What Is It?

TCO estimates the total cost of ownership of something for the duration of its life, in this case it’s printers. Users may be surprised when they see the TCO of some printers is actually quite high, maybe a lot higher than what they thought it might be. Typically the TCO for a printer is estimated to be a three year period but some modern printers can have up to five years of operational use.

TCO is definitely something you should be considering when buying any printer. It takes into account its running costs and gives you an accurate figure which reflects the cost-efficiency of your printing. Printer TCO also takes into account the limits of a printers monthly due cycle which is the recommended maximum usage for that printer per month.

There are companies out there who don’t want you to figure out what we’re going to tell you because if you did, you wouldn’t buy their printer and ink cartridges in the first place. Luckily for you inkntoneruk are here to give you a helping hand in making an informed choice when it comes to keeping the cost of your printing down.

Let us use this simple TCO mono laser (black and white) printer example to illustrate the importance of considering TCO and of factoring in the hidden running costs.

TCO A4 Laser Printer Example

Usage: 500 Pages per month (1 Paper Ream) over a 3 year period

Example 1: HP LaserJet P1005

• Retails For: £84
• Toner cartridge cost: £650 (over 36 months)
• TCO £734

Example 2: Kyocera FS-2020D

• Retails For: £295
• Toner cartridge cost: £127.50 (over 36 months)
• TCO £422.5

You can see, as it is almost always the rule of thumb with printers, the more you spend on buying your printer the cheaper your printer cartridges will be for it. Customers looking for a quick, cheap fix to their printing needs will quickly release it was a costly error when the time comes to replace their cartridges.

It’s worth pointing out that one Kyocera toner cartridge for the FS-2020D will last two years with a 500 page per month usage, while one HP P1005 toner cartridge will last three months! A massive improvement in efficiency all round from Kyocera not to mention to benefits to be had for the environment by curbing landfill waste and resources used in manufacturing and distribution.

How To Calculate Printer TCO

Its easy to calculate TCO for any printer you currently use or are considering purchasing, just add the following costs up:

(a) Purchase cost of the printer

(b) Cost of the replacement ink or toner cartridges

(c) Number of cartridges used (average ink cartridge usage is 20 per annum)

The resulting figure will be the TCO, voilà!

Note:

You should include any other consumables which may need replacing during a three year printing cycle when calculating your TCO. i.e. print heads, waste toner cartridges, fuser units and drum units.