Quality Logic Inc., an independent quality assurance organization in the imaging market, has releases finding from a study on print cartridge reliability.
The QualityLogic Reliability Comparison Study, commissioned by Hewlett-Packard Co., tried to look beyond out-of-box failures to offer
the industry another perspective on testing print cartridge reliability based on faulty cartridges, print quality consistency and user interventions.
QualityLogic’s analysis compared many brands of remanufactured aftermarket cartridges with HP’s original inkjet and LaserJet cartridges.
All brands were tested on the following criteria:
- Out-of-the box failures – cartridges that produced 10 or fewer acceptable pages;
- Premature failures – cartridges that printed less than 75 per cent of the average number of pages produced by the cartridges tested for that brand; and
- Print Quality Consistency – cartridges that produced a high number of unacceptable pages – would have required reprinting of one out of 10, or more, pages.
The study found on average, four per cent of the remanufactured monochrome toner cartridges failed out-of-the-box or failed prematurely.
Quality Logic also found that on average, over 40 per cent of the colour and 17 per cent of the black remanufactured inkjet cartridges failed out-of-the-box or prematurely.
And, on average, the remanufactured brands had eight times more cartridges that produced a high number of unacceptable pages.
In the final analysis, the QualityLogic study concluded that original cartridges are significantly more reliable than aftermarket remanufactured supplies for ink and monochrome toner brands.
However, while different aftermarket brands had different kinds of problems, all brands had notable problems in at least one category.
Gary James, QualityLogic co-founder, director and vice-president of business development said cartridge buyers should be aware of the hidden costs associated with reliability problems.
In addition to establishing the testing methodology, QualityLogic procured samples of worldwide aftermarket remanufactured cartridge brands. The study focused on evaluating the reliability of black and colour inkjet and monochrome toner cartridges.
James Mater, QualityLogic president and CEO said the QualityLogic team worked for over one year to conduct extensive testing, and meticulously analyze and compiled results with 3.5 million pages printed and over 1,700 ink and toner cartridges consumed.