Am I Being Cheated Out of Toner with My Lexmark MS817 Cartridge?

Am I Being Cheated Out of Toner with My Lexmark MS817 Cartridge?

This can be a common question that we get. A customer puts a seemingly brand new cartridge into their printer, and after only a week or so it starts printing light or with smudges. There could be a number of factors that cause this to happen, but the most helpful first step is to print out a Device Statistics.

Troubleshoot Your Printer Cartridge


This report has helpful information like page yield, a record of printed pages, printer life statistics, toner cartridge coverage rate, and more. Below we'll walk you through how to print the Device Statistics and what to look for on it.
This step by step can help you look up the statistics for the 53B1000 toner cartridge or the Lexmark MS817 and MS818 printers.
Here’s an example of what your Device Statistics page should look like:


 If you need to print out a Device Statistics report on your printer, follow these steps:

  1. Press the Menu button
  2. Select Settings
  3. Go to Reports
  4. Choose to print a Device Statistics
Here are some explanations of what you're looking for in this report:

Sides on Cart is the number of pages this specific cartridge has printed. For the cartridge on this Device Statistics, 118 pages have been printed. Check the number on your Device Statistics; has your cartridge lived up to or exceeded it's lifetime?
Printer Lifetime shows you the average toner coverage rate per page. For this printer, the toner coverage rate is set at 6%, which is a good percentage to be at. If the toner coverage rate is too high or too low, this will impact how many pages your cartridge can print and/or what the pages will look like. Read more about it in our Toner Coverage Rate blog post.
One more thing to consider is, how long has the cartridge been sitting on the shelf? Toner is like food - if you leave it on the shelf for too long, it'll eventually "go bad." Unused toner hardens over extended periods of time, which can cause a variety of problems - light print, smudges, spilled toner, etc. Make sure your printing issue isn't due to that.

Contact Print. Save. Repeat. For All Your Ink Inquiries!


Still not sure what's up with your cartridge? Give us a jingle! We'd be happy to help. Our number is 480-463-4548 and we're open 8am-5pm, Monday - Friday. At Print.Save.Repeat, we guarantee that our cartridges last as long as (if not longer than) OEM cartridges. Additionally, all of our products are under our unconditional satisfaction guarantee; if you aren’t happy with something, we will refund or replace it at no cost to you. Our thousands of Amazon reviews show how infrequent this is though!
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