Calculations at Printer.com

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At Printer.com you can find the costs of printers, including the costs of cartridges for almost any printer of the following brands: Brother, Canon, Epson, HP, Konica-Minolta, Lexmark, Oki, Samsung and Xerox. With our vast databases, Printer.com also informs you about the costs of 2,141 cartridges for 4,647 different printers that are currently in the Printer.com system.

You will be able to find the following data based upon your selections at Printer.com:

• The average price of a specific printer
• The actual price of a specific printer at online shopping sites
• The actual price of a printer plus five-year costs of cartridges based upon your printing needs
• Costs of printing black-and-white pages
• Costs of printing color pages
• Comparison between your current printer and new printers based upon your selection criteria

Calculations

At Printer.com we try to provide the best possible calculations and comparisons based upon currently available information, product and price data feeds of e-stores, vendors and manufacturers.
We take into account:

• The average price of the printer
• Average printer usage of five years
• Initial cartridge supplies shipped with a printer (if published by the manufacturer)
• Average supply cost, based upon original supplies without special discounts, combipacks etc.
• Your usage (quantity of printed black-and-white and color pages)
• Other refining selections and requirements
• The International Standards: ISO/IEC 19798∗, ISO/IEC 19752∗, ISO/IEC 24711∗

∗ Method for the determination of toner cartridge yield for color printers and multi-function devices that contain printer components. In the past, printer manufacturers have used a variety of methodologies to measure cartridge yields. This made it very difficult to accurately compare printer brands. Since 2004, many printer manufacturers have worked in conjunction with the International Organization for Standardization (www.iso.org) to create new standards for measuring page yield. At Printer.com, the page yield standards of the ISO are included for calculation of cartridge costs. The ISO approved standards concern ink (ISO/IEC 24711) and color toner (ISO/IEC 19798) printer cartridge page-yield measurements. These standards complement the ISO/IEC 19752 yield standard for monochrome toner printer cartridges. Details of the ISO/IEC standards are available on www.iso.org/jtc1/sc28.

Page yield

Page yield is generally defined as the number of pages that can be printed with a specific cartridge. The standards of the ISO are included for the calculation of cartridge costs at Printer.com. Many factors have specific influence on page yield figures, including the content and quality of what you are printing, how you determine the cartridge's end of life, and (e.g. with ink) how much time passes between print jobs. The amount can vary from one printer to another and from one manufacturer to another.

5%-coverage

In business printing, research shows that printers in office environments print approximately 4 to 5% coverage per page. Therefore in many page yield reports and comments '5% coverage' is mentioned. This means only 5% of the whole page is covered with ink or toner. In printing research, 5% of the page is being printed and the number of pages (yield) is checked until the printing results become remarkably lighter. These coverage reports are also used at Printer.com.

Differences (photos and content of cartridges)

The actual costs may vary and be different from the calculations on Printer.com. Why?

• Coverage and photos: If you are printing photos, the coverage will normally be much more than 5%, of course, so the calculated costs will be significantly higher. Theoretically if a document had a 100% fill, there could be 400% coverage because four colors are needed. Since there is no general standard yet, the coverage of photos is NOT included in the calculations.
• Starter cartridges: Printer.com is taking into account the initial cartridges supplied with a new printer (if the manufacturer is publishing this information). Many printers have initial cartridges with a reduced quantity of ink or toner.
• XL or regular cartridges: In the calculations, Printer.com uses the XL (high capacity) cartridges. If you are using regular-size cartridges, your actual costs will be higher than the calculations.

Differences between laser printers and inkjet printers

The page yield of laser printers mainly depends on the capacity of the cartridge. In case of inkjet printers, the printer itself also influences the page yield. Printer.com uses the published page yield information of a specific cartridge in a specific inkjet printer. In case a manufacturer does not publish such information or in case this information is not available at Printer.com, the published capacity of the cartridge is used for calculations.

Estimates

In some cases manufacturers do not publish the capacity of a cartridge, or this information is not available at Printer.com. In these situations, estimates are used. These estimates are based upon third-party or available publications and/or page-yield calculations.

Excluded factors

Since the following matters are variable, these are not included in the calculations:

• environment conditions, such as humidity and temperature
• electricity
• paper
• maintenance and/or repair
• cartridge safe-mode settings

Disclaimer

While Printer.com makes every effort to ensure the information on this Web site is accurate, we can make no guarantees as to the accuracy or reliability of any information provided. Calculations and comparisons are based upon product specifications and other information provided by e-Stores, merchants, vendors and manufacturers or collected from other publicly available sources. Printer.com makes no warranties or representations whatsoever with regard to any product, information or calculation provided or offered by any manufacturer, e-Store or merchant; and you hereby expressly acknowledge that any reliance on any representations and warranties, whether provided in writing or otherwise, provided by any e-Store, merchant, vendor or manufacturer will be at your own risk. See Terms of Service.