Often we get asked by customers tossing up whether to buy one of two printers “is Printer A better than Printer B?”. The usual answer (if the printers are basically similar – similar dpi, similar print speed, similar price etc.) is for them to compare the cost per page for each printer. For example, the HP Laserjet 1010 and the Lexmark E230.
The HP 1010 uses the Q2612A cartridge (withich contains drum and toner all in one) which costs around $95.00 and prints 2000 pages, giving a cost of 4.75 cents per page.
The Lexmark E230 uses seperate toner and drum cartridges – the drum needs to be changed every 30,000 pages – and toner which yields 2,500 pages. So, the drum costs around $90.00 and the toner costs around $105.00, giving an all up cost of 3.9 cents per page. We work this out by dividing the drum cost by 30,000 pages and the toner cost by 2,500 pages and adding the two figures together.
A difference of 0.8 cents per page may not sound like much, but every 10,000 pages you would be saving $80 – thats nearly a third of the cost of the printer! Next time you are researching printers to buy, make sure you take the cost per page calculation into consideration.