When the more expensive printer is the cheaper option.

Choosing the right colour desktop printer for designers and illustrators.

I have recently had reason to buy two colour printers one for day to day office admin usage, the second for high end large format artwork and photography. Needless to say the options available are vast and sifting through the hundreds of options can drive one slowly insane.

So I rolled up my sleeves and got down to some serious research tackling both the high end and the low end options. What I eventually concluded in both cases is that cheaper printers are discounted by increasing cost on consumable media be that ink, toner or wax. In simplistic terms cheap printer expensive media. Expensive printer cheaper media.

So knowing this it then becomes a question of volumes and cost per page. You will quickly identify that quality is within brackets and that competitive printer sets are very similarly priced.

So for office admin high volume A4 usage I settled on the Xerox ColorQube. Xerox proudly announce this as the cheapest per page print on the market, but be careful. It is the more expensive model ColorQube 8880 at £1000+ that saves the money, its sibling the Xerox 8580 at £360 has all the same specifications but the cost per print is four times that of the 8880. Instead of ink or toner this Xerox uses wax which is also very eco-friendly with very little wastage.

To simplify things the 8880 costs approx 2.5p p/page the 8580 cost 10p p/page. This all comes down to the cost of the wax for each printer. The wax it turns out is identical in both machines but each is shaped to the individual printer.

For me I run a modest 5,000 pages per year, even so the more expensive printer starts saving me money in the second year. Anybody with higher volumes will see a return on investment much quicker and over the life of the machine a significant saving of many hundreds of pounds.

At the high end it is a similar story. For fine art Giclee printing I settled on the Epson SureColor options and for me it was a choice between the P600 at £554 or the P800 at £937. Again the specifications are very similar and quality is indistinguishable. The real differences were the size of the ink containers and the size of the actual print format. The important factor again was that the 80ml tanks on the P800 are noticeably cheaper per ml than the 25ml tanks on the P600.

However the choice was even easier to make once I identified that the P800 ships with 64ml colour tanks included in the price compared to 25ml tanks on the P600 this extra ink adds up to £374 worth of media, meaning there is only £9 difference in cost in real terms. As soon as you start replacing your ink tanks the cost savings are noticeable. Given that the P800 also offers A2 printing over A3+ on the P600 the choice was clearly in the P800’s favour. If you reclaim VAT then again this strengthens choosing the P800 with a £77 benefit above the P600.

In conclusion.
Find the quality of media that meets your needs. Ink, toner, wax, dye.
Settle on the manufacturer that meets your printer specification needs. Size, quality, features.
Then compare the sibling printers consumable costs. Cost per ml ink or cost per page.

You will usually find the more expensive printer is the cheaper option over all.