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

Issue #0833/2 – Following the arrival of Hewlett-Packard’s 5-ink printing system in July, with the launch of the Photosmart D5360 printer, the first of the Photosmart All-in-One 5-ink devices are now launched. Two models, Photosmart C5380 and C6380, offer fast and reasonably economical printing of both office documents and photos. But, they are joined by hard-hitting devices from Epson in particular and still face stiff competition by other new and existing machines. We compare the C6380 with the Epson Stylus BX600FW and their closest wireless competition.

What is clear is that the list of devices shown in item "Seasonal abundance in the inkjet market with a plethora of new printer and AiO models" includes a broader range of models that can be deemed to fall into a business category than we have seen before.

Hewlett-Packard used to be the only inkjet manufacturer to produce inkjet machines that were clearly and unequivocally target at the business environment, with models from Brother arriving on the scene more recently. However, the category is now fairly convincingly joined by Dell and Lexmark and, more importantly, Epson’s new Stylus Office range is not in the least bit vague in its targeting.

So, when making a choice regarding which models to include for a comparison, in some cases it has been necessary to consider a balance between functionality and price. Because the intention is to look at devices likely to be put to business use, we’ve selected those at the upper end of the price scale and specifically with wireless network interface.

Therefore, with the median street price in the UK of several machines falling above the £200 level, we’ve focused on that price grouping. But, we have needed to bring in machines priced lower than that from Dell and Epson because of their particular relevance to the business market and low pricing.

What makes a straight comparison somewhat difficult, however, is that there are both 4-function and 3-function models within the same price bracket. So we’ve attempted to compare features for money, together with Total Cost of Printing in the wireless AiO category rather than necessarily to try and find the most directly functional competitors.

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 500 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 a median street price in the UK including tax.

Brother MFC-885CW

When choosing a Brother device to figure in this comparison, the choice is either to spend the same money for a much higher specification (MFC-885CW - £220) or to spend a lot less money for a slightly lower specification (DCP-770CW - £150). The DCP-770CW certainly competes hard on price with others in the selected group but the MFC-885CW offers a feature-set that sets it apart, including the fax function, DECT telephone handset, speaker-phone, telephone answering machine (TAM) with auto-switching, widescreen colour LCD display and 10-sheet ADF.

Sadly Brother does not yet offer duplex capability on any of its inkjet devices but all feature individual ink to help reduce ink wastage.

It is possible to obtain a Brother wireless AiO for as little as £78. However, although this is a 3-function device with no ADF, like the Hewlett-Packard C6380, obtaining a close purchase price comparison with the higher-priced devices was deemed useful for this exercise. Hence selecting the highly-specified MFC-885CW that is amply suited to the small business market.

Canon PIXMA MP980

Canon’s PIXMA MP980 stands out as being a very significant addition to the market, in that it is not only Canon’s first network inkjet model but networking is wired as well as wireless. Although this model is primarily billed as a mini photo lab, with six individual inks, it is worth including simply because it is Canon’s first network-ready inkjet device and photo capability is specifically part of the target market for most of these devices anyway. This fact is underlined by the price, almost double the price (at manufacturer’s SRP) of any of Canon’s other new models.

As a three-function device, the MP980 has no ADF but is equipped with auto-duplex capability as standard and shares an unusual feature with several other Canon models – twin paper feeds, 150 sheets from the front and 150 sheets from the rear. These two features together ensure that the MP980 is suited for business use.

Dell 968 WiFi

You will recall from the recent article, "Dell pushes Total Cost of Printing with inkjet AiOs through the roof!", that Dell has shifted its inkjet strategy to mirror the strategy that Lexmark has just given up – i.e. virtually giving away the hardware in order to buy market share and then using ink sales as the vehicle for profit.

Selected for its wireless and wired networking, 4-function configuration, the 968 WiFi has a 50-sheet ADF, optional 150-sheet second paper feed and optional duplex unit. This ensures that it is a highly specified machine and, for the price, that it is nothing short of remarkable.

Epson Stylus Office BX600FW

This is where we find the closest competition to Hewlett-Packard’s Officejet range. With a median street purchase price on the BX600FW of only £157, in comparison to £299 for the Officejet Pro L7780, we are talking about almost half the purchase price. Inks, however, are only a little less expensive than inks for several of the other printers, meaning that the overall Total Cost of Printing cannot quite match that of the Officejet L7780. It does, however, categorically beat all of the other printers in the group, meaning that the Stylus Office range enters the market as the best value office inkjet printer with a low entry price – i.e. excepting the Hewlett-Packard Officejet range.

Sadly, the highly specified BX600FW is missing a couple of key business features – it has no second paper feed options and no duplex printing options, both of which are valuable to a business environment seeking to maximise productivity and environmental awareness while minimising Total Cost of Printing.

Photosmart C6380

Although the Hewlett-Packard C6380 is not an Officejet product, with its five ink configuration and high price positioning it is sure to appeal to businesses as a fast and robust multifunction device for the small creative office. Like the Epson BX600FW, it is missing several valuable office features - lacking the fourth function and Automatic Document Feeder. What it lacks in paper handling though, it makes up for in CD/DVD handling with the ability to print direct to disk.

Lexmark X7675

Officejet Pro L7780

We have selected the model with the highest print speed so that it matches competing print speeds as closely as possible. This is the X7675, rated at 32ppm in mono and 27ppm in colour. The X4950 might have been a closer price match but that model is not yet freely available in stores. At around £260, the X7675 is a highly specified wireless AiO with 25-sheet ADF and auto-duplexing as standard.

To emphasis its belief that this is a high-end business model, Lexmark rates the X7675 at up to 5,000 pages per month and offers a 5-year warranty when the customer registers the product. Certainly, if the ADF on these new Lexmark AiOs really is capable of scanning at 25ppm, as claimed, then they should be impressive machines to work with for document capture!

For good measure, where business inkjet devices are concerned, we must include one of Hewlett-Packard’s Officejet Pro devices, using the HP88 cartridge series, as these continue to set the benchmark for low business colour Total Cost of Printing. Therefore, we include the Officejet Pro L7780.

We have selected the top of the range, despite its relatively high purchase cost, because it is the model in the range that has built-in wireless interface as a standard feature out of the box. It also offers other excellent benefits for its high purchase price, such as a high-capacity second paper feed (350-Sheet) and auto-duplexing as standard. In addition, the Officejet L7780 has a 50-page ADF, and individual high-capacity ink cartridges.

Underlining the market’s increasing emphasis on targeting inkjet into the business environment, the Total Cost of Printing differential between the high-end Officejet Pro L7780 and the closest competitor (Epson BX600FW) is now remarkably low and both the Hewlett-Packard Photosmart C6380 and Dell’s 968 WiFi AiO then follow surprisingly closely.

Note, however, that there are other Officejet models available without wireless networking (just wired Ethernet) that would cost the business user around 39% less to buy, thus reducing the long-term Total Cost of Printing considerably because the cartridges used are the same as the L7780.

In terms of pricing, most of these devices are typically found at over the £200 mark. Epson’s BX600FW and Dell’s 968 Wifi AiO are, as indicated, priced below this level, cutting the entry price for the user by a large margin. There is the small specification penalty to pay with the Epson device but features per pound, the Dell represents superb value at purchase.

Again, as already indicated, Hewlett-Packard’s Officejet Pro L7780 is the highest priced machine in the line-up, because it has everything a small business could want in an AiO (except for the telephone features of Brother’s MFC-885CW), but proves to be the most economical in the long run.

This leaves us with three printers whose median street prices are exactly £220 and also the Lexmark X7675, which is typically found at about £260 with a specification to match.

Purchase Price

What strikes us as extremely bizarre in this situation is that the Dell 968 WiFi AiO and the Lexmark X7675 are so similar in terms of specification but so different in terms of purchase price. In fact, Dell’s 968 WiFi AiO, at £77, actually has a higher specification than the £260 Lexmark X7675! This emphasises just how far the strategies of these two companies have diverged in just the last year or so.

No longer the give-away printers from Lexmark (at the high end of the range) and no longer the low-cost ink from Dell. While Lexmark has raised its hardware prices and started offering high capacity cartridges that reduce ink cost a little, Dell has continued to reduce its hardware prices but push ink prices through the roof (see "Dell pushes Total Cost of Printing with inkjet AiOs through the roof!" for further detail).

Although Dell’s ink prices for its new models are significantly increased over ink prices for discontinued models, they still fall within a competitive range when put into the comparative grouping, thus placing the long-term Total Cost of Printing at a level that is still reasonably competitive in the group – certainly no higher than the average.

Total Cost of Printing

There are no models that stand out as being over-expensive in their use of black ink – just the two ‘Office’ designated machines, from Epson and Hewlett-Packard, demonstrating their low cost of mono ink.

Where colour ink, and colour nominal CPP, are concerned, we do see a couple of machines standing out as being costly – Brother’s MFC-885CW and Canon’s MP980. It is these high colour ink costs that are responsible for the long-term expense of these two models. They should be capable of being much more competitive than they are and for them to be more costly to run than the Lexmark X7675, with its higher purchase price, is somewhat alarming.

Putting this data into the variable page-count model, we see that these devices split into three groups.

Total Cost of Printing

Firstly, the Brother, Canon and Lexmark models sit tightly together at the top end of the chart, while Hewlett-Packard’s Officejet model rapidly falls to the low-cost end of the chart at a fairly low monthly page count and only widens the gap with other models as volumes increase, due to its very low cost of ink on a high-priced hardware purchase.

In the middle sits a group that converges quite tightly at higher monthly page counts.

On the one hand, we have the fairly high-priced Hewlett-Packard Photosmart C6380 tracking the high-cost group at a point a little over one penny lower than the average of the three.

On the other hand, we have the Dell 968 WiFi and the Epson Stylus Office BX600FW starting at the very low 6 pence per page level at a low page count, then moving right into the middle ground as volumes rise. The difference between the two is that the Dell aligns itself very closely to the Photosmart model at higher print volumes, while the Epson takes up a position strategically between the Officejet Pro and the Dell/Photosmart position.

There is absolutely no doubt that Epson’s first foray into the business inkjet AiO market puts the company in a very strong position. It would be nice to see the purchase price of this particular model fall a little to allow models with ADF and advanced paper handling to come into the line-up at only a slightly higher price than the BX600FW. To have the full, high-specification, of a business 4-function AiO at the long term Total Cost of Printing seen here in the BX600FW, would push Epson firmly into the general office inkjet arena from its current position at opposing ends of the market – consumer and professional photo/graphic arts.

For its part, the Hewlett-Packard Photosmart C6380 looks to be highly priced for a consumer device, even for photo-enthusiasts, as is the Canon PIXMA MP980. Yet, they are not really adequately equipped for the serious small business market.

While Dell’s well-specified 968 WiFi sits well in the group as an average-cost device, Lexmark’s X7675 looks to be on the costly side, especially when the relatively low specification is taken into account, and Brothers ink costs spoil what is otherwise a superb, and well-priced, office device.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 21st, 2008 at 11:59 am and is filed under Strategy, Hardware, New Products, 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.