Supplies teacher
The up-front cost of your printer is just the beginning. The question is: what can you do to reduce running costs?
It wouldn’t be a printer group test without a discussion of running costs. Even though printers are cheaper than ever – and pack ever more features – there’s no escape from handing over fistfuls of cash every time a tank or cartridge runs dry.
In truth, print costs have come down slightly over the last decade, but at an average for this test of 2.3p per black page and 5.6p per colour page, it’s clear that printing remains expensive, particularly in colour. Print a ream of text and full-colour graphics and the ink or toner alone is likely to cost around £40. So why is printing so pricey?
Manufacturers have always maintained that the cost of supplies reflects the high cost of developing, testing and manufacturing highquality, highly stable inks and toners. There’s truth in this: our experience with cheaper third-party inks suggests that they can be more prone to clogging, that they can produce inferior prints and that they have a tendency to leak during fitting – or even inside the printer. And, while some third-party inks do perform reasonably well, they’re not always that much cheaper than the manufacturer originals.
It’s hard to believe that’s the whole story, however. The chief giveaway is that it always tends to be the cheapest printers with the highest running costs. Granted, there may be packaging reasons why a tiny inkjet can’t have truly high-capacity cartridges, but so-called “standard capacity” tanks are often half-filled versions of their high-yield equivalents and that smacks of what the market will bear.
Spray it again
Whatever the reasons for high print costs, there are practical ways to reduce them. The first and most important is always to choose a printer based on a realistic estimate of how much you’ll use it. An inkjet that gulps 3p worth of ink for each black page might be fine for occasional use, but run off the parish newsletter and you’ll soon be cursing your choice. So, if you need to print a lot, choose a printer with high-capacity supplies, a low page-cost and a high duty cycle.
Whatever printer you have, minimise costs by always hunting out the manufacturer’s highest capacity supplies. These cost significantly more but should work out better value over their lifetime. Often it’s better still to buy a multipack combining all colours, but only if you tend to use all colours at around the same rate.
Whatever supplies you choose, their cost will vary widely, so shopping around is important. We calculate running costs by comparing prices across at least 15 trusted online stores, and sometimes we find the cheapest consumable prices for a single printer across multiple sellers. Look for free shipping where possible, or buy a couple of sets to reduce the impact of carriage costs.
Ink innovation
Printer manufacturers are doing more to reduce the cost of printing. For example, selected HP printers support Instant Ink, a subscription-based service where you pay for a fixed volume of printing per month, while some Epsons support ReadyInk, a non-subscription-based alternative. With each, the printer automatically orders more ink when it begins to run low. We recommend you do the sums before signing up, but both can prove cheaper than buying ink yourself.
There’s also a trend towards refillable ink-tank printers, with Epson continuing to update its EcoTank range, and Canon recently releasing more Pixma G-series models – unfortunately samples weren’t yet available for this test. Refillable
“Whatever printer you have, minimise costs by always hunting out the manufacturer’s highest capacity supplies”
printers tend to cost significantly more than their cartridge-based equivalents: Epson’s EcoTank ET-2710 ( reviewed on p84) is almost four times the price of the Expression Home XP-452, which is more highly specified, but the EcoTank’s print costs are far lower.
If you baulk at the thought of spending £175 on an entry-level MFP, consider that the ET-2710 arrives with enough ink for 3,600 full-colour pages. Buying the XP-452 and enough cartridges to print the same would cost more than £400.
A final alternative is to buy third-party supplies, but we have had mixed results and don’t generally recommend them. Using them won’t invalidate your printer’s standard 12-month warranty unless the manufacturer can prove that a fault was caused directly by their use. Manufacturers can impose their own terms on extended warranties, however, meaning that if you have one, you should either steer clear of third-party supplies or buy them from a seller that warrants against damage to your printer.
Ultimately, the best way to minimise the cost of printing is to buy a printer with low running costs in the first place. Once you’ve done so, shop around for supplies, stick with the highest capacity options, and use it as little as possible.