Page Coverage

Printing costs are based on the amount of ink put on the paper, otherwise known as page coverage.  For example, printing the photo from summer vacation is near 100% page coverage in full color, a resume is more like 8% in all black, and standard office printing averages 15-20%.  When purchasing ink and toner, manufacturers typically list how many prints you can expect out of the cartridge based on 5% page coverage.  While your actual print costs will differ based on what you print, we can use those numbers for comparisons.

Really, really cheap printers

You see the ads all the time:  “Color Printing!  All-In-One Functionality! Only $99.99!  $89.99!! $69.99!!!  The printer might be cheap, but the printing isn’t. Looking at the fine print, you find it will cost around $275.46 to fill it with ink – plus tax.  The black will last for 4,000 pages and the other colors will last for 1,500 pages (at the 5% page coverage we discussed earlier).  That works out to around $0.15 per page for this particular printer.

Total Cost of Ownership

Let’s assume 500 printed pages per month – that’s roughly 20 pages per working day – all color at only 5% page coverage.  Over three years that cheap printer will cost $2,769.99 (assuming also that the printer lasts that long).  Printing more often, or printing documents with more ink coverage will only send that cost higher.