Inkjet Printers Cost Per Page
When laser printers first came onto the market, they really were designed for small office, home office use and business use. The printers were expensive, and toner was also pricey. The cost per page to print onto a laser printer was quite high when they were first introduced. However as more and more consumers started to purchase laser printers, and they demanded lower cost of toner the price of laser printer toner steadily came down to where today the cost per page to print on a laser printer is around $0.04 or $0.05 per page.
Inkjet printers have followed the same cost path. The early printers were expensive, the ink quality was not very good and the cost to print was high. In terms of quality, your pages were saturated with ink – this generally meant that you would only see 100 or so pages printed from a $50.00 ink cartridge putting the cost per page at around $0.50.
During those early years of the inkjet printer you also found printers lacking in many other ways.
It wasn’t until about six years ago that the quality of printers and the quality of the print started to get better and the cost of ink jet started to drop, however so slightly.
Some of the earliest HP printers used two ink cartridges, coding and marking printer typically they were multi-purpose printers – used for home and printing photographs. When you wanted to print photos, you would swap out the black ink cartridge and insert a photo ink cartridge and then you would get impressive results.
Over the years the cost of inkjet printers has come down, particularly for older technology – printers that are a few months old. Typically the cost of the inkjet printer will drop by as much as 50% within 6-months of the printer hitting the market.
However the one thing that has not dropped much is the cost of inkjet printer ink. It is high and has remained high. From the early days of the inkjet printer you paid between $30 and $50 for black ink – the prices have not changed much today. What has changed is the manner in which you can buy ink for your inkjet printer. You can recycle your cartridges, you an even refill your ink cartridges and save as much as 85% off of the cost of a brand new OEM inkjet cartridge.
But what has happened with the cost per page today? It’s dropped significantly and technology has helped that drop as the inkjets on the printers have become finer and are dropping microscopic amounts of ink. Typically out of a standard black cartridge you can get around 300-500 pages depending on the type of font you use, and the quality of the print you select.
Based on an optimistic numbers you can spend as little as $0.10 to get full color images from your inkjet printer – while this might be higher than a laser printer remember you are getting full color copies, not black and white.