all sorts of interesting things, such as average toner coverage. For Lexmark, Dell and IBM laser printers, coverage can be found in a report called device statistics. Although the steps for finding reports vary from printer to printer, most require the navigation menu> reports> device statistics. Or, you will see a button with a green diamond, which can be held for 5 seconds. The historical coverage area record should be represented by a number (usually without a percentage sign) on the printout.

Here are some examples of what 5% and 10% coverage looks like in the real world. The 5% ratio is about half a page of bold text and headlines. A 10% ratio is a full page of text with small graphics or images.

To summarize

The print volume of toner pages is created only as a guideline, only created by ISO as a distributor. Also, it is a standard that we must adhere to, but we must remember to maximize the use of ink cartridges.

 

My cartridge makes less copy, understand the 5% page coverage
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