Laser Printer Cost Per Page

If Gutenberg, the inventor of first printing press, would have been around today, he would have been more than amazed to see modern printers. The ones who have used the typewriters are also in a better position to truly appreciate the luxury offered by printers. Laser printers are in vogue today and are fast replacing conventional inkjet printers where there is high printing demand.

A lot of money is lost due to purely bad decisions. People fail to ignore functionality and economic factors when making a choice. As an economist will reason, when demands meet supply exactly, the wastage of resources is lesser and investments are worth their value. You might be thinking what does this have to do with laser printing cost per page. It has everything to do with it as nothing escapes from economical considerations.

When buying a printer and printing paper (supply), you need to have an idea about what is the volume of your monthly printing requirement (demand). When you get a printer which adequately satisfies these demands with high efficiency, you automatically save money. The one parameter that can help you in deciding is the printing cost per page. You need to decide whether performance of laser printers is really worth the high initial investment.

Calculating Printing Cost

How is printer cost per page calculated? A fresh cartridge is loaded and made to print papers serially until it runs out of ink. The cost of laser or inkjet cartridge is divided by number of pages printed and then divided by a factor of 10 to account for the actual printing area covered. This gives you the actual cost per page.

Cost Estimate

If you check out the latest laser printer reviews, two things that you must consider are cost per page comparison and printing speed comparison. The speed of printing and the cost per page varies from model to model.

While considering estimates, we assume maximum efficiency of printing and consider 5% and 20% ink coverage for only black and color printing respectively. If only printing in black ink is considered, then the cost per page for laser printers extends from $0.01 to $0.04, which is extremely reasonable when you have a large printing volume. For black ink, you can have the lowest cost as it comes down to a cent per page. For color printing, due to the added price of extra cartridges used, the per page cost is $0.08 to $0.17.

If you make a laser printer vs inkjet printer comparison, you will realize a large difference in their costs. Laser printers cost more initially but do not require cartridge replacement frequently, whereas inkjet printers do. Though inkjet printers cost less initially, the cartridge costs get added cumulatively. If you have a large printing workload regularly, laser printers are definitely worth paying the larger initial price.