A toner yield comparison sheet covering every major brand

Toner yield, measured in pages at 5% area coverage, sets the lifetime cost of a printed page more than the headline cartridge price. This comparison sheet covers seven brands across A4 mono, A4 colour and A3 colour, with the standard, high and extra high yield variants where the brand publishes them.

How to read the sheet

Yield figures below come from manufacturer specifications under the ISO/IEC 19752 standard for mono cartridges and ISO/IEC 19798 for colour. Both standards assume 5% area coverage per page, which is roughly the density of a typical business letter with a few graphics. Real office output typically runs at 4 to 7% coverage, so the published figures hold up reasonably well for office use. Documents with heavy graphics, photographs or full bleed colour use significantly more toner and yield drops accordingly.

Figures are listed for the most common cartridge family in each device class. Older or specialist devices may use cartridges outside the families listed; check the manufacturer documentation for those.

Why yield matters more than cartridge price

A cartridge priced at 80 euros that yields 6,000 pages produces a toner cost per page of 0.0133 euros. A cartridge priced at 60 euros that yields 3,000 pages produces a toner cost per page of 0.020 euros. The cheaper headline figure costs 50% more per page across the same volume.

The same arithmetic applies across the high yield versus standard yield decision. High yield cartridges almost always produce a lower cost per page despite a higher list price, because the price uplift is smaller than the yield uplift. The exception is a device printing at very low volume where the cartridge expires before the toner is fully used.

What yield figures hide

Two factors limit the precision of any published yield figure. The first is the 5% coverage assumption. Spanish offices producing translation work, marketing layouts or design proofs run far above 5%, sometimes at 12 to 15% on colour pages. Yield in these conditions drops by two thirds or more. The second is the device specific drum and developer life, which interacts with toner consumption in ways that the cartridge yield figure does not capture.

The yield figure is a comparison tool, not a forecast.Use it to compare cartridges across brands and within the same brand to compare standard vs high yield. Do not use it as a procurement forecast without adjusting for actual office coverage.

Cost per page comparison across the sheet

Translated into cost per page at typical Spanish list prices, the spread between brands narrows substantially. Headline yield does not equate to lowest cost: HP and Xerox often carry premium cartridge pricing that erases the yield advantage. The table below shows mono cost per page at typical office list prices for the high yield variant where available.

Brand	A4 mono cartridge price	High yield (pages)	Cost per page
Canon	~110 €	10,000	0.011 €
Ricoh	~85 €	7,000	0.012 €
Xerox	~145 €	16,900	0.009 €
Konica Minolta	~125 €	15,000	0.008 €
Kyocera	~70 €	7,200	0.010 €
HP	~140 €	10,000	0.014 €
Sharp	~190 €	20,000	0.010 €

Yield is the most useful number on a cartridge box. The cartridge price next to it tells you only half the story; the yield tells the other half, and the product of the two is the line that lands on a finance ledger.

Where third party and remanufactured cartridges sit

Compatible and remanufactured cartridges occupy a parallel market, with yields that range from 90 to 110% of the OEM figure. The price difference can be 30 to 60% lower, which makes the cost per page meaningfully better on paper. The trade off sits in three places: print quality consistency, warranty interaction with the device manufacturer, and reliability under high volume. For low to medium volume offices the trade off often favours compatibles; for high duty production work the OEM cartridge usually wins on operational stability.

Using the comparison sheet at procurement

Print the relevant brand sections, lay them next to the vendor proposal, and confirm that the cartridge family quoted matches the device proposed. Vendors occasionally quote on a standard yield cartridge while the device ships with a high yield default, or the reverse. Both produce surprises in year one when the cartridge counter moves at a different rate than the proposal implied.

Related reference materials

• Pair with the A4 vs A3 paper size cheat sheet
• Use the cross brand spec spreadsheet alongside this sheet
• Reference terms via the glossary poster
• Feed yield into the toner yield estimator
• Compute cost per page using the calculator