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Key Printer Statistics

 

 

Anual Cost of Consumables: Ink, Toner, Drums & Print Heads

Consumables include ink or toner, print heads fusers and other parts that wear out and must be replaced. The cost of consumables is one of the most important IT management stats. If you use only one number to by printers, this should be it.

 

We calculated consumables costs for all 160 printers and all-in-one's available from Staples.com as of November, 2008. The list includes simple printers and complex, high-volume digital printer/copiers. The results follow, expressed in costs per person, case (5,000 sheets), per ream (500 sheets) and page. These numbers reflect ink and toner used in printing standard text documents. Printing graphics and pictures costs 2-6 times more.

 

Print Speed (Pages Per Minute)

Most lasers above the very low end will print 30 ppm (pages per minute) or more. High efficiency inkjets like the HP Officejet Pro K5400 or L7590 print 35ppm.

 

You have to spend a lot of money - typically $1,500-$6,000 - to get 50 pages/minute. Is it worth it? Only if your office print lots of large documents under time pressure, or you have 20+ people printing to a single printer. Here are some examples.

How Long Does It Take to Print This Job?

Job Size - Time to Print In Minutes	at 20 ppm	at 35 ppm	at 50 ppm
20 Page Document	1:10	0:45	0:34
50 Page Document	2:40	1.35	1:10
500 Page Document	25:10	14.28	10.10
20 50-page Manuals (1000 pages)	50:10	28.45	20.10

* Laser printers take 6-20 seconds to generate the first page of any print job. This chart assumes a 10 second wait state.

How Many People Can One (1) Printer Serve?

On average, US offices print 44 pages/person/day. A 50ppm printer will generate 250 pages in about 5 minutes - the average daily output of 5.7 workers.

 

Remember these numbers when the leasing people promise you greater productivityfrom more speed. Unless you print a lot of paper, you can't use the speed you buy.

 

Should I Pay More for Faster Printers?

# Employees	Total Pages/Day at US Daily Average	Print Time at 20 ppm	Print Time at 35 ppm	Print Time at 50 ppm
5 people	220	11:10	6:27	4:34
10 people	440	22:20	12:54	8:58
50 people	2,200	1:51:40	1:04:30	44:10
100 people	4,400	3:43:20	2:09:00	1:28:10

Printer Volume & Monthly Duty Cycles

The Monthly Duty Cycle is the manufacturer's theoretical average number of pages your printer should be required to print each month. The Maximum Monthly Cycle is the theoretical maximum number of pages your printer should print each month.

 

We can thank printer marketing people for these specs. As a practical matter, both of these specifications are meaningless. Most printers will print several times the manfucturers recommended monthly limits and keep on chugging for years.

 

If you insist on taking duty cycles seriously, the table below shows the relationship between price and manufacturers' recommended volumes. Pay special attention to the column on the right. Your average $500 printer will accomodate 12 average employees. How many printers in your office have to handle 12 employees? We bet there are none!

 

Retail Printer Price	Monthly Duty Cycle in Pages	Annual Duty Cycle In Pages	Average Annual Output in People
Very Low ($100)	2,500	30,000	3
Low	5,000	60,000	6
Low - Moderate	10,000	120,000	12
Moderate ($800 - 1,000)	25,000	300,000	30
Moderate	50,000	600,000	60
Moderate - High	100,000	1,200,000	120
High	200,000	2,400,000	240
Very High (+$4,000)	300,000	3,600,000	360

 

Printer Capacity and Speed

This chart shows the relationship between print speed (ppm) and printing capacity.

 

Printing Time	Pages at 20 ppm	Pages at 35 ppm	Pages at 50 ppm
5 Minutes	100	175	250
1 Hour	1,200	2,100	3,000
4 Hours	4,800	8,400	12,000
8 Hours	9,600	16,800	24,000