Why Cheap Printers Carry Big Long-term Costs

2010-02-15

Printers are amazingly affordable, or so it seems. Often printers can cost less than 40 dollars, or even be free with the purchase of a computer system or digital camera. Can this be possible? Well, printer manufacturers are often multi-billion dollar companies, and they did not achieve that level of success by being dumb. Just because something is cheap, that does not necessarily make it a good deal. In this case, cheap printers carry big long-term costs due to the cost of printer ink.

This manufacturing concept is called the loss leader. One of the first instances of this came from shaving razors - you don't make money by selling razors, you make money by selling razor blades. Razors last for years, razor blades need replacing every few days. So, companies found that selling razors at a loss, or even giving them away for free, would result in higher profits. Each customer with that razor would need to buy blades for years, bringing profits far greater than the cost of the razor. Printer manufacturers do this with cheap printers. These are usually small inkjet printers. Here, the printer is the razor, and the razor blade is the printer ink cartridge. Since the printer is small, the printer ink cartridges are small as well. This means they hold small amounts of ink, thus requiring frequent replacement.

Let's put some real numbers to this. A typical inkjet printer has 4 separate ink cartridges, black, cyan, magenta, and yellow. Each cartridge costs from 10 to 30 dollars. From the Hewlett-Packard website, a color ink cartridge will print 240 pictures. But wait, look at the fine print - it will print 240 4 x 6 pictures. A standard letter is 8.5 x 11.5. Printing full page, that cuts it to 60. So, for every 60 pages of color pictures, you will have to pay 40 to 100 dollars for the printer ink cartridges. What about text? A twenty-dollar HP 02 Black cartridge says that it will print 660 pages. If someone prints 5 pages a day, that will mean 1825 pages a year, or about three ink cartridges. True, sixty dollars is not bad, but if a business is using this to print 50 pages a day, printer ink cartridges will cost 553 dollars a year. So, a "cheap" 50-dollar printer ends up costing a company 10 times as much for the year.

In conclusion, a cheap printer can end up quiet expensive due to the cost of printer ink. Users who print a picture a month may not mind, or even notice. However, for a small business, this can be a trap where a seemingly good deal ends up being a money pit.