May 09 2015 Inkjet versus laser printer

Contrary to what I found on most websites when googling about comparisons between inkjet and laser printers, the cost per page on high end inkjet printers is lower than that of laser printers.

Moreover, when buying a new printer one has to consider the number of pages that will be printed to estimate whether the savings done on the cost per page offset the extra initial cost of the printer or not.

Computing cost per page

In order to find out the printer that best fit my usage, I computed the cost per page of every HP multifunction printer with a price lower than $1000 (as of the April 26th 2015). Then I computed the overall cost of a printer that would print 3000 black and white pages (Cost of printer + 3000 * cost per black page). Prices are computed based on HP printers and cartridges official prices. I considered HP printers, because most of them are working under Linux. As for the number of pages, this is a rough estimate of my usage over 5 years (my estimate of the life span of a printer).

Cost per page and for 3000 pages:

The ideal printer

We can observe that the lowest cost per black page is 1.1 cents for an inkjet printer (HP Officejet Enterprise Color MFP X585dn). Then there is a bunch of inkjet printers with a cost per black page of 1.3 cents and 1.6 cents. The cheapest cost per page for a laser printer is 1.8 cents (for the HP LaserJet Pro MFP M521dn).

When computing the overall cost of a printer for 3000 black and white pages, the cheapest printer is the "HP Officejet Pro 8610 e-All-in-One" with an overall cost of $178 ($130 initial cost and 1.6 cents/page), then comes the "HP Officejet Pro 6830 e-All-in-One" with an overall cost of $210 ($120 initial cost and 3.0 cents/page).

Printers below $100 have a higher overall cost because of their very high cost per page (6.7 cents per black page and 10.3 cents per color page). On the other hand, the printer with the lowest cost per page (1.1 cents) has a high overall cost because of its high initial cost of $1000.

In the end, the ideal printer depends on the usage that will be done (number of pages printed). Besides, one may consider additional features (print speed, duplex printing, ...) when choosing a printer.