The real price of a printer
A cheap printer can be expensive to run. Printer makers often sell the machine at a low price and earn their money on ink. The figure that matters over the years is the cost per page, and the total cost of ownership: purchase price plus all the cartridges and paper you will buy.
The calculation
- Cost per page = cartridge price ÷ page yield + paper cost per sheet
- Total cost = printer price + pages printed × cost per page
- Break-even point = difference in printer prices ÷ difference in costs per page
Page yields are measured with standard test pages at about 5% coverage, under ISO standards. For color printers, add the cost per page of the color cartridges.
Example
Printer A costs $80, with $35 cartridges that print 300 pages. Printer B costs $250, with $80 toner that prints 3,000 pages. Paper costs $0.01 a sheet, and you print 200 pages a month for 3 years:
- Cost per page: $0.127 for A, $0.037 for B
- Pages printed: 7,200
- Total cost: $992 for A, $514 for B
- Break-even: about 1,890 pages, reached in under a year
Printer B saves about $478 over 3 years, despite costing three times as much.
What changes the result
- Coverage: photos and graphics use many times more ink than text pages, so heavy color printing raises the cost per page of inkjets sharply.
- Ink tank printers cost more upfront, but refill bottles bring the cost per page below one cent.
- XL cartridges usually cost less per page than standard ones.
- Subscriptions charge a monthly fee for a set number of pages, which can be worth it at steady volumes.
- Infrequent printing lets inkjet heads dry out and wastes ink on cleaning cycles; laser toner keeps.
Tips
- Choose a laser printer for mostly black text, and an ink tank printer for frequent color.
- Print in draft mode or grayscale when quality does not matter.
- Recycle empty cartridges through the manufacturer’s or a retailer’s program.