Laser Printer Cost Per Page

If Gutenberg, the inventor of the first printing press, would have been around today, he would have been more than amazed to see modern printers. People who have used 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 inkjet printers.

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 this has to do with laser printing cost per page.

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 one, 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.

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.

Two things that you must consider while comparing, are cost per page and printing speed. Both vary according to the model.

While considering estimates, we assume maximum efficiency of printing and consider 5% and 20% ink coverage, for black and color printing respectively. To print only in black ink, the cost per page for laser printers, extends from USD 0.05 to USD 0.08. For color printing, due to the use of extra cartridges, the per page cost is USD 0.12 to USD 0.17.

Laser printers cost more initially but do not require cartridge replacement frequently, whereas inkjet printers do. Though the latter cost less initially, the cartridge costs get added cumulatively. If you have a large printing workload on a regular basis, laser printers are definitely worth paying the larger initial price.