When purchasing a new printer, it’s important to factor in the potential page yield your printer will provide. The page yield is the average amount of printed pages your printer’s cartridge will produce. By dividing the price of a ink cartridge by the page yield, you can get a relatively accurate assessment of the cost per page. But how is page yield calculated? And how accurate can it possibly be?

In 2006, the ISO (International Organization for Standardization) set guidelines by which certified companies should test their inkjet cartridge page yields (toner yield guidelines had been previously been established in 2004). The ISO is a global collection of standards institutes which serve both private and public sectors. The printer yield guidelines, which were recently updated, have become the standard by which nearly every major cartridge manufacturer abides. The ISO guidelines are summarized as follows:

• a default printer setting and plain paper are used when conducting the tests

• a standard five page document (with both black and color coverage) is printed consecutively until the ink cartridge is depleted

• a cartridge is considered depleted when the printer shows a signal indicating the printer ink is gone, or the test pages show discoloration

• 3 cartridges each should be tested on 3 different printers not including the 1st set of installed cartridges. The average result is recorded

• tests are done under controlled conditions (temperature and humidity) which simulate a home or office environment.

There are currently no ISO guidelines for testing Photo Printer page yields, however many companies have their own practices for determining page yield.HP’s Photo Yield Testing Methodology is basically the same as the ISO’s, with the exception that page coverage is limited to 4×6 image prints.Many other large manufacturers employ similar techniques to determine photo cartridge yields.And many retailers display page yield information on their product pages.

 

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