Issue #0901/1 – If they wish to save money on printing costs and maximise cost-effectiveness and return on investment, businesses should buy the highest-specification printer or MFP that they can afford. The hardware purchase budget should be stretched as far as possible in the interests of major long-term savings. This article addresses the question, ‘How can buying up the range benefit Total Cost of Printing?’
Kyocera FS-C5100DN,FS-C5200DN & FS-C5300DN
This principle is relevant to all printer users, whether home inkjet users, small business users or enterprises. The printer grouping addressed here, however, is relevant to small/medium businesses, and above, with a clear print requirement rather than micro-businesses or homes where print requirements may be entirely ad hoc, often entailing exceptionally low volumes.
On this basis, a business will almost never be better off financially if it buys the cheapest printer in any manufacturer’s range than if it stretches its budget as far as possible.
This transition always happens at a relatively low monthly page count, dependent on how much toner is contained in the start-up cartridges supplied with the printer. In this instance, looking at mid-range, duplex-capable, single-pass colour laser printers, this can start to happen at a print volume as low as 112 pages per month (Hewlett-Packard Colour LaserJet CP2025dn), or a total of just over 4,000 pages (70% printed in mono and 30% in colour) over three years.
On higher specification printers, however, this might not occur until the print volume reaches 556 pages per month (Canon LBP-5360), or a total of 20,000 pages (70% printed in mono and 30% in colour) over three years.
It is for this reason that most manufacturers ship printers with a low-capacity cartridge (often a starter cartridge) so that users are forced to buy a new set of cartridges as soon as possible after the hardware purchase.
Needless to say, if more than 30% of pages printed are colour pages, the figures below for colour toners will be reduced proportionally. Increased toner coverage on the page has the same effect.
| Black toner required after: | Colour toners required after: | |
|---|---|---|
| Kyocera FS-C5100DN | 2,500 pages (69 per month) | 6,667 pages (186 per month) |
| Kyocera FS-C5200DN | 3,500 pages (97 per month) | 10,000 pages (278 per month) |
| Kyocera FS-C5300DN | 6,000 pages (166 per month) | 16,667 pages (463 per month) |
| Canon LBP-5360 | 6,000 pages (166 per month) | 20,000 pages (556 per month) |
| HP CLJ CP2025dn | 1,200 pages (33 per month | 4,000 pages (112 per month) |
| HP CLJ CP3505dn | 6,000 pages (166 per month) | 20,000 pages (556 per month) |
| Samsung CLP-610ND | 2,500 pages (69 per month) | 6,667 pages (186 per month) |
Note: These calculations are based on total pages printed over three years when printing 70% of total pages in black only and 30% of total pages in colour (including black toner).
In the following two charts, we see that at 50 pages per month, the order in which the printers fall is directly related to the hardware purchase price and that, at 100 pages per month, those positions are retained but with total expenditure falling into a narrower band.
Purchase Price
Total Expenditure - Colour Laser Printers
HP CLJ CP3505dnIt is at just over 100 pages per month that the first major position-change occurs, at the point that the CP2025dn requires its first change of colour cartridges – launching it right to the top of the chart.
At only just over 200 pages per month, both of the other low-cost printers have also required sufficient cartridge changes to push their total expenditure up above total expenditure on the high-specification machines.
Positioning does change again for a band from about 300 pages and 800 pages per month when relatively high-cost cartridge changes on the high-specification printers push total expenditure back up near the top of the range again.
Total Expenditure - Colour Laser Printers
However, upwards of about 800 pages per month, the slightly faster FS-C5300DN becomes untouchable, while all but one of the other printers fall into a tight group, with relatively little to choose between them until the 2,000-page per month level is reached.
At this point, the FS-C5200DN joins its big brother in becoming noticeably more cost-effective than the rest of the group. It is only the (low-end) Hewlett-Packard CP2505dn that holds its position as the most expensive printer throughout, with a total expenditure that progressively diverges from the rest of the group.
All of the machines here should be able to handle up to 2,500 pages per month comfortably, even Kyocera’s FS-C5100DN and Hewlett-Packard’s CP2025dn, and to do so consistently over a three year period of ownership.
Canon LBP-5360 If we then push the envelope up to the average duty cycle quoted by Kyocera for its FS-C5300dn (15,000 pages per month), we can note other dynamics and make other recommendations regarding choice of printers.
Long before reaching 15,000 pages per month, the issue of moving up to even higher-level models than those included here raises its head and should be introduced into any purchase decision. The trouble is that Kyocera does not have any models above the FS-5300 without going to its A3 colour printer range, the FS-C8100 – and then we start experiencing much higher purchase prices (more than €4,000!), which change the purchase dynamics entirely.
By contrast, 40ppm is available from Xerox, 33ppm and 29ppm from Lexmark, and 30ppm from Konica Minolta and Hewlett-Packard.
If we consider high volume printing within an organisation, the requirement can be addressed in one of at least two different approaches.
Firstly, by raising the level of printer purchased, as suggested above. Using this approach, maximum cost efficiency of the device is maintained by selecting the device with the lowest Total Cost of Printing and a duty cycle more than capable of handling the volume. In these circumstances, this could easily bring A3 devices into play with much higher hardware purchase prices, such as the FS-C8100 but much lower toner costs.
This approach requires the printer to be located at least reasonably centrally in the organisation so that all users have ready access to it.
Alternatively, the organisation could take the decision to spread the hardware around by purchasing several printers and locating one close to each group of users. This solution is most appropriate in fragmented environments where users may have to move to a different floor (for instance) just to collect print jobs (thus introducing an undesirable level of inefficiency and cost into the workflow).
In doing this, the overall print volume is split between the several printers and none of them need to be as heavy-duty as the single machine would need to be.
However, the point here is that, in an organisation that prints 15,000 pages per month, it is far more cost effective to run one FS-C5300dn rather than the six FS-C5100dn or CP2025dn printers that would be required in order to comfortably print that volume.
In fact, you can see from the chart below that an organisation could actually own six FS-C5300dn printers, printing only 2,500 pages per month per machine instead of the total of 15,000 pages per month on a single machine, and still save money over owning multiple low-end machines that could, technically, handle the total volume.
Total Expenditure - Colour Laser Printers
Note that calculations for high page volumes includes the cost of replacing the printers, as appropriate, at the end of reasonable physical life while figures for the FS-C5200, FS-C5300 and CP3505dn include the cost of maintenance kits. Hence the number of replacement models equates to running several printers side-by-side to achieve the high volume.
Samsung CLP-610NDSo, for maximum savings, organisations should target owning as few devices, of as high a specification, as possible. Where logistics and ergonomics are important, requiring multiple machines anyway, organisations need to determine how best to distribute the devices so that device numbers are minimised but without compromising worker efficiency.
In creating this comparison, the objectives have been two-fold:
- Firstly, to show just how much money can be saved by selecting a high-specification machine in preference to one with a low hardware price, even for print volumes that may seem, at first appearance, to be too low to support that level of machine cost-effectively.
- Secondly, to make it as clear as possible that choice of printer must be based on an overall picture of total pages printed within the organisation, without any preconceptions, determining how to distribute printers around the organisation in such a way that entry-level printers are avoided altogether but numbers of high-specification printers, with their low Total Cost of Printing, are also minimised.
In addition, this comparison indicates just how cost-effective Kyocera’s ECOSYS technology is, despite the fact that the entry-level FS-C5100dn can only manage to sit inside the tight competitive grouping on the basis of Total Cost of Printing along with the Canon LBP-5360, Hewlett-Packard CP3505dn and Samsung CLP-610ND. For an entry-level machine, though, this is impressive!
Quite simply, the reason that the FS-C5100dn is on the market at all is to catch those users who do not understand the dynamics of Total Cost of Printing and are simply looking for the lowest possible entry price for the device type.
This is not at all unusual. Hewlett-Packard’s CP2025dn falls into this category as well, as does (to a degree) the Samsung CLP-610ND. All manufacturers need to include printers based on this type of market positioning purely because there are users demanding the lowest possible entry price and no manufacturer can afford to ignore that demand.
Total expenditure, and therefore long-term CPP and Total Cost of Printing, on the FS-C5100DN is always higher than the other two models. This is to be expected. However, right up to the 2,000-page per month level, the FS-C5100DN even sits very, very close to the FS-C5200DN (in particular).
Total Expenditure - Colour Laser Printers
To round off, with purchase prices of €821 and €508 respectively, we must consider the fact that the FS-C5300DN does not represent a major premium over the FS-C5200DN or even the FS-5100DN at purchase. Although this represents a difference of slightly over 60%, top to bottom, in real terms the difference is small for the increased life expectancy and, especially, decreased Total Cost of Printing.
Perhaps the most significant question that remains unanswered is, ‘Why is Kyocera not marketing MFP versions of these printers??’
~End~
