The subject of "Page Yields"

For years the printer industry struggled with wildly diverse claims for page yields. OEMs would often use different fonts, paper sizes, density settings, and media making it impossible for end users to qualify or compare page yields.

Cost per page comparisons were unreliable. A standard form of page yield measurement was needed.

In 2004 printer OEMs agreed to a new standard of measuring the page yield of mono laser cartridges. The measurement was in terms of how much print (toner) was laid onto a standard sized page. This area of printing used to define page yield was to be 5% coverage of an A4 sheet.

This agreed standard for mono laser cartridges is ISO 19752. It removes the variability of measuring page yields by providing a like for like comparison across a range of printers from different manufacturers.

In 2006 ISO 19798 was adopted. This test procedure provides the same rigorous standards as ISO 19752 but for colour laser printers.

We make use of both  ISO test protocols, as used by the OEMs, to determine the page yield of our cartridges. Our benchmark is always to “meet or exceed” the performance of the OEM product. This applies to all aspects of the performance of a print cartridge – not just page yield.

By qualifying our products using the same ISO test procedures as the OEM, we can guarantee that our cartridges will print as many pages as an OEM cartridge, and sometimes more. 

One of the distinguishing differences between the procedure used by us and the ISO standards is that unlike the ISO standards, is that we do not only evaluate the page yield, but we also assess the print quality throughout the expected life-cycle of the cartridges.

As part of our product development program we carry out extensive testing of the OEM product. This testing includes measurement of page yield, using the same ISO test procedures applied by the OEM. This means that we can guarantee our customers are getting a true “apple for apple” product.

The number of pages you can print from a cartridge is highly dependent upon what you are printing. The page yield we publish is the ISO standard of 5% coverage of an A4 page. In reality documents rarely have exactly 5% coverage. Therefore, in real life, cartridge life can be different from the published, or measured result.