The Shocking Cost of Inkjet Printers!

Do you have a small inkjet printer in your office? Maybe there’s more than one if you took a look around. Most of our clients who take advantage of our complimentary print assessment service find more printers (inkjet and laser) than they thought existed. As for inkjet printers, most offices have their fair share of them because they tend to be so inexpensive to purchase – until you run out of ink!

If you have one or more small inkjet printers in your office, you too probably started with good intentions of only using them for personal use, just printing a few pages when absolutely needed, and only in black and white, right?

Here are the shocking results of a recent study we did comparing the cost-per-ounce of some different liquids. Starting with the least expensive to most expensive liquid.

Liquid Cost Per Ounce

1. Crude Oil:  $0.015 per ounce
2. Milk:  $0.02 per ounce
3. Dom Perignon Champagne:  $4.54 per ounce
4. Human Blood:  $10.83 per ounce
5. Chanel No. 5 Perfume:  $22 per ounce
6. Liquid Ink for Common Inkjet Printer:  $32.99 per ounce and more!

At $32.99 per ounce, it would cost over $4,000,000,000 (that’s billion!) to fill an Olympic-size pool with the ink you’re buying in those little inkjet cartridges. And that’s just for black and white. Color is typically four times the cost.

Let’s put it in perspective:

If you pay $32.99 for an inkjet cartridge that is supposed to last 500 prints (that’s the manufacturer's rated yield at only 5% page coverage which is barely more than a paragraph of text on a page), your effective cost per page would be over 65 cents per page!

Sample inkjet cost-per-print in black and white (only 5% toner coverage):

$32.99 per ink cartridge / 500 prints = $0.6598 per page

Increase your toner coverage with more text or add a graphic and you’ll quickly be printing at over $1 per page. Add color and your cost per print increases exponentially because now ink from four cartridges is required.

So what’s the answer? It depends on your needs and your budget. That’s why so many of our customers take advantage of our complimentary print assessment service which provides you with a complete inventory of your printing equipment, your page volume activity by printer and a fact-based report on your actual printing costs.  From there you’ll be in an educated position to determine the best print strategy for your business with or without inkjet printers.