One very important factor when purchasing a printer is determining how much it will cost to print each page. A huge factor in this is how much a printer can actually produce from a single toner cartridge.

Because each printer manufacturer judged its yield differently using proprietary systems, an international standard was developed to help determine the exact yield for cartridges in monochrome printers.

The ISO/IEC 19752:2004 standard covers the print yield of cartridges in monochrome printers and all-in-one units (print quality is not covered by this specification). When comparison shopping, if you compare printers made by manufacturers that use this standard, you may get a better idea of how much you can print with a single cartridge from each printer.

Most, if not all, manufacturers support this standard - here are a few press releases and texts announcing this fact (listed for informational purposes only):

* Canon, Hewlett-Packard (HP), and Epson

* Lexmark

* OKI Printing Solutions (Oki Data)

Print This Tip

Get E-Mail When New Tips are Online

Return to the Buying a Printer page.