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

Issue #0426/2 - Buying into colour laser printer has just become even easier—again! But, when pricing on consumables is increased to compensate for lower purchase price, the attraction may just vaporise.

Once again competition is driving down the prices of the ultra low-end colour laser printers. The latest manufacturer to slash pricing is Xerox with a 17% price reduction on its Phaser 6100DB in the Euro zone to €499 and a 20% reduction on the network-ready Phaser 6100DN to €599. In the UK, the reductions are even more aggressive with 21% off the BD version, to £329, and 25% off the DN version, to £399.\

Epson has also had the scissors out on its price list – but again only where the ultra low-end colour models are concerned. Under its UK-based ‘Choose Colour’ promotion, prices are realigned as shown in the accompanying table.
Konica Minolta’s models are also reduced in the UK (see table).
Also available from Konica Minolta is a multifunction, ScanCopy, version of the magicolor 2300W, with a UK price tag of £345.

Konica Minolta, however, has compensated for these hardware price reductions by increasing pricing on the high capacity colour toners for these low-end colour laser products by 8.5%.

Comparing these printers with the recently released HP LaserJet 2550L at £304/€452, there is very little between them in terms of purchase price. The magicolor has the price advantage but check out the CPP table on the next page in light of the consumables price rise!

This table shows both nominal Cost Per Page for mono and colour printing but also shows the CPP for the machines as used for 2,500 pages per month over a period of 3 years; assuming a 30% colour/70% mono printing mix; and including the purchase cost. Note that these figures are based on usage of high capacity cartridges throughout and make allowance for the fact that Epson, Konica Minolta and Xerox all ship the models with low capacity starter cartridges and Hewlett-Packard ships with full standard capacity colour cartridges.

Konica Minolta’s long term CPP is almost the most expensive because of these price rises while Epson’s C900 works out the best value for long term mixed usage because of the very low mono CPP.

But, while Hewlett-Packard makes light of the fact that many other manufacturers ship with low capacity starter cartridges, the LaserJet is actually showing as the most expensive machine to run long-term.

In fact, when the machines are run over a long period of time using maximum capacity cartridges, there is almost no difference in CPP due to shipping with starter cartridges. It is, of course, possible to find a page count at which one machine has changed cartridges while another has not, but when an average usage of 30% colour and 70% mono is involved, this is a pointless exercise.

Only the Xerox machine is disadvantaged at the print volume used here (by 2.7%) and if the monthly volume were to be increased to 3,500 pages, then there would be no difference between allowing for starter cartridges and not allowing for them with any of these machines. This issue really is only relevant at very low print volumes.

Hewlett-Packard points out that the major quality control item within the printer is being changed every time the toner is changed and therefore that the quality will be consistent from birth to death whereas the other printers will suffer from quality degradation over life.

Users must make up their own mind where their priority lies – overall cost or possible quality issues, in the same way that they have to decide between purchase cost or running cost!

~End~

This entry was posted on Friday, August 27th, 2004 at 12:02 am and is filed under Supplies, Pricing, 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.