Why the purchase price is only half the story

You are comparing two printers: one costs 49 euros, the other 149 euros. At first glance, the cheaper one looks like the obvious choice. With a printer, though, the purchase price says little about what the machine will really cost you over its lifetime. What matters is the cost per page, meaning the amount of ink or toner each printed page uses up. A cheap printer with expensive cartridges can cost considerably more over a year or two than a pricier machine with affordable supplies.

Manufacturers often sell the printer itself on a thin margin and make most of their money from the cartridges you keep buying afterwards. It is a well-known principle, much like razors and blades, and it is worth factoring in when you buy instead of just looking at the number on the price tag.

How to work out the cost per page

The calculation is simple once you know two numbers: the price of a replacement cartridge or toner and the page yield the manufacturer gives for it. Divide the price by the number of pages and you get the cost per page. The manufacturer's figure is usually based on a standard with a fixed coverage, for example five per cent of the page printed, plain text without photos. A document with lots of graphics or photos will use correspondingly more ink than the standard figure assumes.

Inkjet or laser: different cost structures

Inkjet printers are usually cheaper to buy, but each cartridge often only lasts a few hundred pages. Laser printers cost more up front, but a toner cartridge frequently lasts several thousand pages. For lots of everyday text printing, such as invoices or forms, a laser printer usually works out better over time. For the occasional photo print, an inkjet remains the better fit, because it reproduces colour gradients more finely.

Another difference shows up when you do not print for a while. Inkjet printers can dry out when left unused, which clogs the nozzles and sometimes means an expensive cleaning cartridge or a trip to a repair shop. Laser printers using toner powder do not have this problem, because toner does not dry out; it is only heated and fused onto the paper during printing. If you only print now and then, factor this point into your calculation, not just the pure cost per page.

A worked example

Say printer A costs 49 euros to buy. A replacement cartridge costs 24 euros and, according to the manufacturer, lasts 200 pages, which comes to 12 cents per page. Printer B costs 149 euros, its toner cartridge costs 79 euros and lasts 2,500 pages, which comes to just over 3 cents per page. If you print about 1,000 pages a year, you pay around 120 euros for ink alone with printer A and around 32 euros for toner with printer B. Add the higher purchase price of printer B, and the extra 100 euros you invested has paid for itself through the lower running costs after a little over a year. Every year after that, printer B saves you around 88 euros compared with printer A.

Why XL cartridges and ink tank systems are often cheaper

Besides the standard cartridge, many manufacturers offer an XL or XXL version, which costs more to buy but delivers disproportionately more pages, bringing down the cost per page. Some inkjet printers also come with a refillable ink tank instead of individual cartridges, which you top up with ink from bottles. Such a machine usually costs more to buy, but the cost per page is often much lower than with traditional cartridge systems. Whether it pays off depends on how much you actually print over the year.

Other running costs that are easy to overlook

On top of ink or toner there is paper, whose price varies with quality and quantity. Some laser printers also need a new drum unit or maintenance kit after a certain number of pages, which is usually listed separately in the manufacturer's information on consumables. Before you buy, it is worth checking quickly whether such extra parts are needed for the model at all, rather than discovering them the first time something stops working.

• Divide the cartridge or toner price by the manufacturer's page yield to find the cost per page.
• Compare this figure across several models, not just the purchase price of the printer.
• Estimate your yearly printing volume realistically before you choose between inkjet and laser.
• Check whether XL cartridges or an ink tank system would bring down the cost per page for the amount you print.

Before you order a particular printer, it can be worth browsing the categories to compare prices for the printer and matching supplies side by side. How to assess the running costs of household appliances in general follows a very similar principle to printers: the purchase price is only the start of the calculation. And what the legal guarantee actually covers if something breaks within the first two years in the EU is explained in the article on guarantees and warranties. Outside the EU, your own country's consumer rules apply.

Frequently asked questions

Are the manufacturer's page yields realistic?

They are based on a fixed test standard with low coverage. In everyday use with more graphics, photos or denser text, the number of pages you actually get is often lower than stated.

Is a more expensive printer worth it if you print very little?

Not necessarily. If you only print a handful of pages a year, the lower cost per page hardly makes a difference, and the higher purchase price never pays for itself. The calculation mainly pays off if you print regularly.

Which is cheaper in the long run, original or compatible cartridges?

Compatible cartridges usually cost less per page, but print quality and durability can vary depending on who makes them. Comparing the cost per page still makes sense, whichever option you go for.

Does electricity add noticeably to printer costs?

Compared with ink or toner, a printer's power consumption in normal use is usually much lower. The consumables almost always remain the bigger cost factor.