Among some users, laser printers are seen as the device that is only useful for printing black and white prints at speed for a low cost per print. While this is the predominant idea in circulation about laser printers, there are actually color laser printers available that have an equally fast print speed and are adept at printing both black and white images and color images of high quality.
The decision on what type of color laser printer to invest in should be guided by determining if the feature set of the color LaserJet printer meets the objectives that have been decided the LaserJet printer should meet up to. Examples of such objectives include the print speed, availability of external paper handling units, wireless connection availability and quality of prints achieved.
But there are times when the decision on the LaserJet to invest on will be determined by cost consideration. The two major cost considerations are the cost of acquiring the printer, and the cost per page of the toner cartridge that determines how much will be spent on procuring replacement toner over the life of a printer. Both costs are important, but in my view, the cost per page is more important as it has an outsized effect on the operational cost of running a printer.
Lexmark C2325dw Laser Printer
For example, the Lexmark C2325dw Single Function Wireless Color Laser Printer (42CC010) is sold for $169.99 on 123ink.ca, this is a very good deal, but more investigation reveals that the replacement cartridge, the Lexmark C2310K0 Original Black Return Program Toner Cartridge has the cost per page of 9 cents. This is relatively high, if you print 100,000 pages over the life of the printer, you would have spent $9,000 over the life of the printer in getting replacement toner.
Brother HL-L3210CW
Another color laser printer is the Brother HL-L3210CW Compact Digital Color Printer. This sells for $349.99 on 123ink.ca. But the Brother TN223BK Original Black Toner Cartridge for this printer has the cost per page of 5.4 cents. Using the same example as above 100,000 pages. It means on average we will spend $5,400 on buying replacement cartridges over the life of the printer.
HP Color LaserJet Pro M452dn
The last Laserjet color printer to be considered will be the HP Color LaserJet Pro M452dn Single-Function Color Laser Printer (CF389A) which goes for $359.99 on 123ink.ca. This is almost the same price as the Brother printer we considered above. But the HP 410X CF410X Original Black Toner Cartridge for this printer has a cost per page of 2.6 cents. Meaning if we assume a life length of 100,000 pages. We can estimate we will spend $2,600 on the replacement cartridge over the life of the printer.
From our analysis, the HP Color LaserJet Pro M452dn Single-Function Color Laser Printer (CF389A) gives the best value for money over the long term.
