Setup Cartridge

[Hesty]

I have only printed about 20 pages on my new printer and now the black cartridge is out of ink.  I thought it printed 180 pages or thereabouts.  I took the cartridge out and it says 302 Instant Ink Ready.  Setup H Cartridge.  I don't know what the setup bit means.  Is this a cartridge to get you set up and it only has a small amount of ink in it or is there a problem with my printer.

[sabretooth04]

Yes, setup cartridges have less ink.  Also what are you printing?  Text, graphics, color, photo's, full pages and how much ink are you using per page?  Let us know.

[Hesty]

I was printing off a text report.  No colour.  So if I put in a new cartridge will I get 180 pages of black text printing.  If not - a bit costly to write reports.

[sabretooth04]

So how much text was on the pages?

[sabretooth04 · Accepted solution]

Here is a chart to help with Ink Cartridge Page Estimation.  All cartridges are based on a 5% coverage when new.

Note:  A 5% coverage is about 6 single spaced lines of text on a page. No bold, graphics or pictures.  A full color photo would be 100% coverage.

A ‘regular’ page of text would be about 72 lines and give us 30% coverage (more realistic).  Don’t forget the font type and size you use will use more ink too.

Example: 564 Standard Black = 250 pages at 5% coverage.   

Let’s say your average page coverage you estimate is 30%.  So…250/6 = 41.

Therefore the number of pages expected (30% coverage) out of your cartridge would be about 40 pages.

A 564 Standard Color (300 pages) at 100% coverage yields – 300/20 = 15 pages.

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I'm going to guess you are using 30% coverage, maybe more.

So for your cartridge.   180/6 = 30 pages.  Probably less as everyone underestimates their ink usage, so 20-30 pages is about on target.

[Hesty]

About four paragraphs on each page.  As if you were writing an essay or report.  No graphics. Just text.

[Hesty]

That's brilliant help.  Thank you so much.  How do you know this stuff!!  Thank you.