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

Issue #0703/1 - A3 inkjet printers cost more than their A4 counterparts but offer high duty cycles and low Cost of Printing, representing a viable entry to A3 colour printing for any business. But, where are the AiO/MFPs?

Surprisingly few inkjet printers for general purpose office printing are offered with the capability for A3 or A3+ printing (11×17 inch or 13×19 inch). There is a tendency for A3 to be considered the sole domain of the professional, whether Graphic Artist or Photographer, or for A3 to be relevant only to the corporation that can afford an A3 laser MFP/copier.

For instance, Hewlett-Packard leads the field with four general purpose A3 inkjet products, including the Business Inkjet 2800 and Officejet Pro K850, Canon has two products and Epson has recently launched a new model to replace the 1290S. Lexmark has no A3 format inkjet printer. So this is seven machines in comparison to the plethora of A4 printers.

In addition, each of these manufacturers has A3 inkjet products targeted at the professional photographer, graphic designer or upper echelons of the photo enthusiast segment. We have excluded these from this comparison on the basis that they do not offer the general business market the low purchase price that is sought after.

As a very much smaller market segment, A3 printers tend to be rather more expensive than their A4 equivalents. This is to be expected anyway but the differential could be reduced if businesses were to move to A3 as a standard office format.

Starting prices for A3 office inkjet products in store are around the £150 / €210 / $270 mark, before tax, on RRPs that start at a little over £200 / just under €300 / around $270.

In the US, there appears to be a strange dearth of up-to-date general purpose A3 printer models available in stores. Those that do exist tend to be at the higher end of the price spectrum, such as the Hewlett-Packard Officejet Pro K850 and Business Inkjet 2800 rather than the more affordable Deskjet models.

Emphasising the relative insignificance of the low-cost A3 market sector, to my knowledge there is not one single A3 (11×17) inkjet All-in-One device on the market! For small businesses desiring to producing low-cost in-house marketing collateral, the larger format could prove to be exceptionally useful. As already indicated, A3 colour multifunction tends to be the domain of large corporations with large IT budgets but many small organisations would benefit strongly from having that larger format capability in a multifunction machine.

As with any inkjet device on the market today, all A3 inkjet printers are capable of producing high quality photographs. This is underlined by the nomenclature of Canon and Epson models that are branded ‘PIXMA’ in Canon’s case and ‘Stylus Photo’ in Epson’s. Each and every machine is, therefore, more than capable of printing high quality marketing materials and posters as well as producing the type of office output that benefits from an A3 format - large spreadsheets, organisation charts, employee notices, posters, etc.

Epson’s Stylus Photo 1400 is replacing the Stylus Photo 1290S (1280 in the US) at the same price but with an ink configuration that not only offers greater flexibility but should also offer a considerable reduction in Total Cost of Printing – around 37%.

Both are six-ink devices but, whereas the 1290S utilises a black ink tank in conjunction with a single five-ink tank, the 1400 moves to Epson’s Single Ink technology with the latest Claria inks. This is the single most significant factor in the reduction in print costs, ensuring that wasted ink will be greatly reduced, especially where dominant colours are used in the print material.

One point that should be noted here is that Epson six ink printers could, and should, offer even lower cost of printing than they do but are hampered because the printers use all six inks (including photo inks) for office printing (e.g. colour spreadsheets). Noted during product testing here at CharisCo Printer Labs, Epson confirms this fact in the yield figures quoted under ISO 24712 for each ink.

This is bad news for the office print user because the photo inks cannot be turned off for office printing but are not needed for the colour rendition required in an office print job. Photo printing requires as broad a colour gamut as possible with fine tonal gradations but office printing is more about sharp edges and vibrant colour – absolutely no need for six inks that boost print costs unnecessarily.

Print speed is improved in the new model – 15ppm in both mono and colour, compared to about 9ppm from the outgoing model. While being an improvement, and faster than the low-end and less expensive Deskjet 1280, 15ppm is slower that all of the other competing printers. Indeed, the mono print speed is 50% slower than the slightly more expensive Deskjet 9800.

Epson has, for some years, offered a roll paper option for a number of its small format printers, including A4 photo printers. The new Stylus Photo 1400 is one of those devices (great for banner printing) and the roll feed slot is also used for inserting heavy cut sheet media. No maximum paper weight is published.

With a maximum paper size of A3+ (13×19 inch), the Stylus Photo 1400 offers maximum flexibility for proofing activities (allows an edge-to-edge A3 image to be printed on paper large enough to included trim marks and image data), ideal for proofing of marketing materials and posters that will be sent out for lithographic printing.

To complete the media handling flexibility of this machine, a manual slot is also provided for direct printing onto printable CDs and DVDs surfaces. Epson and Canon are the only major printer manufacturers to offer this facility.

Moving on to Cost of Printing, as already indicated, the new Stylus Photo 1400 offers users a significantly reduced Total Cost of Printing, mainly due to the use of six individual ink tanks instead of the black plus quin-colour (5-ink) cartridge configuration of its predecessor.

In making a true cost comparison between the outgoing Stylus Photo 1290S and the new Stylus Photo 1400, we are hindered by the fact that the methodology for testing ink yield is different – see last week’s issue of TCPglobal, Issue#0702 "New ISO yield standards for colour printing", for a full analysis of change to ISO 24712 from a 5% testing convention.

Using a selection of Hewlett-Packard inkjet printers for which yield data is available under both 5% convention and ISO 24712, an average increase in quoted yield has been calculated to help us through the interim period of changeover.

In this group of A3 office-oriented inkjet printers presented here (including the outgoing Epson Stylus Photo 1290S, incorporated for comparison purposes), yield data for half of the devices is only quoted under the old 5% convention, while data for the other half is available from ISO 24712 testing. These are indicated by dark red and dark green colouring respectively in the attached table.

So, for the models where only 5% data is available, we have applied a uniform yield increase into the computations – 22.5% for mono inks and 33% for colour inks – thus decreasing the nominal Cost Per Page and long-term Cost of Printing.

In this way, while we wait for all manufacturers to catch up with the ISO standard, we are able to arrive at an approximation of a comparison between machines tested differently.

For machines that are already quoted to ISO 24712, these figures provide a better comparison between devices than we experienced under the old 5% convention.

First of all, we note again that the new Epson machine is very much more economical to run than its predecessor, by 37%, and that it is more economical than either of the Canon printers. Surprisingly, it manages to be more economical even though all six inks are used for office printing. However, it cannot touch any of the Hewlett-Packard printers for economy over a three-year period of ownership.

It’s a close run contest though! Hewlett-Packard’s Deskjet 9800 (also tested to ISO 24712 as is the Stylus Photo 1400), is surprisingly costly in comparison to the other Hewlett-Packard printers.

Here we see clear evidence of the effect of the six-ink office printing on the Epson. While the Deskjet 9800 actually has a higher nominal mono CPP that the Epson, the use of photo inks for office printing by the Epson pushes up the nominal colour CPP to the point where its long-term Cost of Printing is higher than the Deskjet – and this is on a lower purchase price as well as a lower nominal mono CPP than the Deskjet.

UK A3 Office Colour Inkjet	Purchase	A4 Print Speed		Nominal CPP	Mixed mono/colour CPP over 3 years
Canon PIXMA iX4000	£249	Mono Colour	18 ppm 14 ppm	2.19 pence 6.76 pence	4.22 pence
Canon PIXMA iX5000	£329	Mono Colour	25 ppm 17 ppm	2.19 pence 6.76 pence	4.44 pence
Epson Stylus Photo 1290S	£254	Mono Colour	9.4 ppm 9 ppm	4.34 pence 8.78 pence	6.41 pence
Epson Stylus Photo 1400	£254	Mono Colour	15 ppm 15 ppm	1.81 pence 7.04 pence	4.01 pence
Hewlett-Packard Deskjet 1280	£209	Mono Colour	14 ppm 11 ppm	1.83 pence 4.67 pence	3.21 pence
Hewlett-Packard Deskjet 9800	£279	Mono Colour	30 ppm 20 ppm	2.05 pence 5.72 pence	3.87 pence
Hewlett-Packard Officejet Pro K850	£305	Mono Colour	24 ppm 21 ppm	1.06 pence 4.07 pence	2.65 pence
Hewlett-Packard Business Inkjet 2800	£383	Mono Colour	24 ppm 21 ppm	1.06 pence 4.07 pence	2.87 pence

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 1,000 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.

Also with Epson, we see clear evidence of the confusion caused by the previous yield testing and quoting convention. The Stylus Photo 1290S comes out as the most expensive machine in the group (even after making an adjustment to compensate for the 5% test convention) – not just because it carries a quin-colour ink cartridge but also because the black cartridge is very uneconomical.

Now – at first glance, it doesn’t appear that it should be uneconomical. The brochure quotes a yield for the black cartridge of 540 pages – quite reasonable against a colour cartridge with a yield of 330 pages.

BUT – that black yield is quoted at 3.5% page coverage, meaning that the true yield at 5% coverage is more like 324 pages. So, black yield is low but the price is high.

Cost of Printing - A3 Office Inkjet Printers

This emphasises the nature of the dangers associated with having no clear standard to work to. Manufacturers were able to slip a figure into the mix that is misleading and unrepresentative of the true situation. As ISO 24712 takes hold, we all hope that some clarity will emerge.

Moving on to the Hewlett-Packard offerings, there is a clear difference between the running costs of the more expensive, heavy-duty machines in comparison to the low-end devices. With the range spanning low price entry-level (Deskjet 1280) up to the high-level Business Inkjet 2800, with its laser-like variants and options (up to dtn model), the Officejet Pro K850 is the most economical printer overall in this group. But, this is only because the purchase price is lower than the Business Inkjet 2800.

Both printers use the same base print engine with the same cartridges, so there is no difference in nominal Cost Per Page. However, the Business Inkjet 2800 is worth the extra money for higher volume customers.

We have based these cost comparisons on a monthly page volume of 1,000 pages. All of the Hewlett-Packard printers are rated for a maximum monthly duty cycle of at least 5,000 pages and the Officejet Pro K850 is rated at 6,250 pages. However, the top of the range Business Inkjet 2800 has a rated duty cycle of 12,000 pages per month.

So, any of these Hewlett-Packard machines are well able to service a busy office environment but for those with higher print volumes, using the device as a low cost alternative to a laser printer, the Business Inkjet 2800 is the machine.

At first glance, 1.06 pence per mono page (nominal) is exceptional but we must remember that under the 5% convention, this would calculate out to 1.31 pence per page. We are going to need to get used to the figures but 1.06 pence (and even 1.31 pence) is certainly competitive with laser printers.

Three of these Hewlett-Packard printers have been on the market for more than 18 months, so could be due for replacement at any time from later this year. Even the K850 has now been available for more than one year.

Because of the ink set that is used by the Deskjet 1280 (No.45 black and No.75 tri-colour) the machine has not been tested to the new ISO ink yield standard, potentially indicating that this is the machine that is most likely to be replaced first. With their independent ink tanks, the higher level machines are more likely to experience longevity.

After making the yield adjustment, it looks as though Canon’s two offerings provide better economy than the outgoing Epson but struggle to compete with the incoming model – although they do offer rather better print speed. Putting them against the Hewlett-Packard models, while not at the forefront of the economy scale, the do look to compete well technically while not being too far adrift on the Cost of Printing.

Not every office needs an A3 capability but there are many that would make good use of the facility if they had it. Perhaps the profile given to this particular category is just too low-key.

~End~

This entry was posted on Friday, January 26th, 2007 at 12:03 am and is filed under Hardware, Supplies, Pricing, Comparisons, 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.