Epson 212XL yellow · XL

The Epson 212XL yellow is the high yield yellow for the Expression Home XP-4100, the WorkForce WF-2830 and the WorkForce WF-2850. Those printers hold four separate cartridges rather than one tri-colour block, so an empty yellow costs you a yellow.

It is rated at about 350 pages and lists near $16, about 4.57 cents a page. The standard 212 yellow is rated at about 130 pages for around $11, roughly 8.46 cents, so the XL is close to half the price per page and there is little reason to buy the smaller one for regular use. The XL colours are rated lower than the XL black, at about 350 pages against 500, so the colours run out sooner even on ordinary document printing.

The three printers this fits are all recorded as open on our firmware tracker, so compatible and remanufactured 212XL yellows will work, and the non-genuine ink message they trigger can be dismissed. Level reporting is the weak point on third-party chips, so a spare is more use than an accurate gauge.

When yellow disappears from prints, the cartridge is often not the problem. These printers have a fixed head, and yellow is frequently the colour that has gone longest without being asked for, so its nozzles are among the first to dry. Print the nozzle check pattern before you buy anything. A block that is completely missing points at a clog, while a block that prints faint and patchy is more likely a cartridge genuinely running down. If the pattern comes out clean but a photo still looks wrong, the problem is colour management in the driver rather than ink.