Irate Over Ink

Page Yields: What You Get, What It Costs (chart)

Printers generally deliver the page yields vendors promise, but per-page costs differ widely.

n/a = Not applicable.

FOOTNOTES: ¹ Actual. ² Dell does not provide yield data.

HOW WE TEST:Page yield data supplied by the Rochester Institute of Technology's Imaging Products Laboratory. IPL follows the American Society for Testing and Materials' F-1942 Standard Practice for Creating Test Targets for Determining the Ink Yield of Imaging Supplies Used in Ink Jet Printers. Average yields are based on results from five cartridges per color, printing until print quality visibly deteriorates or until the printer software stops printing until the cartridge is replaced. Pages assume 5% area coverage of a document based on an 80-square-inch printed area. Color page yield is based on 5% area coverage per color. These parameters are assumed to be comparable to (but not a facsimile of) the 5% graphics page yields given by Canon, Epson, Hewlett-Packard and Lexmark.