What does 5% page coverage mean?
Updated 28/03/2017
‘My ink or toner cartridge prints 1000 pages at 5% page coverage.’ – What does that mean?!
You’ve probably been frustrated by the fact that your cartridge hasn’t lasted as long as the manufacturer said it should….
Nearly every single ink and toner cartridge says it prints at 5% page coverage, yet so many people don’t know what page coverage means, how it’s calculated or what it looks like on an actual page, and it’s understandable why people feel frustrated when their cartridge doesn’t print the amount of pages it says that it should!
Read on if you’d like to know why that is and get the answer to what does 5% page coverage mean?
Here’s what you’ll learn:
- What is page yield or duty cycle?
- What is 5% page coverage / why was it introduced?
- What 5% page coverage looks like on a piece of paper
- What things affect page coverage.
- How can I make my ink / toner cartridge last longer?
So let’s try and shed some light on it…
What is page yield or duty cycle?
The first thing that we need to define is page yield / duty cycle. Page yield is listed against toner or ink cartridges and duty cycle is listed against maintenance items that don’t contain any ink or toner but will last for a specific number of print cycles.
Each were designed to give you a rough idea of how many pages you should be able to print before your cartridge runs out of ink or toner or your maintenance product needs to be replaced.
What is 5% page coverage / why was it introduced?
The number of pages that you do get from a cartridge can be affected by lots of different things and is difficult to calculate without parameters.
For example, you might own a Samsung printer that uses a cartridge with a page yield of 2500 pages. If you generally just print black and white Word documents and emails, then it’s more likely that you’ll get closer to 2500 pages than someone else using the same cartridge but who prints lots of documents in colour every day including images or blocks of shading. So, the amount of ink or toner being used by those two-different people isn’t the same, and the total number of pages printed by their cartridges won’t be the same either.
Page coverage is only meant to give you a guide to the maximum number of pages an ink or toner cartridge can print not the exact number that it will print.
So how can manufacturers like Samsung say that their toner cartridges can have duty cycles of 2500 pages?
They calculate the numbers based on ‘page coverage.’ It means the amount of an A4 piece of paper that would be completely covered in ink if what you were printing was compacted into a block.
As you might expect, a print out with 5% page coverage will probably have a lot less colours, or shaded areas. Also, remember that printing photographs will use a heck of a lot more ink and toner. Something more like 80% page coverage.
If we use the previous example again, you will be able to print out 2500 pages before you run out…if your average page coverage is 5%.
This is an industry standard measurement that was introduced and enforced by the Office of Fair Trading and ISO (the International Organisation for Standardisation) because there needed to be a way to help customers to understand what they were paying for.
So what does 5% page coverage look like?
You might be thinking that doesn’t sound like much at all but it was the standard that was set for all printer manufacturers to state their page yields to. To give you a better idea of what 5% page coverage looks like on an A4 piece of paper, take a look below:
Example of 5% page coverage
Again, going back to the Samsung toner example, if you printed out something like this every single time, or averaged this amount, you should expect to get around 2500 pages from your cartridge based on Samsung’s calculations.
Some people don’t realise just how little 5% is. But if you take this into consideration when reading what your cartridges’ duty cycle/page yield is, you’ll appreciate that it is only a rough estimate.
What things affect page coverage
Now you know that the page yield of an ink or toner is the maximum number of pages a cartridge can print up to, there are several different things that can affect how many pages you get from your new cartridge. Strangely, some of these things are not dissimilar to how long a petrol lasts in a car.
For example, if you drive a car at the top speed limit every day, rev your engine lots and your car is not as efficient as it once was 6 years ago, then you won’t get as many miles from a full tank of petrol than you might if you drive slower or your car is newer. It’s the same for a printer, here are the things that can affect it:
- Age of the printer
- Humidity of the office around your printer
- If your printer is in good condition or has recently been serviced
- How much / how often you print (if you print lots in small amounts of time)
- What you are printing (page coverage)
- If maintenance parts of the printer need replacing.
- The font you use.
It’s also worth noting that some of these things also affect the quality of your prints.
How can I make my ink or toner last longer?
Ok, so it’s going to be difficult to average 5%. But there are a few things that you can do to help make that toner go just that little bit further.
Our post with advice on saving printer ink (and toner) outlines 7 really helpful tips that can dramatically help you to reduce wastage. Furthermore, it is worth considering:
- Setting your printer to draft mode / changing fonts.This reduces the quality a little (such as making font fainter), but it is ideal for when you’re only printing out rough or internal documents. Changing the font to one that uses less amounts of ink or toner can in fact increase the amount of pages printed.
- Your printing behaviour.If you’re printing out every little document and email, think whether you need to do so.
- Keeping digital copies.Save invoices/letters/emails etc. to your hard drive or smartphone, rather than printing them off.
- Reducing the number of letters, you send.Lots of post means more printouts; could you say it in an email, instead?
- Get your printer serviced / buy a newer printer. The efficiency of your printer affects its print output. Getting a service can improve that. Also, printers should only last around 4-5 years and newer printers are more advanced and efficient, so buying a new one pays off in the long run.
- Buy a printer that matches your needs. Your printing needs will change over time and printers are designed for a maximum monthly usage. If you print more than a printer is efficiently meant to it will greatly affect its output and you may find that a new printer that better matches your needs will cost you less in the long run.
Hopefully this has made things a little clearer. If you remember that the duty cycle figure is only meant to be taken as a guide (and how it’s calculated in terms of page coverage), it should leave you feeling a little less short changed or simply find out how many pages your cartridge should print based on what you are printing using our tool.
Was this any good to you? Let us know what you thought. Leave us a comment below or tweet us @TonerGiant.
About Stuart DeavallI have been working in the printing industry with TonerGiant for over 16 years, and I'm the resident technical printer expert, helping people fix their printer problems for over 14 years. I have taken part in many training courses with HP, Samsung, Brother, Canon and Xerox to further my knowledge, and I'm also the Digital Marketing Manager at TonerGiant.co.uk (degree qualified).
Wee bit disgusted and was going to complain as I bought two high density toner cartridges for a Lexmark C540 printer yesterday and managed only 1000 or so copies from the first cartridge despite trying to be frugal in my print quality. Yes maybe a bit more than the 5% but still bit disappointed.
My query is this though, as the life of the ‘chip’ in my understanding is down to the number of copies, can these cartridges be refilled and used again with the same chip until the number of copies reaches the maximum number of copies rather than when the toner runs out. (or am I getting this completely wrong.)
Regards John
Hi John,
Thanks for your comment.
I completely understand your frustration. 5% really isn’t a lot, and it is disappointing when you’re still not getting the stated page yield even when you’ve tried everything to reduce the amount of toner you use. The page yield and page coverage amounts are something that the Office of Fair Trading brought in to help give consumers an idea of how many prints can be achieved, however the amount stated should still only be used as a guide.
In response to your query, a refill service is not something that we offer and so we don’t have experience of this. For this reason, we wouldn’t advise you to do so as it may risk causing damage to your printer.
If it helps, you can actually generate a page coverage report for your Lexmark printer to see what % you’re currently using. In the Lexmark program on your computer, go to:
Settings > Select Utilities > Coverage Estimator: Select On. After every print job you will be shown a page coverage estimation report. If it appears that you are in fact averaging 5% but aren’t getting the correct page yield, let me know and I’ll be able to have the guys here resolve this for you.
Hope this helps!
Gareth
It’s very helpful information. Thank you.
Very helpful, thanks!
Are there toners which offer more than a 5% yield?
Hi, no the standards were set by the ISO which is an independent body and all manufacturers stick to it. 5% is the highest as far as I’m aware.
You can print whatever amount you wish, the 5% coverage (average email?) is a reference point even though it should have been a full page of type (~15%) as most prints are this or pictures which are impossible to predict the usage for.
Let’s take a 4-pack color toner set for an example. If it states that they yield 6,000 pages, am I right to assume I can print 4 x 6,000 pages at 5% coverage, if I were to print each each color individually?
Now I know that any color is made up with a combination of colors, but even so the coverage of each color over any area would be at less than 100%, plus normally color would be a very small percentage of a printout. Am I right to assume it would then be quite possible to get more than 6,000 pages out of a color set combined?
Thanks!
Hi Wayne, that’s a great question.
The answer is no you wouldn’t get over 6000 pages in any instance unless the coverage was less than 5%. Basically as you mentioned the colours combine, therefore the coverage is being used for each colour at the same time (yellow and cyan would be used to make green together so though it’s not this simple, one on top of the other would be covering the page at the same time). If you did print the colours separately, it’s possible that you would get 6000 pages for each colour, but often in the printing process a colour is being used even if you can’t see it clearly on the page (there’s also waste in the printing process).
The coverage was introduced only to be used as a guide by the international standardisation organisation, but the maths still isn’t exact and is rarely accurate. The page prints number is always stated as an ‘up to’ or an ‘approximate’ figure. Take it with a pinch of salt!
Thank’s Stuart for the information. I am glad someone has given the clear answer. I find it ridiculous that a standard references a A4 sheet and then only to fill it with 1/3 of a page of type. I will make the assumption it was based on average memo/email, but anyone I know sees page coverage and thinks one page of type. This however explains why I got less than 200 pages on an XL cartridge. Guess I better invest in laser.
Used to wonder whether I was the only one getting fewer pages per cartridge. My usual prints are about a page long with 1.5 line spacing.I guess that would amount to more than 5% considering the reference standard is a 3rd of a A4 paper.
thanks a lot for the knowledge
Hi, is there some program online that can calculate print covering percentage by scanning sent A4 text (ratio: black : white). I hope you understand my question (I’m not english speaking).
Thanks
Hi there, I’m afraid I’ve never seen one if it does exist!
Hello
I hope you’re still there and they give you a huge raise each year.
This write-up is excellent! Thank you.
Quick question…
Looking at the 8.5×11 5% example would a safe guestimate be…
If you printed like the example and filled the page, then your 800 pages at 5% coverage could be calculated as 1/3 of the 800 pages, i.e. the reality 264 pages. Would that be correct?
Thanks again for this great post. – jga
Hi John, my example could be way off but officially they say 3-5 paragraphs of text is 5% coverage so if you were printing a full page of text (and it also depends on font size and type) then you likely would be printing at 2 to 3 times as much (so 10-15% coverage). I created a tool to calculate your print coverage and pages printed which will help in your example which you can find here.
THANK YOU for the clear explanation.
we chargeback for printing and wonder how (or if) coverage can be calculated/estimated based on what you have shown here ? For example, we print checks with anywhere from 15-45 lines of print on one side and 20 lines with images on the other. Is there a calculation or is it best guess ?
Thanks, and great article ! -Steve
Normally the printer status page can tell you what page coverage on average you’ve been printing at so possibly that could help. It is the best guess though unless you know the exact coverage.
Thanks this has explained a lot, but left me with a lot to think about.
Thanks for the help.