For a number of years, HP has been publishing a “monthly duty cycle” in the specifications for its LaserJet printers. This has—to me—been a misleading number, as it appears to grossly overstate the hardiness of the printer. For example, the HP Color LaserJet 1600 has a monthly duty cycle of 20,000 pages, which seems way out of line for a “personal” office printer.

Many of our customers have purchased printers that are unsuited for the load placed upon them, based on the number of pages they think the machine will be able to print each month. The result is that these machines experience a high failure rate—and accompanying downtime—because the machine in truth cannot keep up with their demands.

HP recently moved to eliminate the confusion of the monthly duty cycle by also publishing a “recommended monthly print volume.” Their footnote for this spec reads “HP recommends that the number of printed pages per month be within the stated range for optimum device performance, based on factors including supplies replacement intervals and device life over an extended warranty period.” In other words, “recommended monthly print volume” means exactly what it says, and your machine will work best—and last longer—if you print no more than that each month. In our Color LaserJet 1600 example, the recommended monthly print volume is 300-1500 pages, a more reasonable figure for this model.

The monthly duty cycle is still published, but its footnote indicates that this spec is best used to compare models of similar printers. When looking at the paper output of one of my customers, I would in no way base the purchase of a printer on this number. Instead, the recommended monthly print volume will provide a far more accurate basis for the suitability of a given printer. Kudos to HP for making this more clear!