Lewis
Member
Printer Math: Why a $100 Cartridge Can Be Cheaper than a $50 Cartridge
12.04.09
Forget about ink volume and cartridge prices. Focusing on a printer's cost per page will give you a much better idea of its running costs.
Buzz up!on Yahoo!
It never ceases to amaze me how often people focus on the wrong thing when it comes to running costs for printers. I get e-mails from readers on a regular basis claiming that our printer reviews don't tell them what they need to know about running costs, because the reviews don't give (take your pick) the volume of ink per cartridge, the cost of ink per milliliter, or the price of the cartridges. Another variation on the theme complains about a given manufacturer not publishing the volume of ink in its cartridges (which is often true, but not for any nefarious reason).
The reality is that none of these numbers will tell you anything useful about running costs. If you think they do, you're starting with one or more faulty assumptions.
On the issues of ink volume per cartridge and cost of ink per milliliter, the faulty assumption is that the volume of ink will tell you something about the number of pages you'll print. It doesn't. Not for two cartridges from different manufacturers, not for two cartridges from the same manufacturer, and not even for two different capacity cartridges from the same manufacturer for the same printer.
Why Ink is Like Laundry Detergent
Here's a trick question: is a 20 ml cartridge a better value than a 10 ml cartridge at only 1.5 times the price? If you think the answer is yes, you answered too fast. The truth is that I didn't give you enough information to know. What if I added the fact that the 20 ml cartridge prints only 1.5 times as many pages? That would make it an equal value. And what if it printed only 1.4 times as many pages? That would make it a worse value.
The appropriate analogy here is to the laundry detergent commercials showing how the little bottle of the advertiser's stuff is more concentrated than the big bottle of the other guy's stuff, so the lesser volume can actually do more loads. The issue isn't how much volume of detergent you get, but how many loads of wash you can do. The same principle applies to ink. The issue isn't how much ink you get, but how many pages you can print.
Here's an actual example, using the numbers for a single printer's standard and high-capacity cartridges. The standard cartridge holds 11 ml of ink and prints 220 pages. The high-capacity cartridge holds 16 ml, or 1.45 times as much ink. If the ink volume let you predict the number of pages printed, the high-capacity cartridge would print 1.45 times 220, or 319 pages. In reality, the high-capacity cartridge prints 355 pages—over 10 percent more than you would expect from the difference in ink volume.
Given the 10 percent discrepancy in page yield per milliliter of ink for the two cartridges, you'll wind up with significantly different results if you compare the value of the two based on ink volume rather than page yield. And if what you care about running costs, it's the value based on page yield—more specifically, the cost per page—that matters. The cost per volume may be an interesting number if you want to compare ink prices with, say, the price of costly perfume, but it doesn't tell you anything about running costs.
Not so incidentally, I didn't mention the printer model or manufacturer for this example, because the manufacturer provided the numbers only with the understanding that I wouldn't publish those details. A lot of manufacturers consider ink volume to be proprietary information precisely because too many people treat the volume as a more meaningful number than it is.
The Cost per Cartridge Fallacy
A lot of people who move up from an inkjet to a color laser are shocked by the difference in cartridge prices between the two technologies. Granted, after being used to paying in the neighborhood of, say, $30 to $50 for a complete set of cartridges, it's a big jump to paying $300 to $400 or more. Here again, however, these are the wrong numbers to focus on.
Here's another trick question: is a $50 cartridge a better value than a $100 cartridge? You're probably ahead of me on this one. The answer depends on how many pages each cartridge can print. If the $50 cartridge prints 250 pages and the $100 cartridge prints 500, they're the same value. If the $100 cartridge prints 1,000 pages, it's a lot cheaper per page. As a rule of thumb (although it's not universally true), the cheaper the cartridge, the more you'll pay per page, which is to say, cheaper cartridges are often more expensive in the long run.
Figuring out the running cost for a color printer is a little tricky, because you have to calculate the cost for a black and white page separately from the cost for a color page. For lasers, you may also have to factor in the cost of other consumables (which can include anything from photosensitive drums to toner waste bottles to fusers) that need to be replaced every so often in addition to the toner cartridges.
In case you've never noticed it, we always include the cost per mono page and cost per color page in the Spec Data section of our printer reviews, and I occasionally mention the costs per page in the review itself if they're unusually high or low. Be aware also that the numbers in our reviews are a better basis for comparison than numbers you'll find on manufacturers' Web sites, both because I include costs that some manufacturers leave out, and because I do the calculation the same way for every printer, which ensures that the numbers are truly comparable.
One last thing to keep in mind when you compare two printers is that you'll often find that one is cheaper for monochrome pages and the other is cheaper for color pages. To come up with a useful comparison of running costs, you'll need to make a guess about the percentage of pages you'll print in color versus black and white. If you don't have a good sense of the answer, you might want to keep track of what you actually print for a couple of months. But even without that information, focusing on the cost per page will give you a much better grasp of running costs than worrying about ink volumes and cartridge prices. For a look at some current MFPs with relatively low running costs, see our recent roundup.
12.04.09
Forget about ink volume and cartridge prices. Focusing on a printer's cost per page will give you a much better idea of its running costs.
Buzz up!on Yahoo!
It never ceases to amaze me how often people focus on the wrong thing when it comes to running costs for printers. I get e-mails from readers on a regular basis claiming that our printer reviews don't tell them what they need to know about running costs, because the reviews don't give (take your pick) the volume of ink per cartridge, the cost of ink per milliliter, or the price of the cartridges. Another variation on the theme complains about a given manufacturer not publishing the volume of ink in its cartridges (which is often true, but not for any nefarious reason).
The reality is that none of these numbers will tell you anything useful about running costs. If you think they do, you're starting with one or more faulty assumptions.
On the issues of ink volume per cartridge and cost of ink per milliliter, the faulty assumption is that the volume of ink will tell you something about the number of pages you'll print. It doesn't. Not for two cartridges from different manufacturers, not for two cartridges from the same manufacturer, and not even for two different capacity cartridges from the same manufacturer for the same printer.
Why Ink is Like Laundry Detergent
Here's a trick question: is a 20 ml cartridge a better value than a 10 ml cartridge at only 1.5 times the price? If you think the answer is yes, you answered too fast. The truth is that I didn't give you enough information to know. What if I added the fact that the 20 ml cartridge prints only 1.5 times as many pages? That would make it an equal value. And what if it printed only 1.4 times as many pages? That would make it a worse value.
The appropriate analogy here is to the laundry detergent commercials showing how the little bottle of the advertiser's stuff is more concentrated than the big bottle of the other guy's stuff, so the lesser volume can actually do more loads. The issue isn't how much volume of detergent you get, but how many loads of wash you can do. The same principle applies to ink. The issue isn't how much ink you get, but how many pages you can print.
Here's an actual example, using the numbers for a single printer's standard and high-capacity cartridges. The standard cartridge holds 11 ml of ink and prints 220 pages. The high-capacity cartridge holds 16 ml, or 1.45 times as much ink. If the ink volume let you predict the number of pages printed, the high-capacity cartridge would print 1.45 times 220, or 319 pages. In reality, the high-capacity cartridge prints 355 pages—over 10 percent more than you would expect from the difference in ink volume.
Given the 10 percent discrepancy in page yield per milliliter of ink for the two cartridges, you'll wind up with significantly different results if you compare the value of the two based on ink volume rather than page yield. And if what you care about running costs, it's the value based on page yield—more specifically, the cost per page—that matters. The cost per volume may be an interesting number if you want to compare ink prices with, say, the price of costly perfume, but it doesn't tell you anything about running costs.
Not so incidentally, I didn't mention the printer model or manufacturer for this example, because the manufacturer provided the numbers only with the understanding that I wouldn't publish those details. A lot of manufacturers consider ink volume to be proprietary information precisely because too many people treat the volume as a more meaningful number than it is.
The Cost per Cartridge Fallacy
A lot of people who move up from an inkjet to a color laser are shocked by the difference in cartridge prices between the two technologies. Granted, after being used to paying in the neighborhood of, say, $30 to $50 for a complete set of cartridges, it's a big jump to paying $300 to $400 or more. Here again, however, these are the wrong numbers to focus on.
Here's another trick question: is a $50 cartridge a better value than a $100 cartridge? You're probably ahead of me on this one. The answer depends on how many pages each cartridge can print. If the $50 cartridge prints 250 pages and the $100 cartridge prints 500, they're the same value. If the $100 cartridge prints 1,000 pages, it's a lot cheaper per page. As a rule of thumb (although it's not universally true), the cheaper the cartridge, the more you'll pay per page, which is to say, cheaper cartridges are often more expensive in the long run.
Figuring out the running cost for a color printer is a little tricky, because you have to calculate the cost for a black and white page separately from the cost for a color page. For lasers, you may also have to factor in the cost of other consumables (which can include anything from photosensitive drums to toner waste bottles to fusers) that need to be replaced every so often in addition to the toner cartridges.
In case you've never noticed it, we always include the cost per mono page and cost per color page in the Spec Data section of our printer reviews, and I occasionally mention the costs per page in the review itself if they're unusually high or low. Be aware also that the numbers in our reviews are a better basis for comparison than numbers you'll find on manufacturers' Web sites, both because I include costs that some manufacturers leave out, and because I do the calculation the same way for every printer, which ensures that the numbers are truly comparable.
One last thing to keep in mind when you compare two printers is that you'll often find that one is cheaper for monochrome pages and the other is cheaper for color pages. To come up with a useful comparison of running costs, you'll need to make a guess about the percentage of pages you'll print in color versus black and white. If you don't have a good sense of the answer, you might want to keep track of what you actually print for a couple of months. But even without that information, focusing on the cost per page will give you a much better grasp of running costs than worrying about ink volumes and cartridge prices. For a look at some current MFPs with relatively low running costs, see our recent roundup.