Print quality tests using off-the-shelf color electrophotographic printers revealed systematic tone fluctuations among the first several pages in print jobs after idle periods as short as 1 min, under certain environmental conditions. It can be shown that the tone values on the first few pages of a print job after 1 min of idle are statistically different from the tone values on the other pages of the same job. In the mid-tone ranges, the mean tone value difference between pages can differ by 4 ΔE₇₆ units under low temperature and low humidity conditions. This article presents an experimental approach to characterize this type of transient tone deviation in a print job for tone consistency control and improvement. A first-order difference model is employed to approximate the transient tone deviation. The resulting model can accurately predict the transient tone deviation over pages to within 1.3 ΔE₇₆ units, based on cross-validation.