The cheapest printer to run: where the real cost hides

Where the real cost of a printer hides

Printer pricing is one of the great sleights of hand in consumer tech. Many printers are sold cheaply, sometimes barely above cost, because the manufacturer makes its profit afterwards, on the ink. It is the razor-and-blades model: give away the razor, sell the blades forever. The result is that a bargain cartridge inkjet can cost more in ink within its first year than it cost to buy, and people who chose it on the sticker price feel ambushed every time they replace a cartridge.

The fix is to stop thinking about the purchase price and start thinking about the cost per page. A printer that costs more up front but a few pence per page will, over a couple of years of regular printing, cost far less than a cheap printer with expensive ink. So the first question when buying any printer is not "how much is it?" but "how much will it cost me to actually use?"

The cheapest printer types to run

Two kinds of printer dominate on low running cost, and which is cheapest depends on whether you need colour.

• For colour and all-round printing: a refillable ink-tank printer is cheapest by a wide margin. The Epson EcoTank ET-2850 swaps cartridges for bottles and brings the cost per page down to a few pence, with enough ink in the box to last most homes a year or two. You pay more up front, and you get it back many times over.
• For black text only: a mono laser is cheapest. Toner lasts far longer than ink, so printers like the budget Pantum BP2300W and the HP LaserJet M110we have a very low cost per page for documents, with the bonus that the toner never dries out.

At the other end, a cheap cartridge inkjet bought without an ink plan is the most expensive type to run for the amount it prints. That does not make cartridge inkjets bad, the Canon PIXMA TR4750i is excellent value for occasional use, but it does mean they need to be matched to light printing, or paired with a plan.

Are ink subscriptions worth it?

For cartridge inkjet owners who print regularly, an ink subscription is often the single biggest saving available. Instead of paying per cartridge, you pay a small monthly fee tied to how many pages you print, and ink arrives automatically before you run out. For colour and photo printing in particular, which is where cartridge ink burns fastest, a plan can transform the economics. The catch is that a plan only makes sense if you print enough to use the allowance; if you print a handful of pages a month, the monthly fee may outweigh the saving, and an ink-tank printer or a laser, which need no subscription at all, may suit you better.

The mistakes that quietly cost you money

Three errors account for most wasted printing money. The first is buying on purchase price alone, the trap this whole guide exists to warn against. The second is leaving an inkjet idle: liquid ink dries in the heads, and the printer wastes ink on cleaning cycles, so if you print rarely, a laser is both cheaper and more reliable. The third is over-buying capability, paying for a photo printer or a fast office machine you do not need, then paying to feed it. Avoid those three, match the printer to how you actually print, and you will spend far less over its life than most people do.