Which Printer Is Cheapest to Run? Cost Per Page Across Laser, Inkjet and Ink Tank

Ink tank printers are the cheapest to run for colour, mono laser is cheapest for high-volume black and white, and cartridge inkjet is the most expensive of the three by a wide margin. Cost per page is calculated by dividing the price of the consumable by its rated page yield, then adding a share of the machine's purchase price and any service cost. This guide shows how to do that calculation for a specific quotation, and why a printer that costs a few hundred dirhams can cost several thousand to own.

Quick reference: the ranking

• Cheapest mono at volume: mono laser with high-yield toner, especially a department MFP.
• Cheapest colour: ink tank, by a large margin over cartridge inkjet.
• Most expensive per page: cartridge inkjet, particularly with standard-yield cartridges.
• Lowest purchase price, highest lifetime cost: the entry-level cartridge inkjet.
• Often overlooked: the drum, fuser and maintenance kit on a laser, which are real consumables with real intervals.

How to calculate cost per page

Take the price of the consumable and divide it by its rated page yield. If a toner cartridge costs AED 300 and is rated at 6,000 pages, that is 5 fils per page. Do the same for every consumable the machine needs, then add them together.

Two adjustments make the number honest. First, yields are quoted to a standard (ISO/IEC 19752 for mono toner, 24711 for inkjet) at 5 per cent page coverage, which is a fairly sparse text page. Real documents with logos, tables or shading use considerably more, so a realistic working figure is often 20 to 40 per cent above the datasheet cost per page. Second, add the machine: divide the purchase price by the pages you expect it to produce over its life and add that to the per-page figure. On a cheap inkjet printing 300 pages a month this is a surprisingly large number.

Where each technology actually lands

Mono laser. The workhorse for documents. High-yield toner cartridges of 6,000 to 15,000 pages bring cost per page down substantially, and department MFPs with very high-yield toner go lower again. This is why a floor-standing MFP shared by a team usually beats four desktop printers on total cost, even though it costs far more to buy.

Colour laser. Four toners rather than one, so colour pages cost several times a mono page. The important detail is that many colour lasers consume a small amount of colour toner even on pages you consider black, unless you configure a true black-only mode, so set that in the driver defaults.

Ink tank. The category that changed the economics. Ink is bought in bottles and refilled into reservoirs rather than in cartridges, and yields run into thousands of pages per bottle set. For offices printing moderate colour volumes, this is the cheapest colour available and it is not close. The trade-offs are slower speed than laser and the need to print regularly, since heads can clog if the machine sits idle for weeks.

Cartridge inkjet. The cheapest machine and the most expensive pages. Standard-yield cartridges are particularly poor value; XL cartridges improve it but rarely enough to compete. This category makes sense for very low volume or where the machine is a secondary printer used occasionally.

The consumables people forget

Toner is not the only consumable on a laser. Most machines also have an imaging drum, a fuser and sometimes a transfer belt or a maintenance kit, each with its own life and price. On some models the drum is integrated into the toner cartridge, which raises toner cost but removes a separate item; on others it is separate and replaced every 20,000 to 50,000 pages. Ask which architecture a quoted machine uses, because comparing a cartridge-with-drum model against a separate-drum model on toner price alone gives the wrong answer.

On inkjet and ink tank machines, the equivalent hidden items are the maintenance box or waste ink pad, and the print head itself on machines where it is user-replaceable. Add paper too if you are building a full picture, and remember that heavy or coated stock costs several times plain 80 gsm.

A worked comparison

Take an office printing 2,000 mono and 500 colour pages a month, which is typical for a small UAE business of fifteen people.

On a cartridge inkjet at roughly 12 fils mono and 45 fils colour, that is about AED 465 a month in consumables. On a colour laser at roughly 5 fils mono and 30 fils colour, about AED 250. On an ink tank at roughly 1.5 fils mono and 6 fils colour, about AED 60. Over three years the difference between the inkjet and the ink tank is in the region of AED 14,500, which is many times the price difference between the two machines.

Those rates are indicative rather than a quotation, and they move with the specific model and consumable pricing, so run the calculation on the actual machines you are comparing. The pattern, however, holds consistently.

Reducing cost per page whatever you buy

Set duplex and mono as driver defaults, since most of what offices print does not need colour or single sides. Use high-yield consumables; they almost always cost less per page than standard yield. Consolidate several desktop printers into one shared department MFP, which lowers both cost per page and service overhead. Enable follow-me or PIN release printing if the machine supports it, which removes the uncollected print jobs that quietly consume a significant share of volume. And keep the machine within its recommended monthly volume, because running a small printer hard is the fastest route to an early replacement.

For the wider machine choice, see our guides to choosing an office printer or MFP and photocopier rental versus purchase, and browse the range in desktop and office printers.

FAQ

Which printer is cheapest to run?

Ink tank for colour, by a wide margin, and mono laser for high-volume black and white. Cartridge inkjet is the most expensive per page of the common technologies.

How do I calculate cost per page?

Divide the consumable price by its rated page yield, add every other consumable the machine needs, then add the purchase price divided by expected lifetime pages. Allow 20 to 40 per cent above datasheet figures for real-world coverage.

Why are quoted page yields optimistic?

They are measured at 5 per cent page coverage under ISO standards, which is a sparse text page. Documents with logos, tables or shading use considerably more ink or toner.

What consumables do people forget on a laser?

The imaging drum, fuser, transfer belt or maintenance kit. Depending on the model the drum may be integrated with the toner or separate with its own 20,000 to 50,000 page life.

Is a cheap printer ever the right choice?

Only at very low volume or as a secondary machine. At any regular volume the purchase saving is recovered by the consumables within months.

Comparing printer quotations? Send Procure the models and your monthly volume and we will work out the cost per page, or browse desktop and office printers.