A New Printer or Copier: What Makes More Sense?

While you might be considering a laser printer, there are cases where a color copier will make more sense. When your print volume sits at less than 1,000 pages per month, you can save a lot with a printer; however, once that volume rises, a copier might be the more beneficial option.

We had a customer, for example, who wanted a Xerox Phaser 7500 color printer, and they planned to make 2,000 color prints each month. At Xerox’s website, they say that this will cost $0.11 per color print. That, however, is somewhat false. The problem is that this is 20 percent coverage, and 20 percent coverage is about 8.5 x 11 on a sheet of paper that has been folded in half three times.

What happens if the client chose that printer? It means they will pay $0.66 per sheet for each color print, and if they have to use tabloid, they will pay $1.28 per copy. Now if you choose the Xerox WorkCentre 7525 copier, you will pay $0.075 for each print, and it will prove the same for tabloid printing because it does not matter how much coverage the page sees.