Printer cartridge yields vary from colour to colour

[#1]

Whilst considering my options for a new Canon printer, I found that each CMYK cartridge page/photo yield varied, sometimes significantly. The physical cartridges look the same, so they should hold equal quantities.

Do they in fact, or is the quantity in each trimmed to reflect the cost of the make up of a certain colour, to make the price of each item equal at the salepoint? Thoughts?

As an alternative to Canon I could use an equivalent HP model, but they use the Black/Tri- colour system, as opposed to Pigment Black, CMYK of Canon. How does one compare cartridge costs over a time? Is there a statistic on the average amount of of each colour in an average image, I wonder.

[#2]

Ink cartridge or toner cartridge?

[#3]

@VileReynard ink jet

[#4]

I have a Canon printer but have always used compatible ink cartridges. These have transparent cases and I can see that they all start out full, so must have the same quantity of ink.

I find that having.separate ink cartridges is not much help as compatible cartridges seem to come in sets. It is obviously useful if you are happy to pay through the nose for individual genuine Canon versions.

[#5]

Probably irrelevant unless you use the printer an awful lot.

My (albeit ancient) Canon goes through a cleaning cycle pretty much every time I send it a document. It does a cycle whenever it switches on and I probably only print two or three documents a week these days.

My ink usage is more a factor of the cleaning cycle than the  actual print consumption.

[#6]

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@Luzern wrote:

The physical cartridges look the same, so they should hold equal quantities.

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I know HP inkjet cartridges don't. Of course standard and xl cartridges look the same but they hold different ink quantities. 

Apparently the xl has a larger piece of sponge inside to hold the extra ink. Or so I'm told.

Not that it seems to make any difference when I'm refilling it.

[#7]

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@Baldrick1 wrote:

I have a Canon printer but have always used compatible ink cartridges. These have transparent cases and I can see that they all start out full, so must have the same quantity of ink.

I find that having.separate ink cartridges is not much help as compatible cartridges seem to come in sets. It is obviously useful if you are happy to pay through the nose for individual genuine Canon versions.

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But then you don't have to buy a tri-color cartrige when one colour runs out. The rest are still serviceable, so replacement is gradual.

[#8]

@billnotben Keeping it simple, I am considering only standard cartridges, as the reasons for variation in yields will hold good for the XL and XXL offerings.

[#9]

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@Luzern wrote:

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@Baldrick1 wrote:

I find that having.separate ink cartridges is not much help as compatible cartridges seem to come in sets. It is obviously useful if you are happy to pay through the nose for individual genuine Canon versions.

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But then you don't have to buy a tri-color cartrige when one colour runs out. The rest are still serviceable, so replacement is gradual.

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This is only an advantage if you can buy single cartridges at a sensible price. As the cheapest way by far is to buy compatible cartridges in sets you end up with a stock of the rarely used colours.

[#10]

That's not been my experience.

[#11]

Ok this is not much help to the OP.

Had inkjets since I as at Uni, so around 20 years ago. This was a Canon printer. Remember printing off my disseration which was around 60 pages. No do I print that quite important document off in high quality or not? Of course I picked high and it took around 4 minutes per page, which x60 was taking a long time so I had to print some off in low quality as I needed to travel back to where I was studying.

The cartridges were see-through and had a habit of emptying themselves even though I didn't have the printer on. That did my head in so went in the bin.

Then had a Brother inkjet and that went in the bin. Can't remember why exactly now, though I think it was a similar problem with the colours.

I am onto my second laser printer and have never looked back. My advice is if you need to change the printer is to consider a network colour laser.

Not ideal, they cost a bit of extra money but nothing too bad.

I personally would never touch another inkjet with a bargepole. Maybe they have improved since then, but I won't hold my breath on that.

[#12]

I'm still on my first laser printer, but second cartridge as I don't print much - but that's over 5+ years.

I personally would never touch another inkjet with a bargepole - even if they have improved.

[#13]

@Luzern  I used to be a dedicated HP inkjet fan...... even when I had to resort to refilling the single colour in a tricoulour cartridge.... messy... Yuk !...but a bit of fun along the way.... Used to use replacement cartridges, then bought some bottles of ink to do the refilling myself, as and when.... eventually, the old HP died on me, and I wanted to get a "single colour" cartridge type printer... Ended up with the Canon (same as yours if I recall)...

I don`t do refills anymore.... don`t do a lot of printing... but the colours are reasonably good enough for my photographic stuff, when needed...

I use "STINKYINKS" as my supply source.... buy in bulk i.e. pack of 10 (or whatever the offer is) ...   black,     and multipack for colours... saves a bit of cash, and always got one when you run out...

When you look on line at different suppliers... they should be showing you the actual quantity of ink per cartridge,... so you may find there are two differing prices for the same cartridge from the same supplier.

[#14]

@shutter not quite the same as mine, as mine has slightly larger screen. It's being junked as the messy colour prints can't be cured by me.

As to yields ISTM all the makers use official ISO standards, but their explanations are opaque. Third party este estimates vary from the makers' and sometimes not consistently; a colour's yield may increase, but the others decrease.