TCPglobal - news, views and issues on total cost of printing

Issue #0736/1 - Printer manufacturers have begun targeting power users with highly specified printers with low purchase prices. Firstly Samsung launched its CLP-350N in September and at the end of October Xerox released its new Phaser 6130.

Both Samsung’s CLP-350N and Xerox’s new Phaser 6130 power-user colour laser printers offer low-volume customers an amazingly high specification at what Xerox describes as an ‘affordable price’ – Samsung makes no comment but its pricing is lower than Xerox’s!

Samsung CLP-350N

While the Samsung machine is built on an up-rated version of its CLP-300 engine (to 5ppm colour and 19ppm mono), the new Xerox Phaser 6130 is built on a brand new Fuji Xerox engine that offers light-usage owners a level of sophistication and functionality previously totally unavailable – far higher than its main competitors, the Samsung CLP-300 and the Dell 1320c.

As an engine, Dell preceded Xerox to market with this printer (Dell Colour Laser Printer 1320c) but with some key differences to the Xerox version – not just talking about the rather nasty Dell custom casing and colouring. But, more about that later.

Dell 1320c

Printing at 12ppm in mono and 16ppm in colour and with toner-only cassettes and a relatively long-life imaging unit, the Fuji Xerox engine resembles a cross between the concepts used by Samsung in the CLP-300 / CLP-350N and Oki in its single-pass colour print engines. The closer resemblance is clearly with the configuration of the Samsung engine though.

Off-axis toner-only cassettes, in the configuration adopted by Samsung and now Fuji Xerox, are very easy for the user to access and change as well as being environmentally friendly, as discussed in last week’s article "Environmental impacts of supplies configuration". It is not known at this point whether the cassettes used in any of these machines are made from biodegradable plastics but the very fact that there are no OPC drums or developer rollers included is great for reducing waste.

Dell and Xerox use toners of different capacities and the imaging unit is quoted differently but with the same obvious life-time intent. In both cases the printer ships with starter cartridges of 1,000 pages per cartridge and both have standard and high capacity cartridges available as aftermarket supplies.

Dell says that its high capacity colour toners are 2,000-page capacity, while Xerox goes for 1,900 pages. However, while Dell indicates a yield of 2,000 pages for its black cartridge, Xerox offers a yield of 2,500 pages.

Xerox Phaser 6130

Unfortunately, this difference doesn’t mean that the nominal Cost Per Page from the Xerox black cartridge is any lower than the CPP from the Dell. Using typical street pricing for all comparisons in this article, Dell’s nominal black CPP works out at a very respectable 1.66 pence (similar to many mono laser printers of a similar speed), while Xerox’s is a slightly high (but not too excessive) 2.19 pence (nominal CPP for some mono printers approach the 3 pence level).

Nominal colour CPP from Xerox does not stand out as being quite so much higher than Dell’s, being just 18% higher instead of the 32% higher we see with the black. So, although the Xerox nominal colour CPP is on the high side, it is not as high as we see from Samsung for its CLP-300 (even taking the lowest pricing we’ve found!) and is certainly considerably lower that the Phaser 6130’s baby brother the Phaser 6110.

* (inc. VAT and Delivery)

Note that for this level of machine, the mixed mono/colour CPP over three years shown in the accompanying table is calculated on the basis of 500 pages per month; 70% pages in mono and 30% pages in colour; is based on the use of maximum capacity supplies; takes into account any standard, or starter, supplies shipped with the device; and also includes the cost of purchase. All prices are manufacturer’s recommended prices without tax.

Samsung’s CLP-350N, however, takes a totally different approach to toner – one that is completely alien to the category.

Not only is the machine based on standard toners with a high-yield, offering a massive 4,000 pages from the black cartridge and 2,000 pages from each of the colour cartridges, but the machine actually ships with those toners, not with half-filled starter toners.

Curiously, pricing on the black toner has actually been set at a rather high level (over £60), giving a nominal CPP of 2.18 pence! With a nominal colour CPP just short of 10 pence, and a low purchase price, the overall Cost of Printing over three years is an aggressive 4.83 pence – beaten only by Konica Minolta’s magicolor 2530DL at an impressive 3.61 pence.

Because all of these printers are so new, there is little live street pricing available for the supplies and pricing falls close to the manufacturer’s RRP. As the machines establish themselves in the market over time, we might find that the Cost of Printing falls a little due to lower average street pricing as discounting kicks in.

What this print speed means though is that this print engine is faster in colour than any of the other low-price colour laser printers. It beats Samsung’s CLP-300 and the Phaser 6110 by a factor of 4 and the other four-pass machines in the class, including the new CLP-350N, by a factor of 2.5. It is even 50% higher than Hewlett-Packard’s Colour LaserJet 2600n.

Even though the differential in purchase price with the Samsung is 100% (at its lowest), the extra speed is sure to work in favour of the Phaser 6130 and Dell 1320 where small business users are concerned.

Unlike the Samsung CLP engine, the Fuji Xerox engine incorporates an imaging unit that Xerox rates for 30,000 pages – more than the anticipated life of the machine and a figure that allows for users to print an average of 833 pages per month over a three-year period.

Dell, on the other hand, rates it only at 20,000 pages. Perhaps Dell is being supplied with a lower grade unit or perhaps Dell is being more conservative. However, as there is no indication that a Dell owner can purchase a replacement, and Xerox classifies the part as a service item rather than a consumable (covered under any existing warranty or maintenance contract), higher-usage Dell owners could run into trouble. Hopefully, this unit is covered under maintenance contracts like other Dell printers.

With a life of 20,000 pages over three years, the user can print 555 pages per month without having to change the unit. As Dell recommends its 1320c printer to users wishing to print between 400 and 1,200 pages per month, we have a distinct mismatch here and Dell may be guilty of misjudging the life expectancy of this machine.

Xerox, on the other hand, indicates its confidence in the engine by quoting a maximum monthly duty cycle of 40,000 pages (one-third more pages than the maximum quoted life-expectancy of the printer!).

In fact, users would be far better off (28% better off!) buying the Phaser 6180, even at 500 pages per month, let alone 833 or 1,200 pages per month, instead of the Phaser 6130!

Samsung, like Dell, also goes for a relatively low maximum monthly duty cycle for the CLP-350N but with the difference that the imaging unit is a consumable item and can be changed easily as many times as the user may desire – thus potentially extending the life of the printer indefinitely.

Network-Ready Entry-Level Colour Laser Printers

Underlining the fact that the CLP-350N and Phaser 6130 are targeted at sophisticated, low-volume users, the printers comes equipped not just with PCL6 emulation but with PostScript 3 as well (genuine Adobe PostScript from Xerox, emulation from Samsung). In addition, both printers are network-ready out of the box, as well as offering USB.

Dell’s 1320c is not in this league at all! It is targeted at the low-budget user who is buying a Dell PC or laptop. It is host-based only and does not come ready equipped for network usage – USB only – an upgrade is required for network connection. It is also designed to match the colour scheme of Dell’s PC range, which results in the whole machine taking on a very unattractive appearance that would do nothing for the work environment (except to help lose it amongst the PCs and monitors!).

Where the Dell and Xerox machines do coincide is in their print options. Dell specifically mentions such features as manual duplex through the print driver, n-up printing, booklet printing and watermarks. Although manual duplex is not specified by Xerox, the Phaser 6130 does have a ‘skip blank pages’ feature, which implies duplex printing (see article "Xerox again targets productivity on office printing – Smart Duplexing"), together with other features not mentioned by Dell, including: fit to new page size; poster printing; and banner sheets. It is also capable of continuing to print in black only if one of the colour toners has run out.

Even more impressive though, is that the Phaser 6130 offers higher levels of valuable functionality, such as Secure Print, Proof Print and RAM collation – as long as 256MB RAM is installed (128MB standard - max 1,152MB). Again for the demanding user, the Phaser 6130 incorporates solid colour simulations that are approved by Pantone Colour, together with ICC profiling and Xerox Colour Correction. Xerox also offers its usual range of sophisticated Xerox management tools on the Phaser 6130.

In addition, and affecting both Fuji Xerox-based printers, is a high paper capacity for a printer in this category. At 250 sheets, this is higher than all but the Hewlett-Packard LaserJet 2600n. Sadly there is no optional second feed available but few users in this category are likely to need dual feeds and, if they do, it is worth buying up the range.

As if to contradict, although the basic paper capacity of the CLP-350N has not changed since the CLP-300 (at 150 sheets), there is now a second paper feed unit available as an option. This unit offers a capacity of 250 sheets, bringing maximum capacity to 400 pages.

Still on paper handling, manual duplexing is one of Samsung’s stronger functionality points, it is very clear and simple to use and very effective.

On the whole though, Samsung does not major on added value functionality, rather in ease of use and low entry cost. This is perhaps emphasised by the fact that the CLP-350N ships with 128MB RAM in order to handle PCL and PostScript capabilities but maximum RAM is a miserly 256MB.

So, to wrap up on the new Fuji Xerox engine, the Xerox Phaser 6130 is an extraordinarily highly specified printer at a keen purchase price that is exceptionally well-conceived for demanding small businesses. Priced by Xerox at £214 / €389 / $449 ex. tax, there are no real discounts emerging as yet but this may come (though Xerox printers do not tend to attract discounting in the way that printers from other manufacturers do).

Xerox easy-to-change
toner cassettes

Its design is compact, clean and attractive, with an easy access door at the side for changing the toner cassettes (preinstalled at purchase). Like the Samsung CLP-300 and CLP-350N, the Phaser 6130/Dell 1320c is a quiet engine because of the few moving parts and particularly the absence of a rotating toner carrousel.

Dell, for its part, offers the same Fuji Xerox engine in a cut-down version that is ideal for those with a very tight hardware budget – priced by Dell at only £119 / €169 / $299 (expensive in the US!) ex. tax. Dell makes mention of the 1320c being ideal for upgrading from ‘high running cost inkjet’ but buyers should be very wary about taking this as fact – there are a number of inkjet options available that offer overall Total Cost of Printing than colour laser!

To use the 1320c as an upgrade to a mono laser printer is distinctly feasible though. At a nominal mono CPP of 1.66 pence (as already mentioned), the running costs of the 1320c are very much at a similar level to most mono laser printers in a similar speed category (and are significantly lower than some). Colour printing can then be viewed as something of a bonus.

There is no doubt that Samsung’s engine and system design ensures a very easy to use low-end printing solution, with little to fault it – it is just a shame that the design of the machine is somewhat boxy and unexciting. Typical in-store purchase pricing is £199 / €280 inc. tax (not yet available in the US).

As the more highly specified machine, everything Xerox claims about the Phaser 6130 looks to be very true – and it is good to see Xerox making use of engines from its own stable for low-end machines instead of buying them in from Konica Minolta and Samsung. Dell’s 3xxx series colour laser printers were Fuji Xerox engines that Xerox itself did not use.

~End~

This entry was posted on Friday, November 9th, 2007 at 12:02 am and is filed under Hardware, Strategy, New Products, Pricing, News, Issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.