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There are so many printers on the market these days and some of them are extremely cheap - some under $50 after cashback. But what are the real costs of ownership of a printer? The initial purchase price is actually the smallest amount you will pay over the lifetime of the printer - the cost of consumables (replacment ink or toner) soon exceeds what you paid for the printer. So it can often be false economy being drawn in to the super cheap buys. So how do you work out how economical your printer is?
All manufacturers have technical information about their printers and their ink or toner cartridges. For printers, you need to find out the "duty cycle". This is measured in pages per month and is the upper limit of usage for the printer. For example, a fifty dollar home printer will have a much smaller duty cycle than a thousand dollar office printer. Buy a printer that can cope with your demands or you might be replacing it sooner than you think. For cartridges, you need to find out the "average yield". This is how many pages can be printed with the cartridge. There is a standard called ISO/IEC 24711 (for inkjets) and ISO/IEC 19798 (for toners) which means that the measurements are consistent across different printer, ink and toner brands. Divide the cost of the ink or toner by its average yield to arrive at a cost per printed page. For example, a HP Officejet J4580 inkjet printer has a black cartridge (HP No. 901) with an RRP of $23.00 and an average yield of 200 pages. $23.00 divided by 200 = 11.5 cents per page. Compare this with the extra large cartridge for the same printer. It has an RRP of $42 and an average yield of 700 pages, giving a cost per page of 6 cents. It’s clear which one you should be buying! Typically, laser printers are more economical than inkjets but this isn't always true especially for the cheap lasers. HP's Officejet Pro series bring the cost per page down to under 4 cents, which is less than their cheaper laser printers. Make sure you do the above calculation before making your purchase.
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