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

Issue #0634/1 - Can Xerox be serious? New Phaser 6110 is allegedly “the affordable replacement to business inkjets”, yet Konica Minolta’s new magicolor 2500W costs 38% less to run even though it costs 2.6% more to buy.

This week we see the launch of three new laser printers that bolster the ultra low-cost entry-level category considerably but with characteristics and running costs that vary almost more than any we’ve yet experienced. Ironically, purchase prices are contained within a very tight band.

Xerox Phaser 6110

We have to start with Xerox’s Phaser 6110, a printer that Xerox claims is its “most affordable desktop colour laser printer”, claiming that it is a replacement for business inkjet printers.

A starting price of £189 / €274 / $349 ($249 after a rebate), is claimed to be less than a single front row ticket to a Rolling Stones concert. Having not thought about buying one of those, I have no comment! Certainly, it makes the Phaser 6110 the lowest priced colour laser printer on the market. But, is that enough?

This isn’t about purchase price, its about the total package and, in this instance, Xerox cannot even claim to be providing a higher specification in the Phaser 6110 than the competition:

• it is the equal slowest printer in the group, with print speeds of 4ppm in colour and 16ppm in mono against a minimum of 5ppm colour from all but the Canon LBP-5200
• maximum duty cycle is only 24,000 pages per month, whereas several others are capable of 35,000 pages per month (CLJ1600 is rated at only 20,000 pages while Canon does not specify)
• and it does not have a built-in network interface, which is a standard feature on the Dell 3010cn and Lexmark C500n.

So, we see that Xerox is providing a basic machine with nothing positive to differentiate it except a list price advantage of £5 in a category where purchase prices fall within a narrow band anyway! Users are being led into a scale of costs that they cannot easily foresee, duped by the low ticket price on the machine itself. I’m sure they don’t realise that, over three years, they can expect to pay nearly £5,100 for their printing!!

If we focus on Cost per Page and overall Total Cost of Printing, we find that the Phaser 6110 is actually the most expensive machine to run under all three of the cost measurements. It even pushes the Lexmark down off its habitual ‘most costly’ slot.

Mono Cost per Page on the Phaser 6110 (2.48 pence per page) runs at 15% higher than the Lexmark C500n and 72% higher than the least costly machine in the group – in this instance, the Konica Minolta magicolor 2500W.

Colour Cost per page is even worse with a nominal colour CPP (at an incredibly high 12.46 pence) that is 20% higher than the Lexmark and 58% higher than the least costly – Canon LBP-5200 this time.

Putting all three elements together, and calculating an overall Total Cost of Printing over three years, the Phaser 6110 again comes out as 20% more expensive than Lexmark’s C500n with a CPP of 5.65 pence. With the Canon LBP-5200 proving to be the most cost-effective laser device in the group overall, the Phaser 6110 works out to be a massive 62% more expensive.

Going back to the total spend over a three-year period, this works out that a Lexmark owner should expect to part with almost £4,250 while a Canon LBP-5200 owner could reckon on spending just £3,135 in comparison to £5,100 on the Xerox Phaser 6110.

But, since Xerox makes a claim to be able to replace ‘more expensive’ business inkjet printers, let’s bring the Hewlett-Packard Officejet Pro K550 into the equation. This business inkjet device uses Hewlett-Packard’s off-axis individual ink system with long-life print heads. One of these print heads (Black/Yellow) should need replacing twice during our three-year period of ownership, where 2,500 pages are being printed every month. Working on the standard assumption that only 30% of pages are serious colour pages (5% of each colour), the other printhead (Cyan/Magenta) should not need replacing at all.

From every angle, the inkjet machine from Hewlett-Packard is less costly than any of the laser printers. And, even quoting normal print mode, rather than draft mode, print speed is far from disappointing against the laser competition.

In fact, colour print speed from the K550 inkjet is higher than anything offered by the lasers and mono print speed is higher than two of the lasers. However, the Hewlett-Packard Officejet Pro K550 inkjet device has a purchase price that is a whopping 28% lower than Xerox’s Phaser.

Inkjet technology is cheaper to produce than laser technology and, therefore, the 28% lower purchase price of the Officejet Pro K550 should come as no surprise. That it enjoys such a low nominal Cost Per Page is perhaps not so obvious, as manufacturers are able to pitch the CPP at whatever level they feel users will pay for the privilege of printing.

In this instance, the K550 does enjoy a very competitive Cost Per Page to add to its low purchase price. Indeed, it is so well priced for business users that there is no laser printer that can even begin to touch it’s low cost at a print volume of 2,500-3,000 pages per month.

Indeed, against the Phaser 6110 – ranked as ‘The Most Expensive Laser Printer’ – the K550 will cost users a somewhat significant 62% less per page than the Phaser 6110 (meaning that the Phaser 6110 works out to be 164% more expensive to run than the K550!).

Uk Sub-£250 colour	Purchase	Print Speed		Nominal CPP	Mixed mono/colour CPP over 3 years
Canon Laser Shot LBP-5000	£194	Mono Colour	8 ppm 8 ppm	2.04 pence 10.21 pence	4.62 pence
Canon Laser Shot LBP-5200	£203	Mono Colour	19 ppm 4 ppm	1.59 pence 7.89 pence	3.48 pence
Dell 3010cn	£209	Mono Colour	25 ppm 5 ppm	1.69 pence 9.37 pence	4.22 pence
Hewlett-Packard Colour LaserJet 1600	£219	Mono Colour	8 ppm 8 ppm	1.91 pence 9.69 pence	4.40 pence
Hewlett-Packard Officejet Pro K550	£136	Mono Colour	12 ppm 10 ppm	0.94 pence 4.64 pence	2.14 pence
Konica Minolta magicolor 2500W	£194	Mono Colour	20 ppm 5 ppm	1.44 pence 7.95 pence	3.51 pence
Lexmark C500n	£205	Mono Colour	31 ppm 8 ppm	2.15 pence 10.41 pence	4.71 pence
Xerox Phaser 6110	£189	Mono Colour	16 ppm 4 ppm	2.48 pence 12.46 pence	5.65 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 2,500 pages per month; 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.

Looking at the total spend over the three-year period, whereas we saw that the Phaser 6110 will cost the user in excess of £5,000, the Officejet comes in at a total spend of less than £2,000 (~£1,930) – an incredible difference that must, surely, speak volumes to the discerning user.

On this basis, that the Phaser 6110 is “an affordable replacement to business ink-jet printers” is as downright absurd a claim as one can imagine and one that Xerox is irresponsible to make.

If purchase price were the only factor involved, then the claim to be a “Brilliant Price” would just about be true, insofar as the purchase price is the lowest amongst the laser printers. But to add the “affordable” tag (which implies ‘all-round cost’, not just purchase price), and to compare it with business inkjet printers, is blatantly incorrect and misleading.

Canon Laser Shot LBP-5000

Bringing its own 8ppm single-pass engine to market, already in use in the Hewlett-Packard Colour LaserJet 1600, Canon is attacking this sector hard. It already has the four-pass LBP-5200 taking the award as least expensive laser machine to run in the group, and now introduces this single-pass machine (Laser Shot LBP-5000) with aggressive purchase price and cost of running that beats both Xerox and Lexmark, placing it in the upper-middle band within the group.

There is actually nothing remarkable about the LBP-5000 but it allows Canon to use its engine in a branded product and target greater visibility in the market as a whole and specifically within the entry level segment.

At 8ppm for both mono and colour printing, this machine is not a fast mono device but, for those users with more of a focus on colour pages than mono pages, 8ppm in colour is a valuable asset. Single-pass in itself offers valuable benefits – mainly much quieter operation. Four-pass machines are very noisy and clunky as they rotate the toner carousel during printing.

One point to make here though, is that the Lexmark C500n, although costly to run, offers a mono speed of 31ppm as well as a colour print speed of 8ppm and a built-in network interface … could be considered to be the most appropriate printer in the group for certain categories of user.

Paper capacity is an average 250 sheets but there is an optional second feed of a further 250 sheets. None of the printers in this group offer automatic duplexing, however, this model does not even offer a manual duplex capability through the printer driver.

Konica Minolta magicolor 2500W

At this end of the printer market, it is difficult to create a machine that really does differentiate itself. Konica Minolta’s magicolor 2500W makes a brave effort with several differentiating features:

• the highest maximum duty cycle – 35,000 pages per month
• toner cartridges pre-installed
• 4x the memory of the Canon LBP-5000
• high capacity toner cartridges available (4,500 pages)

With its 35,000-page duty cycle and optional high capacity toner cartridges, the magicolor 2500W is a machine that is capable of servicing a busier office than many of the other machines.

Experiencing a massive purchase price cut of 31% over its predecessor (magicolor 2400W), the 2500W is also aggressively priced and has a long-term Cost of Printing, 3.51 pence, that only just fails to beat Canon’s LBP-5200 by a very small margin. We have also already seen that this machine has the lowest nominal mono CPP in the group.

Particularly impressive is the fact that, although the machine ships with 1,500 pages-worth of colour toners (standard cartridges), it ships with a full high capacity black cartridge (4,500 pages). This represents excellent value for money at purchase.

As an aside, it is very interesting to note that Dell has decided not to challenge the market as aggressively in this exceptionally competitive category as it does in the single-pass laser printer categories. The 3010cn from Dell is not the least costly laser printer here on the basis of any of the measurement factors.

To round off then, Konica Minolta and Canon are both tackling the entry-level arena with new offerings that are fair-minded (although unexciting on the part of Canon) whereas the offering from Xerox appears not to be able to compete on any front, despite the claims of the marketing literature.

In reality, a cost conscious user will do far better to ignore the supposedly better technology of the laser printer and to target business inkjet as offering all the capabilities required in a small business environment at a much lower cost. Xerox’s Phaser 6110 certainly cannot cut it.

However, alongside the Phaser 6110 laser printer, a multifunction version has also been launched – Phaser 6110MFP. Next week we’ll evaluate how that sits in the market and whether it represents a value offering.

~End~

This entry was posted on Friday, November 10th, 2006 at 12:03 am and is filed under New Products, Hardware, Pricing, Comparisons, 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.