Show Me the Money: How Ink and Paper Costs Add Up
THE TEST: On behalf of PC World, the Imaging Products Laboratory at the Rochester Institute of Technology evaluated the ink and paper costs for printing 4-by-6-inch glossy photos. IPL tested nine of the printers we reviewed; the two dye-sublimation snapshot printers were not tested because they use a ribbon capable of producing a fixed number of images (therefore, their costs are easily calculated without testing). If you buy single packs of paper and ribbon, prints from the Dell Photo Printer 540 cost 50 cents each, and the Sony DPP-EX50 prints cost 68 cents each. However, buying print packs in quantity can reduce those costs to 39 cents and 57 cents, respectively.
IPL printed a series of four images from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) that it had cropped to 4 by 6 inches using each printer's "best" or "photo" mode and the vendor's recommended glossy photo paper. The lab depleted three sets of cartridges, replacing them when they failed due to low ink, or when print quality had depreciated noticeably. IPL used the average of the page yields to determine ink costs per page; prices for ink and paper are from the vendors' Web sites. The test beds had controlled temperature and humidity to simulate normal office conditions.
WHAT WE FOUND: The good news is that ink and paper costs bore no direct relation to photo print quality--you can print beautiful photos without getting bilked for supplies. For example, the Epson R320 printed top-notch photos to both letter-size paper and snapshot paper, yet its cost per page of 49 cents was well below the average of 62 cents for all printers. In contrast, the Lexmark P915 printed less attractive photos than any other desktop printer, yet its cost per page was almost twice that of the Epson R320, at 97 cents. Paper alone for the Lexmark costs 40 cents per 4-by-6-inch sheet, and the company only sells packs of 20 sheets; in contrast, Epson sells 100-sheet packs of snapshot paper that cost $16.20, or about 16 cents per sheet.
When IPL performed page-yield testing for our August 2004 story, "Printers for Every Purpose," inkjet printers with individual ink cartridges tended to have lower ink costs than models with tricolor cartridges when printing color graphics on plain paper. The same proved true for photo printers when printing glossy photos.
The three desktop photo printers that use tricolor cartridges (the two HP models and the Lexmark P915) averaged 85 cents per snapshot, while the four models using individual cartridges averaged 52 cents per print. However, the lowest cost came from the Epson PictureMate, which uses a single cartridge with six inks. If you only print onto the 100 sheets of paper that come with the ink cartridge, cost per page is 29 cents. However, you might be able to stretch your pennies a lot further: Printing onto additional glossy paper, the PictureMate averaged 186 snapshots per ink cartridge, lowering per-print costs to 23 cents.
Tests show that some printers will soak you for nearly a dollar a print.
HOW WE TEST: Data based on tests designed and conducted by the Imaging Products Laboratory at the Rochester Institute of Technology. A series of four 400-dpi images from the International Organization for Standardization were printed at "best" or "photo" settings to calculate page yield and cost per page. Paper costs based on packs of either 100 or 120 sheets, except for the Lexmark P915, for which only 20-sheet packs are available.
FOOTNOTES:
1Optional tricolor photo cartridge not used in this test.
2High-yield color cartridge used.
3 Price for set of paper and either ink cartridge or dye-sublimation ribbon.
4 Paper and ink or ribbon costs cannot be calculated separately; print consumables sold together.
Eric Butterfield
