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Issue #0539/1 - Low cost but expensive, Dell’s E340/E342n range can’t hold a candle to any other printer in its group on cost, especially Dell’s 1710 but neither represent best value for money when printing significant volumes.

Right up front, it must be clearly stated that the two printers new to this group, Dell’s 1710 and Lexmark’s E340/342 series, are very low cost newcomers in a category more typically associated with durable, high volume printers even though their print speed is not at the high end.

Dell 1710n

Both Dell’s 1710 and Lexmark’s E340/342n are rated for just 15,000 pages per month. This is very low by comparison to the other printers in the speed category. For instance, Epson’s innovative AcuLaser 2600N is rated for a maximum of 120,000 pages per month and Ricoh’s AP410 for 150,000 pages per month. Although rated five times higher than either Dell or Lexmark, Hewlett-Packard’s LaserJet 2420 duty cycle is still relatively low by comparison to the Epson or Ricoh at 75,000 pages per month – half the Ricoh rating.

Therefore, although printers within the group presented here compete on print speed, there are large differences in pricing levels and volume capability (as described above). However, the fact that prints speeds compete is of significance because print speed is the criterion that most users consider first when starting the process of purchasing a new printer. At this point, some users may well be tempted by the thought of a 28ppm printer for £300 without stopping to consider the durability and cost implications.

But, what is particularly interesting in this group is how they compare and compete on Cost of Printing! For this reason, we have presented figures based on several different monthly print volumes in order to illustrate the differences. This gives us the opportunity to see the effect of print volume on fast low-end machines against endurance mid-speed machines (of comparable print speeds).

Lexmark E340
and E342n

Firstly, the figure of 2,000 pages per month is chosen to avoid any requirement for maintenance kits to come into play on the upper-end machines and the top figure of 10,000 pages is a reasonable throughput for a printer of the calibre of those same printers. Network models have been used in all cases to ensure comparability of functionality. In terms of the Lexmark range this means using the E342n because it is the E340 that is the non network-ready model.

At this high level of monthly throughput (10,000 pages), both Dell 1710 and Lexmark E34X would burn themselves out within a matter of months. This means that at higher volumes, a new printer would be required every so often when the previous one burned out. The cost of such a replacement has not been factored into these calculations!

Long Term Cost per Page

So, what we see is that the Dell 1710n is the cheapest to buy at only £159 but, unusually for a low-priced machine (but typical of Dell), that it is also the cheapest to run for low volume printing. At the other end of the spectrum, Lexmark’s new E342n, despite being the second cheapest to buy (43% lower than the Epson and 61% lower than the Ricoh) is the most expensive to run long term – just by a fraction.

Ricoh AP410N

But, remember that we are talking about setting it against several heavy duty machines, particularly the Ricoh AP410N with a monthly duty cycle of 150,000 pages! As soon as the monthly page count begins to rise, the overall running cost per page of the other printers would begin to fall off rapidly while the CPP of the Dell and Lexmark would fall by a relatively small amount (if the machine was able to last that long).

By the time we get to the point of pushing 10,000 pages per month through these printers, the Lexmark is the most expensive by a long way – 25% higher than the Ricoh AP410N (the most expensive to purchase) and 81% more expensive than the Brother HL-7050N (the second most expensive to purchase).

This really underlines in a most graphic way that choice of printer has to be based on a broad set of criteria, taking into account a detailed investigation of running costs alongside purchase cost.

On this basis, it is clear that the Lexmark is never a good buy – it is a basic, if fast, personal printer that is expensive to run. If the major criterion for purchase is low purchase price, then it is the Dell that wins the day, especially as the non-network version costs less than £100 / €135 / $160 and, as long as monthly volume doesn’t exceed 2,500 pages per month, it is the cheapest to run long term. There is nothing to be gained by buying the Lexmark instead of the Dell because the Dell is Lexmark-built anyway.

Brother HL-7050N

Hewlett-Packard’s LaserJet 2420n holds an interesting position in the group. Purchase price is in the mid range and CPP on low volume printing is right at the top end of the range but, with increased page throughput, the long term CPP rapidly falls to a point where it is very competitive, even closely challenging the Dell machine.

Where it differs from the Dell machine is that, even though it does not have a maintenance kit to extend its life (like the Dell), its duty cycle is five times that of the Dell and it will therefore be capable of higher monthly volumes and will last the user much longer than the Dell. So, if pitched directly against the Dell 1710n, while the Dell user would have to buy a new machine to continue printing high volumes, thus pushing up the long term Cost of Printing, the Hewlett-Packard LaserJet 2420n would still be running at the low CPP for a long time to come.

Brother HL-7050N
fully configured

This entry was posted on Friday, December 9th, 2005 at 12:03 am and is filed under New Products, Supplies, Hardware, Pricing, Comparisons, Issues, News, Financials, Total Cost of Printing. 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.