The remanufacturer aimed at explaining page yields, standards governing them and why it takes them seriously.
On its website, the company explained that “in the product descriptions of our inkjet and toner cartridges we always mention the number of pages you can print with it. This way, dealers and users can easily compare our printer cartridges to those of other brands. But how is the page yield actually measured? And what method is used?”
It noted that “in the beginning […] for a long time there was no clear standard to determine the page yield of inkjet and toner cartridges”, with some manufacturers assuming “an average of five percent coverage on an A4 sheet”, fully using up the cartridge before counting “the number of pages printed”. However, the “lack of further test criteria” meant that “one is still comparing apples to oranges”, while “there were also manufacturers that used other methods, which led to even more confusion”.
This “all changed” in June 2004 when the ISO standard “to determine the number of pages printed with a black toner cartridge” was published, and which was “embraced by all printer manufacturers and many producers of alternative toner cartridges”. Pelikan points out that this has “been THE standard in the market ever since”, and “later on, standards for colour and inkjet cartridges were also published”.
On the ISO testing conditions, Pelikan noted that standards for page yield “describe exactly how the tests should be conducted”, including “under what conditions” such as temperature and humidity; “the size of paper used”; “the print quality settings”; “the size of the test”, with at least three printers and three different cartridges each; the “test document that should be used”; “how to deal with error messages”; and “even how often you should shake the cartridge when it is nearly empty”.
To add to this, the printers and cartridges “should be purchased on the open market from three different vendors”, and you are “not allowed to buy directly from the supplier”. From its perspective, Pelikan comments that it “stands for quality and transparency”, and so it always “test[s] the print capacity of all inkjet and toner cartridges according to the ISO standards”.
This, it points out, “makes our products easily comparable to that of other brands”, and “moreover, it is a comprehensive and reliable test method, which is widely accepted”. The company’s way of running ISO tests “has been checked and approved by an independent institution” – in this case, TÜV in Germany – and it concluded that this is “important when it comes to public procurement”, with Pelikan providing an ISO document “for each article number, including a test report”.