Why I Stopped Buying the Cheapest Office Printer and Started Paying Attention to Total Cost

My View on Office Printing: The Cheapest Machine Is a Trap

I’ll be honest: for years, I was the person who picked the lowest-priced printer for our office. We needed a machine for invoices, shipping labels, and the occasional marketing handout. The $200 model looked fine on paper. But after managing our office supplies for over five years—processing 60-80 orders annually across 8 vendors—I’ve changed my mind completely.

My view is simple: selecting a printer based on its sticker price is one of the fastest ways to waste your department’s budget. The real cost isn’t on the price tag. It’s in the ink, the paper jams, the downtime, and the frustration. I learned this the hard way.

Where the “Cheapest” Printer Actually Costs More

Let’s look at the numbers. In 2023, I bought a “budget” inkjet printer for $149. It looked like a steal. The cartridges were $35 each—or so I thought. Actually, they were $35 for the standard yield cartridge, which lasted about 200 pages. Our office prints roughly 800 pages a month. That’s $140 a month just in ink. Over a year, that’s $1,680 in supplies for a $149 printer.

Compare that to the laser printer I replaced it with. The upfront cost was $550. But the toner cartridge was $90 and lasted 2,500 pages. That works out to about $29 per month in supplies. Over a year, that’s $348. The laser printer paid for itself in savings within four months.

“From the outside, it looks like vendors just need to work faster for rush orders. The reality is rush orders often require completely different workflows and dedicated resources.”

But it wasn’t just the ink. The cheap printer jammed constantly. I’d estimate we lost about 3 hours a month to clearing paper jams and fixing alignment issues—maybe 30 minutes per printer, depending on the model. That’s 36 hours a year of lost productivity. At an average employee cost of $25/hour, that’s $900 in hidden labor costs. The $149 printer was costing us over $2,500 annually when you added up supplies and lost time.

The Komori Surprise: A Different Kind of Printing

Now, I should note that our main production floor is a different world. We have a Komori printing machine—specifically, a model with the KHS Hyper System (KHS). That’s not an office printer. That’s a high-speed offset press that runs 24/7 for commercial jobs. The cost per page is fractions of a cent, and downtime is measured in minutes, not hours. It’s a different tool for a different job.

But here’s the connection: the same principle applies. When we evaluated the KHS of Komori Hyper System, we didn’t look at just the purchase price. We looked at the total cost of ownership: the reduced makeready time (KHS cuts it by 40%, according to their specs), the lower waste on short runs, and the reliability. It’s the same thinking I now apply to office printers. The cheapest option upfront is rarely the cheapest in the long run.

What About Digital vs. Laser? (And a Note on 3D Printers)

People often ask me about the laser vs. inkjet difference. Here’s my take: for high-volume text printing, laser wins every time. Inkjet has its place—photo printing, for example—but for an office printing reports and invoices, laser is cheaper per page and faster.

But I digress. The reason I bring this up is that some vendors push inkjet as a “lower cost per page” option with high-yield cartridges (which can be true), but they often omit the lower page yield and slower speed. It’s a classic case of the surface illusion: it looks cheaper until you run the numbers.

And 3D printers? A friend asked me about the Da Vinci Mini 3D printer for prototyping. I told him the same thing: the upfront cost is irrelevant. It’s the cost of the filament, the build plate adhesion, and the time to calibrate. A 3D printer with multiple extruders might cost more upfront but can handle complex prints in half the time, saving labor costs. The same logic applies.

Responding to the Skeptics

“But my budget is tight,” you might say. “I can’t afford a $550 laser printer right now.” I get it. I’ve been there. But look at it this way: if you buy the $149 printer, you’ll spend over $1,600 in ink in the first year. If you finance the $550 printer over 12 months at typical rates, your monthly payment is about $50. Your monthly ink cost drops from $140 to $30. You’re actually saving $60 a month from month one. The cheaper option is more expensive from day one.

“Dodged a bullet when I double-checked the quantities before approving. Was one click away from ordering 10x what we needed.”

So glad I switched when I did. Almost kept the old printer to save $400 upfront—which would have cost us another $1,200 in ink over the next 9 months. Dodged that bullet.

Final Thought: Know Your Costs

I’m not saying you should never buy the cheapest option. But stop making that decision without the full picture. Calculate your total annual cost: upfront price + supplies + maintenance + lost productivity. That number is what matters. The lowest sticker price is almost never the lowest total cost.

That’s been my experience across hundreds of purchase orders—from office paper rolls to a Komori printing machine for the production floor. And I’ll bet it’s yours too, if you look hard enough at the real numbers.

Note: Prices mentioned are as of January 2025. Verify current pricing at your supplier as rates may have changed.