Troubleshooter

Epson cartridges work primarily on the basis of counting how much ink the printer has dispensed from the cartridge in order to establish whether a cartridge is full or empty.  The printer iself doesn't actually look inside the cartridge to see the visible ink level and as such, if the cartridge initially read as being full and now reads as being empty then this would lead us to believe that the ink from the cartridge has actually been utilised.

Please note, in order to avoid doing damage to the printer it would be normal for it to leave a small amount of ink in the used cartridge.  It is also worthwhile bearing in mind that performing a printer head clean does use a moderate amount of ink.  The printer will also periodically clean the printer heads which will result in a small amount of ink being continuously dispensed even if the cartridge isn't actually being used for the purpose of printing.

While manufacturers give an page yield for cartridges, realistically the amount of prints you will get from a cartridge is likely to be much less than this. This is because manufacturers use a standard page coverage of 5% (set by ISO/IEC 19752) to determine page yield.

If you are concerned that you may not be getting sufficient pages from your cartridges or would simply like to check what kind of page coverage you are printing we have written an article on a free program to calculate coverage.

If after reading the above you believe that the cartridge still should have lasted substantially longer than you achieved then please do contact us as it's possible that you have received a faulty unit.