Recently I laid out around half a grand for a laserjet to print some stuff for an organization at cost to provide them with a way higher quality product than they currently had. All the online material spouts out figures based on toner cartridge manufacturer's claims of number of pages per cartridge. Nowhere was I able to find any HARD, EMPIRICAL data on how much some printing actually cost or any numbers flatly laying out percent toner/ink coverage per page. I now can only assume the numbers are based on double spaced common font type per page because I got less than 500 pages from "3000" page cartridges at something on the order of 60 to 75% toner coverage per page.

Luckily I'm skeptical and fairly methodical when my pocketbook is involved and I inflated my printing charges to levels roughly six times as high as what I anticipated based solely on manufaturer's claims. (And you'll note 500 x 6 = 3000. Phew!) So, I'm still doing okay but will have to raise my prices a bit to keep providing this service.

My question is can anyone point me to any published accounts of what true coverage per cartidge is and not some ambiguous claim of how many pages one can expect without clearly defining how much toner is being laid down on each page?

Consumer Reports has done a few articles on printers and replacement supplies. Its the reason I bought my current printer. COI for five years was really low.

My fish population has also suffered recently to due to harsh winters. But I thought it was with a "K"?

Its hard to find data on almost all currently sold printers at once. It will require one to search the web for hundreds of comparisons, all with different methods of testing and different results. But heres a few to get an idea....
This one covers printers by brands (think they are using comparable models)
http://www.spencerlab.com/reports/SpencerStdy-HP1350vs.pdf

This one is compairing cost of home printing vs store printing, but helps give you an idea
ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softlib/software9/CO...t_US_090507.pdf

This is more focused on a few Epson Printers doing photo copies
http://www.redrivercatalog.com/cost-of-ink...rinting-v1.html


Now I just glanced at these pages, so I dont know if they will be truely helpful, but just do a google search and see what you come up with.


P.S. - there was a study a few years back about these "discount printers" you can buy for $100 or less. They stated in the article that most of these printers cost more to replace the cartridges, then to buy a new printer. So in the long run it was more economical to just throw your printer out and buy a new one, when it's time to replace the ink. It also said that some new printers (to help save cost in the purchase of the device) would ship with special ink cartridges that would only contain 25% to 50% of total ink compared to a new replacement cartridge. Just things too keep in mind.

This is why you no longer get both cartridges with the cheapest colour printers.

The last time I looked at the test data, the number of sheets was calculated in some weird way, using a sheet with 8% coverage! This is completely unrealistic, as even a double spaced page of text uses more than that. Hence the huge number of sheets they can claim. And you can bet that they carried on printing those faint grey characters for a long time after the machine started saying "Ink empty! Change now!"

I read an advert claiming that a new inkjet was cheaper to run than a laser printer. It uses big cartridges and separate tanks for the colours, and so on, but I don't believe it for a second.

I cut our printing costs from massive to nearly none. We do a lot of green, and black, with probably 70% coverage, 30% full colour. First thing I did was remove the faded green backgrounds! We were using an HP inkjet with split cartridges, and getting through perhaps one a month of a colour, and at least one black. £30 a time, and the half price refilled ones were terrible, giving results we couldn't send out. And if you believe the ink level reading, it's empty after 50 sheets! It does 250 or so. Cutting the background colour really helped a lot.

We now use an Epson laser that cost about £400 some years ago. (It's "obsolete" now.) The toner refill is £90 per colour and £115 for the black, but the number of sheets you get is crazy. We've refilled it once so far, changing three of the carts (not the magenta) in a year or so. Two started bleating toner low months ago, so I decided to print a load then change the cartridges - there's a two day turn around, as the toner carts are now obsolete, so no printing then - and I did over 350 sheets that day. That was months ago! They are still working fine. I think we've done about 2000 pages.

We are trying to cut costs further, as well as do things better, too. We now duplex the colour sheets for one range by feeding them through the B&W laser to print the black and white reverse. It is far faster, and uses less toner, and also saves a page every time. Our Epson is quite old and takes a good minute to warm up, then does about 4 pages a minute full colour, so a little slower than the inkjet on short runs. Modern lasers are far faster though (as are some inkjets). Quality is pretty much at parity, but laser prints don't fade so fast and are water resistant. You can also use far cheaper paper whilst getting high quality.

In summary, tweak the design where possible, and use a laser printer!

Certainly there's no way I can gauge how much toner was in the original cartridges. Time shall tell.

I need waterfastness so laserjet is a must.

Yep, I'll be tweaking my designs in the future.

I did score a 2-fer on ebay this morning so that'll help a bit.

I, too, believe pages per cartridge claims MUST be based on very, VERY unrealistic % page coverage. I mean, who buys a color printer to print ONLY colored text??? Bleh.

And there's just no question we're getting WAY more bang for our buck versus a commercial printer. I can beat them hands-down for my needs.

Thanks for the replies all.

It is a very common setup for the cartriges which come with the printer, even the expensive printers, to ship only half full.

This is almost certainly the case for the "bargain" ink jet printers where the cost of replacement carts is equal to or greater than the cost of a replacement printer. I found that the first set of colour toner cats in my (cheap!) Samsung colour laser didn't last very long, nor did I expect them to. That got used for mostly documents, and the occasional picture.

I've used the replacement toners for a lot of image heavy work, including CD/DVD labels and jacket covers (The kids don't get the original DVDs, they get copies to wreck.) so that I can put the originals somewhere save, and the kids can still identify/find their movies without having to descipher my handwriting. So far, I've put more pages through the replacement toner carts than the originals ever managed, and the status indicator is still saying that I've got between 2/3 and 3/4 of the carts left. That means that I'm getting FAR more coverage from the replacement toner cartriges than I did from the ones that shipped with the printer, and in that respect, I'm not surprised. The replacement toner cartriges were a signifigant percentage of the printer's original purchase price.

By the way, I don't know what the consumer laws are like there, but here, somewhere in the fine print, it does explain exactly what they mean by pages in terms of percentage of the page covered by toner.

I work as a Tech in the print industry. For commercial grade equipment, toner yield is usually base
on 6% coverage. Rebuilt toner cartridges can save money as the drum is probably good for a few refills.

Dell 3130cn is what I have. Is there any place setup to take a "new" empty cartridge in exchange for a reduced price rebuild? Seems a better deal than returning the used to Dell and buying a full priced one. 6% sux considering what I'm printing but if that's the number then that's the number. Thanks.

6% is even worse than I recalled! Ever seen a page with 6% coverage? It would be mostly blank!