Traditionally the word inkjet has been a dirty word in much of the business world, associated with unprofessional looking documents and such high running costs that most business owners and techs wouldn’t dare consider them as an option, eschewing them in favour of the laser variety. The expensive, low capacity ink cartridges that cursed consumer products for many years (and still do for many models) certainly didn’t help their reputation with many SMB (small to medium business) owners, many of whom had experienced the pain of shelling out hard earned dollars for what seemed like only a handful of average photos in their home life, and certainly weren’t prepared to put up with that at work.

So for most businesses the 1990’s to mid 2000’s involved black and white laser prints, occasionally dotted with a coloured logo on a letterhead that was preprinted, or the odd colour page if you were blessed with access to a colour laser (and someone else was paying for the toner). In recent years with the push of colour lasers into the prosumer and small business markets by companies like Brother and HP came attractive purchase prices that spiked uptake and saw many SMB’s start printing in colour... until the first set of cartridges ran out. That, combined with the surge of all in ones in the consumer market saw many business owners wondering why they would pay more for a laser that only did one task, leading many to spend $200 on an MFC that led them back to the expensive cartridge problem. Then came the wider introduction of managed print services to the SMB sector, leading many small 5 or 6 employee firms to lease an MFP at a per print cost, which worked well for some and not so well for others.

All this leads us to being asked the same question again and again – is there an affordable way for my small business to print in colour? While the solution differs depending on the situation, the answer is generally yes (and keep in mind this article is targeted at small business – the rules are different for larger workgroups).

A real world example

Let’s look at costs through a common real world example. Bill runs a small business consisting of himself and 5 staff, working out of an average size, fairly open plan office. Until recently, bill had two small Brother Laser printers he bought from a big retailer for $189 each, and a canon ink printer/scanner/copier/fax he bought for $269 about 2 years ago.

Based on the average price Bill pays and the manufacturers yield figures for the cartridges, we get the following figures:

If Bill’s situation sounds familiar to you then you’re not alone; we’ve worked with many businesses that have been through this exact scenario and have either abandoned the hope of colour or get it professionally printed and wear the inconvenience and cost. The general rule of printers is the higher the purchase price the lower the running cost. In reality many small businesses are hesitant to spend upwards of $1,500 on a colour laser that only prints, opting instead for a lower priced all in one that seems better value but has high costs hidden in its consumables. And this leads us to inkjets. Throughout the past few years some of the larger manufacturers (primarily HP and Canon) have been developing inkjet printers that are designed for business, and while many of these products have been quite good they have not enjoyed a particularly high uptake, due partially to the hesitance of businesses and techs to jump ship from lasers.

So let’s look at some options relevant to Bills situation. Bill’s primary priority is to introduce more colour to his business printing and ideally replace one or all of his existing printers without spending huge money upfront or in consumables. Bill is open to keep the canon operating for scanning and faxing, and he has scanning software that allows him to scan and print to a different printer that he has used for some time to try and divert more prints to the laser, so if an MFC is too expensive he will compromise.

Looking at some models on the market, along with some that Bill has looked at, we get a few options:

Just to clarify, the Samsung CLX-3175FN is essentially Samsung's $559 colour laser printer with scan, copy and fax functionality added, so from a print point of view it compares to the other models selected. In an ideal world Bill would look to a colour laser MFP in the $1000 - $2000 with a lower running cost, however even with an expected increase in printing it’s difficult for him to justify this outlay, so he’s looking to try and balance purchase and running cost.

Once the initial cartridges that ship with the printer runs out, the approximate per page cost (including 1.2c for each sheet of paper) is:

Looking more closely

Looking solely at purchase and running cost it seems clear that the HP inkjets are by far the most cost effective option. We’ll leave Bill for a moment and look at this more closely. The ink technology that exists in these models has been in the market for some time under the hood of HP’s Designjet large format printers (the kind that posters and technical drawings are printed on), but the price tag and the fact they are wide format printers limited them to businesses that made money off what was printed. The relatively long printing and drying times also meant that they were not the greatest fit for an office environment, where being able to produce durable prints quickly and cheaply are the priority. Advances in ink technology, spurred in part by advances from the development of HP Edgeline technology has resulted in inks that dry faster, bleed less and are more resistant to smudging and fading which for the most part addressed the issues with ink prints in the office. The ink delivery system (seen in the Designjets) uses multiple print heads to deliver the ink to paper from large capacity (in comparison to consumer level printers) tanks that store each colour separately, allowing similar page yields to what is seen in lasers with the bonus of the cartridges and the printer being cheaper to purchase.

So if Business inkjets are so good and so affordable to run, why are they not dominating the market? Part of the blame lies on the impression many have of ink printing as slow, unreliable and expensive, and part of lies in the fact that it is (by comparison to Laser) a relatively untested method for business printing. Laser technology has proven itself to be a dependable workhorse that gets the job done with a minimum of fuss and produces durable, crisp text. The fact we still service a few HP Laserjet 4L’s (which debuted in 1993) is a testament to this fact. Printing is as fundamental to business as a desk or a phone, so it’s understandable that any changes in technology will be met with more than a bit of hesitance. However business inkjets have been in the small business market for a number of years and in our experience have proven to be a competent option for businesses requiring colour printing for a low initial price, reasonable running cost and for small to medium print volumes.

There are still some areas for improvement however. Duplex printing is slow compared to a Laser as after the first page is printed the printer pauses to let the ink dry before printing the second side. The choice of paper plays a big part in print quality – lasers are quite tolerant of cheaper, low quality paper whereas on an inkjet the difference is obvious. HP recommends their own Colorlok paper, which while somewhat tricky to source in New Zealand at the moment gives prints that look stunning and dry virtually straight away. We run an Officejet Pro 8500 as our main office printer and are currently using Xerox paper that gives a good result but will switch back to the HP paper when stock is available. Since we moved from laser to inkjet as our sole office printer the performance has been excellent and given the high amount of colour in our documents the savings have already been noticeable.

Conclusion

So if you’re in a situation similar to Bill’s, what is the best choice – colour laser or inket? Bill had a limited budget so was willing to keep running his Canon MFC in some capacity if an all in one was going to be too expensive. He wanted to introduce more colour to his prints to match his brand and modernise his business look, with the option to print small volumes of marketing material to give to his customers, without having to spend huge money to do so. From these requirements the Officejet Pro 8500 would be the best fit, with the added benefit of being able to consolidate from three units to one. If you remember bill was spending $1351.43 per year on printing, so if we calculate the cost on the Officejet we get the following:

So even if Bill's print volume does not change, he will save $279.56 purely in ink cost. If you take into account time saving from faster print speeds, less trips to buy cartridges, the convenience of one unit instead of three, and the extra features of the Officejet such as direct scanning to a network folder then that accounts to a cost saving from improved productivity. Of course Bill wanted to increase his volume of colour printing, so the per page savings allows him to do this.

In conclusion if you’re looking at changing how you print in your office, inkjets are a worthy option worth considering alongside Laser. Keep in mind every office situation is different so it’s important to look at more than just running cost and consider what features and functionality are of value to you. Our experience in tailoring print systems for business means we work with you to get the perfect fit, so to discuss your situation give us a call today on 06 825 6208.

Resources

Infotrends business inkjet analysis (PDF - 1.06MB)