Help Center - How to Calculate Laser Printer Costs and Find the Best Low Cost Printers

How to Calculate Laser Printer Costs and Find the Best Low Cost Printers

Did you know you can find out the costs of owning a particular printer model?

This can help you improve your buying decision and find the best low cost printers that will match your needs.

Printer costs can be calculated based on your print volume, printer price and its cartridge's cost per page. 

To find out how much your laser printer will cost you in its lifespan, we need to take note of the following:

I. Average lifespan of a printer

The average lifespan of a laser printer is 5 years.

II. Your Estimated Yearly Print Load

What's your monthly printload? If it's 300 pages a month, the yearly printload would be 3,600 pages.

III. Included Ink in Printer Purchase

If you have already chosen a printer that you're going to buy, does it include ink in the package? And if it does, what is its Page Yield?

To find out, you can check your printer model's product page.

• In Epson, you can find it in the Overview under the section What's In The Box.
• In Canon, it can be found in the Product Page in the What's In The Box section.
• In Brother, you can find it in Specifications under What's Included.
• In HP, it can be found in Specs in the section What's in the Box.

For example, an HP Laserjet Pro M15W has a Preinstallled HP Original Introductory Toner Cartridge with a page yield of 500 pages.

If you have a monthly printload of 300 pages, you don't need to buy a cartridge for a month.

IV. The Cartridges' Cost per Page

Cost per page is the price of the cartridge divided by its page yield.

For example, an HP 48A Toner Cartridge has a price of $49.99 and a page yield of 1,000 pages. It's Cost per Page is then $0.049.

V. The Cost Consideration

The next step of determining printer costs is to compute them all in a formula:

Cost Consideration = {[(Your Estimated Yearly Printload x average lifespan of laser printer) - Included Ink Page Yield upon buying the printer] x Total Cost per Page} + Printer Price

As an example, the sample numbers above will be used with the printer model HP Laserjet Pro M15W that has a price of $109.99:

Cost Consideration ={ [ (3,600 pages x 5 years) -500 pages] x $0.049} + $109.99

Cost Consideration = $967.49

The printer cost of HP Laserjet Pro M15W in a span of 5 years of your print volume is $967.49.

Wan to know how much it would cost to run a inkjet printer? Click here.

Looking for cheap ink cartridges? Feel free to check our brand printer pages for remanufactured HP toner and ink, Epson ink and toner, Brother ink and toner, Canon ink and toner, Lexmark ink and toner or other cheap printer ink cartridges and search for your printer model through the list provided.