What is going on with HP printer ink page yields?
Traditionally, there have been assorted ways to determine the size of the inkjet cartridge before you purchased it. There was most many times the volume of ink in ml (milliliters) or on occasion fl (fluid ounces) printed on the box, cartridge or both. Sometimes there were page yields listed on the company web internetlocation or listed at the marketing level. This data was necessary in differentiating highpriced cartridges from economical models.
Until recently, much of that data could be taken at face value but last week, an accidental invention brings up a valid question when it comes to the validity of OEM stated page yields.
First, let me say that there genuinely is no precise way to predict how a heap of pages you may end up getting from a queer ink cartridge. This is due to the a lot of variances in printing material, environments, habits and all of these variables alter over the time frame in which the cartridge is used. With that being said, I still can’t support but call “shenanigans” on HP.
While searching for ink volume selective information on new cartridges from HP’s website, we found that there were no longer ink volumes available on any the cartridges we looked up. Fortunately, we had already assembled OEM ink volumes and page yields on all the older printer cartridges as they had been freed in the past, so those weren’t needed. The new models like the HP 60 black (CC640WN#140) and HP 901 (CC653AN#140) cartridge only showed “Cartridge yield: approx. 200 pages (actual yield depends on printer and specific use”.
A quick trip out to our own warehouse was fruitless in finding the selective information we necessitated from the boxes on the actual product. None of the new OEM HP 60 boxes listed ink volumes and the page yield numbers were rounded to even 100 page increments such as “~200 pages” which is unusual.
I picked up an HP 74 OEM cartridge from the warehouse shelf, (released a few months ago); it read “HP 74 4.5 ml/0.15 fl oz” on the back of the box. We just got another shipment of the HP 74 OEM cartridges so I looked on the back of a new shipment of cartridges, it read “HP 74 ~200* pages”, but the volume of ink had been removed?
The Hp 74 now shows 200 pages and I know it has 4.5 ml of ink because the older OEM box listed it. The HP 74xl holds 18ml of ink and has a listed page yield of 750 pages so let’s assume that it is an honorable estimation for now.
The new HP 60 black “standard” cartridges has a listed 200-page yield so I would guess it must have a 4.5ml ink volume since it also retails for the same price- right? Well, there is no way of knowing.
Wondering if all of the older HP cartridges now have new info when it comes to their page yield, I randomly looked up a few older HP models. To my surprise, the page yields listed on HP’s internet site had changed!
I verified HP cartridge page yields from asapinkjets.com with Staples.com and all of them matched. Checking again with HP.com, I found that the page yields had been altered, all in the direction of up or not available. Here were a couple examples I found.
- C9351AN-HP 21 — (Staples shows 150 — HP now shows N/A)
- C9352AN-HP 22 — (Staples shows 140 — HP now shows 165)
- C9362WN-HP 92 — (Staples shows 210 — HP now shows N/A)
- C9361WN-HP 93 — (Staples shows 175 — HP now shows 220)
- C8765WN-HP 94 — (Staples shows 450 — HP now shows 480)
Struggling to find an explanation, I accumulated as much data on each HP cartridge from their website. I thought that possibly a alter in the ink drop size could explain the changes in page yield if HP changed the printhead on the cartridges?
After comparing the known ink volume of each cartridge to the listed page yield of each cartridge (supplied by HP), I came up with a pages per ml figure. After that, I matched up similar PL (Pico liter) drop sizes (size of a single drop of ink formed by a single nozzle) from dissimilar models that had been freed over the last 10 years for a lot of black and color ink cartridges.
I could see big variances in page yields per ml of ink amid dissimilar HP cartridge models with the same size of PL drop. Color ink cartridges with a 5 PL drop ranged from 21 pages per ml to 68 pages per ml? Black inkjet cartridges with a 17 Pico Liter drop ranged from 22 pages to 30 pages per ml?
Granted, there may have been a heap of advances in engineering science over time, which could have contributed to the overall increase in pages per ml. However, the swings are so big that I can’t aid but feel that the manufacturer page yield data is inaccurate at best and altogether fictitious at worst. The Pico Liter drop size also appears to have little to do with page yield.
So what does all this mean to you? Well, it means that it is harder than ever to figure out what you’re getting for your dollar.
Page yield selective information is being rounded up or just arbitrarily increased and actual printer ink volume data is not being freed which makes it tough for the intermediate buyer to gauge the value of a peculiar cartridge. This also makes it much posing no difficulty to list unrealistic page yield info on the box since they are without doubt or question washing their hands of any liability to realize those numbers.
The pool of data is getting a little murky. HP may be up to something, so buyer beware.
An oversized cartridge for people with over-sized needs