Printer Ink Cartridges – The Real Cost!

If you are the owner or user of a printer, and use your machine on a daily business, you no doubt spend a significant amount of money on printer cartridges- regardless whether you have an inkjet printer that uses printer ink cartridges or a laser printer which uses toner cartridges. Over a number of months and years the cost of these printer cartridges can add up to huge amounts of money! Before purchasing a printer or to investigate and to reduce these costs for your existing printer it is useful to firstly calculate how much printing is actually costing each month. Secondly a “cost of ownership” calculation is also important as you will need to purchase printer ink or toner cartridges regularly. This is more important if you own and use an inkjet printer as the cost per page of an inkjet printer is higher than a laser printer- the cartridges need replaced more regularly. Therefore inexpensive printers can end up costing more in the long run because of their high ink cartridge costs. To calculate the printing cost per page by dividing the printer cartridge price by the yield, with the yield being the number of pages that one ink cartridge can print. For example, if the price of a Lexmark ink cartridge is £25 and its yield is 600 pages, then its cost per page will be £25/600 = £0.042 (4.2 pence per page)The monthly copst of ownership can be found by multiplying the no. of prints per month by the cost of the printer cartridge and divide it by the yield of the cartridge. Again, for example if you print 250 black prints per month using an Epson ink cartridge that yields 500 pages and costs £15, the monthly cost of ownership is 250 pages x 15 divided by 500 pages = £7.50 . If, after doing these calculations you find the results rather high, you may wish to consider alternatives to the expensive original cartridges like quality remanufactured or compatible cheap ink cartridges.