Which Toner Cartridge to Buy for Your Laser Printer?

Anybody who has ever used a laser printer must be acquainted with a toner cartridge. In simpler words, it is the cartridge used in laser printers. It consists of an ink reservoir from where the ink comes out. It’s no secret that to get optimum performance from your heavy duty printer you need to be very careful when buying a cartridge. Hence, we aim on helping you come out of this confusion and experience a high quality printing performance.

What’s this Thing Called Yield?

Every cartridge carries a particular technical specification that may not be so easy to understand. But, as a user you need to be well versed with some basic information - like the yield. So generally, there are three kinds of toner cartridges - standard yield, high yield and super high yield. Naturally, the optimum printing yield depends on your usage and other requirements.

The question is, how can you do that? Let’s see:

Some Basics

A standard yield toner is ideal for handling nominal number of pages, super high yield for delivering vast volume and high yield is for people whose printing requirements lie between these two categories.

But, how do the manufacturers make sure that the toner cartridges are performing as promised?

• Standard Yield: These come with a standard 3000 page yield. That means you can print out approximately 3000 page before you are out of toner ink in the cartridge.
• High Yield: Usually the high yield cartridges can deliver a good page yield up to 7000 pages.
• Super High Yield: This cartridge delivers a phenomenal 12000 page yield over the entire lifetime of the toner.

Page Yield and Coverage Percent

Obviously, the page yield depends on your everyday usage and printing requirements.

This is the reason a multifunction laser printer’s page yield is directly linked to the coverage percentage.In layman’s words - page coverage is decided upon the square inches, density and settings while printing on a standard paper-size.

Most manufacturers have a standard of 5% coverage for black and white test pages and 20% coverage for color test pages. Hence, with 5% coverage, a standard yield cartridge deliver up to 3000 pages, a high yield cartridge produces something less than 10000 pages. Of course, the super high yield ones are designed to print more than 10000 pages with the same coverage percentage.

In short, factors that affect the printing performance are - images in the print, coverage area and other printer settings etc. That’s the reason manufacturers set a fixed coverage percentage and optimal printer settings to test the actual page yield. This testing process comes as a part of the required ISO or IEC standards.

Just remember, a toner’s page yield, and coverage percentage have an inverse relationship - lower the page coverage, higher the toner yield and vice versa.

Which Yield Should You Buy?

A quick cost-to-benefit analysis before buying the right cartridge is very helpful. After all you want neither - lower-than-expectations or more-than-needed page yield.

Also, keep in mind that these specifications are not just there to help the manufacturers but also to meet your expectations and requirements in the best way possible. So if you require more B&W prints than the colored ones, opt for a standard yield black toner cartridge and a high yield color toner cartridge. A smart user would mix and match these specifications to best suit their needs.

About the Author:

Arem Mukim, Manager - Corporate Communications & Digital, Ricoh India Limited

With several years of experience in Corporate Communications, Ms. Mukim has extensive knowledge in the field of brand image, digital PR, media relation, and marketing campaigns. Ricoh India, where she is working currently, is a market leader in its key categories and offers a wide variety of products and solutions, which include Office Printers, DSLR cameras, compact colour laser printer, LCD projectors, laser printer in india, multifunction laser printer, binoculars, colour laser printers, short throw projectors, digital duplicators, wide format printer, ultra short throw projectors, production printers, projection systems, video conferencing solutions and related software technologies.

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