Sticker Shock for Toner Cartridges
Lyra Research put out a press release about the cost of replacing toner cartridges for “affordable” color laser printers. In looking at color laser printers that are under $500, they found that with two of them, the cost of a new set of cartridges exceeds the original cost of the printer itself. For the Brother HL-2700CN and the Lexmark C510, new sets of toner cartridges cost 19% and 10% more than the printer, respectively.
The rest of the printers they looked at all had toner cartridge costs of at 75% of the original printer price.
Typically Brother usually has pretty low costs for their toner cartridges, so it is surprising to see them as the most expensive for this type of printer. For their low-cost monochrome printers, their cartridges typically cost about $10 less but yield 1,000 more pages than similar ones from HP. Lexmark machines are always expensive to operate, so it is not surprising to see two of their machines on this list.
Based on these numbers, Lyra speculated that people will alter their printing habits based on the shock they receive from the cost of replacement toner cartridges. We have seen in the past that people who use color laser printers are pretty disgusted with the cost of replacing them, so they either don’t use them at all or else they only use them for only the most special jobs.
Pricey Brother and Lexmark Cartridges Dampen Affordable Color Laser Fanfare, Says Lyra [Press Release]
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July 6th, 2006 at 3:17 am
That graph…it shocks you, doesn’t it? It made me wonder what these Printer manufacturing giants are up to. On the one hand you have huge glow-sign boards from these biggies about investing ‘only’ on genuine toner cartridges and on the other hand you find out a truth that sets your 10-degree morning smile into a gloomy frown where you keep guessing where to invest your money on. Maybe as always, going for a refill from your nearby vendor will remain to be the solution for families who are not relatives of these IT giants themselves.
July 21st, 2006 at 9:01 am
Where does the Samsung CLP-510 rank in toner replacement costs.
July 26th, 2006 at 1:35 pm
The printer business is rapidly adopting the razor school of thought: give the razor away and charge as much as the market will bear for the blades.
I’ve received a number of printers for “free” with the purchase of something else, and I tend to use them until the ink runs out (after which I donate them to somebody else). I don’t think that I want to do the same with $500 or $1,000 color laser printers!
As a result, “they” are simply not getting my business!
October 2nd, 2006 at 3:47 pm
What I would like to know is what is the total cost per page of consumables for the various printers. The original cost of the printer is almost irrelevent.