How long can the ink in the printer last? You may have noticed that you often buy too many ink cartridges for your printer. However, the number of prints you get may not always be the same before the ink runs out. In fact, the print quantities listed on these online sites are for general guidance only and do not indicate the exact amount to print. Every printer is different. Why does my ink or laser cartridge seem to print fewer pages than usual?
Many different factors can affect the efficiency of the toner cartridge and, more importantly, what you print will affect the number of pages printed by the toner cartridge. Therefore, there is no clear answer to the question “How long can the toner cartridge be used?”.
How many pages can the cartridge print?
As mentioned above, each printer is different, which means that each ink cartridge is different. This means that there is no easy answer to this question. For example, suppose you and your friend each have a glass of water. You are not thirsty, but your friends need to drink. How long will your water stay full? Your situation will be different for each of you because your friends are thirsty, so they can drink faster than you can. The same is true for printers.
What is page yield?
To be brief, page yield or duty cycle is the maximum number of pages your ink cartridge should be able to print before it runs out of ink or toner.
However, it’s a little more complex than that.
For many years, each manufacturer had its own internal method of calculating page yield and duty cycle. This led to dilemmas. For example, HP developed a black toner with a print volume of 2500 pages per duty cycle. Brother itself uses the equivalent toner to work with, and the yield per duty cycle is 3000 pages. Both manufacturers have fully evaluated the toner in different ways.
What will affect your page yield / duty cycle?
You can purchase a toner cartridge with a capacity of 2000 pages and the toner cartridge usage per page is 5%, but if the affected pages contain a lot of information and images, 5% or more will be used. The estimated capacity (2000 pages) will no longer be reached. This is because the amount of text, colors, images, etc. on the page will affect the amount of ink and ultimately affect the overall output/cycle (number of pages) of the ink cartridge.
The exact number listed next to the page output / cycle in a cartridge’s product description will be based on “page coverage”. As measured by the Office of Fair Trading, this is the amount of ink or toner used on a page, depending on the type of text, images, borders, etc. The yield offered by cartridge manufacturers is based on a 5% page coverage.
What does this look like? Here is an example of different types of page coverage.
Examples of page coverage :
In conclusion
It is not possible to set a fixed number on the number of pages you can print from the ink cartridge. Also, older printers may not be as efficient as newer printers. Therefore, this can also affect the efficiency of the ink cartridges.
Source image: https://www.servicestechnologiquesam.ca/
Why does my ink or laser cartridge print fewer pages?
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