I get asked this question a lot when discussing page yields of various cartridges. Due to the huge amount of different things we print, it is very hard to predict how many pages one cartridge will print using the 5% page coverage. Not many people know what this 5% figure means or what it looks like when printed.
This 5% measurement was created by the fellows at the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).
They determined that an average business letter would be covered by 5% of standard black ink or toner.
However, you still need to take into consideration:
Font Size
Font Type
Page Margins
So you can see why page yields are used more for comparative purposes than as an accurate page yield. You can see a 901XL cartridges will print more than 3x the amount of pages than a standard 901, even if 700 pages and 200 pages are not accurate counts. A photo is 100% page coverage!
These standards allow Printer Cartridge Manufacturers to calculate how many pages your ink cartridges will print until it runs dry. Using this ISO set of documents, any new cartridge can be run through a printer in specified printing conditions and produce a set amount of pages. This is also continuous. Home users are not printing continuously as they do in the page yield tests, and printers often run print head cleanings automatically to prevent your print heads from drying up from not being used. However, this does use up ink.
Ink and Toner Planet weighs all cartridges to the same specifications as the manufacturers so you’ll never get less pages out of them.
To increase the number of pages you can print simply use basic formatting, reduce large font headlines, don’t use bold highlighting, remove borders and eliminate extra graphics. You can also get (free!) PrintEco from Ink and Toner Planet. PrintEco software optimizes content to reduce the number of pages you need to print. PrintEco’s automatic optimization tool reformats your documents to save time, paper and ultimately saves the environment.
