Page Yield
Whether you are buying a genuine, compatible, or remanufactured cartridge an important consideration should always be how many pages can you print from the cartridge.
Now Mr. Mc Scrooge would meticulously keep a record of each and every printed page and be contacting his Lawyers for false advertising if the numbers of printed pages did not concur with the quoted yield.
But do you wonder why your compatible ink cartridge might last 6 weeks on your Epson Stylus C68 printer, after the previous one from the same supplier at the same rated page yield lasted 3 months? “Something’s wrong with the cartridge” you cry! “Yes, it must be the cartridge!” – But this is probably not the case.
Often the reason is due to varying levels of usage. For instance, the cartridge that lasted only 6 weeks might have had to produce the invitations to the annual holiday gathering, which you had volunteered to do. Also, that invitation contained an image of last year’s show, along with attractions on the reverse side, a lot of words and pictures. Pictures, grey scale or colour use a lot of ink.
Another reason that the printer cartridge appears to expire before the quoted number of pages is due to the page coverage. Page yields are based on the industry standard of 5%-page coverage, this means just 5% of the page covered with printed text. Things like temperature, humidity and paper can all effect page yield !!, yes, that cheap paper from the Superstore can be sucking up your ink like no tomorrow.
In the Epson Stylus C68 a compatible cartridge (T061) we quote a yield of 450 pages (at 5% coverage).
But if you were printing at a page coverage of 10%, simple math tells us that you will only achieve 225 pages, and if you were printing multiple images, then you would get a lot less. Perhaps you should order two or more cartridges if you know you have a lot of printing to do.
So, the next time your ink runs out a little quicker than you had expected, give a thought to what you have been printing this time around.
