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

Issue #0720/1 - Choice of hardware will always be a key element in determining the Total Cost of Printing. This week we pitch one alternative model (recently released Xerox Phaser 6115 MFP) against some of the models considered in the low-end colour laser MFP line-up investigated in last week’s TCPglobal.

While Hewlett-Packard reorganises its inkjet supplies product range with the aim of opening up the choice of supplies and making that choice easier for its users, there still is, and almost certainly always will be, a strong burden on the user to select the correct hardware in the first place if economical printing is a priority.

In the arena that has captured the imagination of so many users, low-end colour laser MFPs, this is so clearly demonstrated by looking at the devices offered by Xerox.

Xerox provides a good illustration for this study as the engines used at the low end are not purchased from its own Fuji Xerox stable but from Samsung and Konica Minolta. This means that there are close, but different, levels of machine presented by Xerox, allowing the company to target different types of users easily while keeping the cost per page for the lowest volume users higher than average.

We’re talking about the Phaser 6110 MFP/X and Phaser 6115 MFP. Both are low-end devices, with little difference in purchase price, and both are of a similar print speed and functionality.

Let’s first run a brief comparison of the hardware – speeds, feeds and functionality – to determine whether there is any significant choice to be made between the two.

Xerox Phaser 6110 MFP

Clearly, and obviously, the first thing to note is that the hardware specification for the Phaser 6115 MFP is equal to or better than the Phaser 6110 MFP in almost every respect. The only significant difference is that the Phaser 6115 MFP actually has a slower scanner unit than the Phaser 6110 MFP/X.

Offering other significant advantages, though, the Phaser 6115 MFP includes the CentreWare IS embedded web server, which offers much more detailed feedback to the user regarding printer and supplies status as well as accessibility to Xerox’s online support systems.

Xerox Phaser 6115 MFP

Most physical and performance characteristics, such as print speed and memory, are either the same or only very slightly better on the Phaser 6115 MFP. However, business use intent is evident on the Phaser 6115 MFP with its 200-sheet standard paper input capacity with upgrade option to 700 sheets. Furthermore, the Phaser 6115 MFP is available in an auto-duplex version – a valuable asset and one that TCPglobal will always promote.

Finally, and most importantly – an area that cannot be adequately reflected in the technical specification – Xerox claims that the print and copy quality of the Konica Minolta driven Phaser 6115 MFP is much better than the Samsung driven Phaser 6110 MFP/X.

Now, consider the fact that the Phaser 6115 MFP costs only £569 (RRP) against £502 of the Phaser 6110 MFP – a premium of just 13.3%. In terms of typical street price this equates to £534 including tax and delivery for the 6115 MFP against £475 for the 6110 MFP/X – premium dropping to 12.4%.

For the extra performance offered: slightly faster print speed; standard paper capacity = 150 higher; more than twice the maximum paper capacity; 50% higher duty cycle; option for automatic duplexing, surely this minor price premium is worth paying? If you are unsure, consider further that the total spend over three years (1,250 pages per month) would be reduced by 28%, not increased.

This means that, not only would the overall cost per page be reduced by this 28% but the user would have to change cartridges less frequently – about half as often for the black and one-quarter the frequency for each of the colours. Fewer interventions means lower maintenance and administration costs.

On the downside, the out of pocket expenditure per cartridge is, of course, higher because the yield is 4,500 pages per cartridge instead of 1,000 pages per colour and 2,000 for black.

More interesting even than this, though, is to see what happens when we run the analysis for different numbers of pages printed.

What we are most interested in arriving at is the breakeven point where number of pages printed per month is concerned. By this I mean – at what monthly print volume does the Phaser 6115 MFP actually become more expensive to run than the Phaser 6110 MFP/X because of its higher hardware purchase price.

Referring to the accompanying chart, we see that this breakeven occurs at an extraordinarily low monthly page volume between 50 and 75 pages per month. In fact, the precise figure is 64.81 pages per month – or a total of 2,333 pages over three years.

Hopefully, any business prepared to spend around £500 on a colour MFP would be printing at least 65 pages each month – after all, this is only three pages a day! But, despite this, the Phaser 6110 MFP/X is a popular machine.

As indicated earlier, the reason for this is largely the ticket shock factor of buying the new toners for the machines. A complete set for the Phaser 6110 MFP typically costs £143 whereas a complete set for the Phaser 6115 MFP will cost users £360 – but, remember how much longer they will last.

Just for comparison purposes, and to again emphasise the position that business inkjet holds at this end of the market, the chart also includes Total Cost of Printing figures for the Hewlett-Packard Officejet L7680 – also a four-function device.

On average, the L7680 is 50% less costly to run even than the Phaser 6115 MFP – quite a saving.

Out of interest, let’s also insert the Phaser 6115 MFP into the model line-up used in the last issue of TCPglobal to see just where it sits. The result is quite remarkable. The Phaser 6115 MFP is placed well within the group, lower even that Epson’s CX11NF due to the higher purchase price of the Epson machine. Furthermore, it falls only a little above the level of one of the inkjet MFPs, Lexmark’s X9350.

Total Cost of Printing - by Monthly Page Volume

This clearly makes the Xerox Phaser 6115 MFP a strong contender in the low-end business colour laser MFP market. Not only is it a highly specified machine but its Total Cost of Printing is approaching the right ballpark to compete, unlike the Samsung CLX-3160FN and the Xerox Phaser 6110 MFP/X.

Cost of Printing

To round off, it is worth considering whether Xerox might not benefit from increased sales in the sector, together with lower operating and administrative costs, if a slight reduction were made in the purchase price of the Phaser 6115 MFP combined with dropping the Phaser 6110 MFP from the line-up, thus not being a drain on operational resources. This would result in fewer SKUs on the books and allow a larger installed base of the one machine, enabling Xerox to make economies of scale.

Or, would Xerox consider that the loss of revenue from the exorbitantly expensive supplies for the 6110 more than outweighs the operational savings that could be made?

At the bottom line, though, is the user’s purchasing behaviour. For any user with more than the fewest of pages to print, the Phaser 6115 MFP is clearly the superior machine of the two in every sense. The only potentially off-putting factors are the 12% higher purchase price and the fact that the immediate out-of-pocket cost of buying the supplies is higher. For any business, that fact should be irrelevant.

~End~

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 20th, 2007 at 12:03 am and is filed under Hardware, Pricing, 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.