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

Issue #0704/1 - Kyocera Mita’s new A3 colour laser printer is clearly a competent machine with lower Total Cost of Printing than its competitors but also has some strange characteristics.

Kyocera Mita’s attractive new high volume A3 departmental printer, FS-C8100DN, signals a certain departure from the typical Kyocera Mita product model that we have come to expect in two major respects – low relative duty cycle and low consumables yield. In addition, the purchase price is high.

Where high volume departmental printing in large corporations is concerned, A3 format printers are often called on for the task partly because they are considered to be heavy-duty machines in comparison to A4 machines and partly because they offer the occasional A3 printing capability that may be demanded in a corporate environment.

So, although this new model boasts an uprated print speed and duty cycle (higher than its predecessor), it comes as some surprise that this new machine has colour toner cartridges that yield only 7,000 pages! Even the black has been downgraded to 15,000 pages.

For a machine that is being marketed primarily to the contract market, rather than the purchase and feed market, this leaves the machine severely handicapped.

UK A3 Single-pass colour	Purchase Duty Cycle	Print Speed		Nominal CPP	Mixed mono/colour CPP over 3 years
Hewlett-Packard LaserJet 5550dtn	£2,780 Max. 120,000	Mono Colour	28ppm 22ppm	1.24 pence 5.95 pence	3.62 pence
Hewlett-Packard LaserJet 9500hdn	£6,290 Max. 200,000	Mono Colour	24ppm 24ppm	1.19 pence 5.71 pence	3.98 pence
Kyocera Mita FS-8100DN	£7,499 Max. 120,000	Mono Colour	32ppm 16ppm	0.68 pence 3.33 pence	3.46 pence
Xerox Phaser 7760GX	£5,660 Max. 150,000	Mono Colour	45ppm 35ppm	1.25 pence 4.21 pence	3.49 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 10,000 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.

Firstly, although the duty cycle for the FS-C8100 is higher than it predecessor, FS-C8026, it is still low by comparison to competitors in the market. Having been increased from a maximum of 100,000 pages to 120,000 pages per month, only two A3 colour laser printers are inferior and these are both entry-level machines (Epson C9100 and Oki C8600).

This means that all the other A3 machines available, numbering seven, have duty cycles that are either the same or superior, several of these also being entry-level models. Three of these competitors have duty cycles of 150,000 pages and two are rated as highly as 200,000 pages (67% higher). This leaves two machines that are rated at the same level as the FS-C8100DN, both costing more than 60% LESS than the FS-C8100DN.

For the high volume target market specified by Kyocera Mita, the maximum monthly duty cycle really needs to be up at the 200,000-page mark, alongside machines like Hewlett-Packard’s Colour LaserJet 9500 and Lexmark’s C920.

This leads us straight into the second issue, the purchase price. As stated, the FS-C8100DN is targeted at the contract market (copier dealers using the copier sales model) and it is for this reason that the published RRP is £7,499.

But, even if that market is the primary target, one would expect some sales to be made through printer channels using the traditional printer model (purchase and feed). Looking at the issue the other way around, the competitors are also likely to be sold using the contract model. So, purchase price is significant either way.

For the purposes of this comparison, we are going to ignore the lower priced machines and focus on the ones that most closely compete with the FS-C8100DN. On this basis, there are only two logical competitors, the Hewlett-Packard Colour LaserJet 9500 and the Oki-engined Xerox Phaser 7760.

However, we have to pull one additional model into the line-up because Kyocera Mita has pitched its FS-C8100DN against the Hewlett-Packard Colour LaserJet 5550dtn instead of the faster and heavier-duty 9500hdn.

Here-in lies a problem. Both machines (FS-8100DN and CLJ5550dtn) are rated for the same duty cycle (120,000 pages), have a 1,100-sheet input capacity (without additional options) and offer PCL, PostScript and direct PDF printing. But, there the comparison ends.

Boasting a 14% higher mono print speed, the FS-C8100DN also offers a maximum paper capacity of 4,100 sheets using the optional 3,000-sheet high capacity paper input unit (effectively double the capacity of the CLJ5550dtn) and advanced paper finishing options, none of which are available for the CLJ5550dtn.

But, despite this technical superiority, we come to the third big issue. Because the toner cartridges for the FS-C8100DN have been significantly downsized from its predecessor, the colour cartridges are actually only just over half the capacity of the colour cartridges for the CLJ5550dtn – at 7,000 pages compared to 12,000 pages.

Thankfully Kyocera Mita has reduced the capacity of the mono cartridge by only 25% (compared to the reduction of 65% on colour capacity). This means that the mono yield is still just higher than the Hewlett-Packard CLJ5550 yield (but only by 15%).

For users intending to push the envelope with print volume, at 20,000 pages per month, the black cartridge will need changing every three weeks instead of every month and colour cartridges could need changing almost three times a month (if all pages held significant colour content). At the general 70/30 split (mono to colour printing), the colour cartridges would need changing approximately every four and a half weeks.

Total Cost of Printing - A3 Colour Laser

Target Competition to Kyocera Mita FS-C8100DN

By contrast, the cartridges on the predecessor (FS-8026 – 20,000 pages per colour) would have needed changing monthly for the black and approximately quarterly for the colours. Cartridges on the CLJ9500 (25,000 pages per colour) would be changed every five weeks and four months.

Looking at the Cost Per Copy of the consumables, the Kyocera Mita model displays much lower nominal figures, for both black and colour, than the Hewlett-Packard model. However, with a hardware purchase price that is more than 2½ times higher, the FS-C8100DN has to be used at a fairly high volume to ensure that overall Total Cost of Printing does challenge the CLJ5550dtn.

At a monthly volume of 10,000 pages, the costing works out just in favour of the FS-C8100DN (3.46 pence against 3.62 pence). But this is somewhat marginal considering the volume being printed. It represents a difference in expenditure of only just over £500 on a total expenditure of around £13,000 over three years.

Dropping the monthly print volume by half, to 5,000 pages, means that users will be better served by the Colour LaserJet 5550dtn. Here the CLJ5550dtn will cost only 4.39 pence, whereas the FS-8100DN will cost 5.27 pence – becoming significant.

It is at a monthly print volume of around 9,500 pages that both machines will cost exactly the same over three years. If the volume is pushed very high, however – up to the 20,000 pages quoted as an average duty cycle for the FS-8100DN, then the economy of this machine begins to become apparent. Total Cost of Printing will fall to 2.45 pence per page whereas the LaserJet 5550dtn will cost 3.13 pence.

Here then, we find one of the surprises. We are used to Kyocera Mita printers giving us a Total Cost of Printing that is at least 25% or 30% lower than Hewlett-Packard’s printers based on a relatively moderate page count. Here, we find this 20% cost advantage only at a high print volume.

If we turn our attention to the two printers that should be considered to be the primary competition, especially Xerox whose business lies historically in the contract market, we find another surprise.

Not only does Kyocera Mita’s FS-8100DN not top the list as the heaviest duty departmental printer but, at the mid volume of 10,000 pages per month, the machine is not the most economical either.

This accolade actually goes to Xerox – but with Hewlett-Packard’s Colour LaserJet 9500hdn falling 15% behind the FS-8100DN and unable to challenge at any print volume.

It is remarkable to see that the cost of running the FS-8100DN dips below the line belonging to the Phaser 7600GX only at at volumes above 10,000 pages per month (see accompanying chart) and that the two lines then track relatively closely to one another right up to 20,000 pages per month.

Total Cost of Printing - A3 Colour Laser

Kyocera Mita FS-C8100DN vs Major Competition

At the opposite end of the scale, for moderate to low-volume applications, we would need to turn to the entry-level models for maximum economy. But here also, we see the remarkable situation where Xerox’s Phaser 7760GX still costs about the same to run as Hewlett-Packard’s Colour LaserJet 5550dtn at only 7,500 pages per month.

To round off the discussion, Kyocera Mita’s new FS-8100DN clearly fits the bill where high volume contract sales are concerned as long as the purchase price is never introduced into the equation as a separate element. Outside of the contract market, and especially at low volumes, an entry level model will be more appropriate. In the middle ground, Xerox’s Phaser 7760GX is also a real option.

~End~

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 7th, 2007 at 12:03 am and is filed under Hardware, 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.