What Is The Most Economical All In One Inkjet Printer, Using The Least Amount On Ink Cartridges ?

Hello HarryCPD,

This is a question that can be answered in many different ways, but I will provide the answer I feel is best for the vast majority of users.

First, you should decide if you need color printing or just black.  Do you need faxing capabilities? Are you printing business communications, family photos, or a combination of things? Either way I would strongly suggest going with an all-in-one that uses laser technology rather than inkjet. Why? The inkjet printers are very cheap to purchase, but the ink cartridges over the lifetime of the printer are very costly.  On the flip side laser printers are typically more expensive, the toner cartridges are more expensive, but they have a vastly

If you plan on doing a lot of printing and fast printing laser is usually the best option. Also I prefer laser if your printing things that need to be mailed without an envelope, for example envelopes or postcards. Inkjet can easily be smeared by the postal processing equipment or run due to rain.

The following printers are used to provide an example, I'm not necessarily endorsing them. The Brother MFC-7220 Laser All-in-One costs approximately $200, has a page yield of 4,000 and the replacement toner cartridge costs approximately $40. That means per page it costs $0.016 cents to print using this printer.

An equivalent inkjet all-in-one printer is the Brother MFC-845CW which costs approximately $200. This is a color printer, however the cost per page I'm calculating is only based on printing black ink. The replacement black inkjet cartridge costs approximately $21 and yields approximately 500 pages. So the cost per page is $0.042 cents for the inkjet. By the way, most printer manufacturers base their page yield figures on a 5% page coverage -- it's almost an industry standard.

Before you decide on an all-in-one printer get the price of the replacement cartridge along with the page yield on the cartridge. Take the cartridge price and divide by the page yield and you will get the cost per page. This is the most important variable to consider once you determine a printer has the functionality you need.

If you want to go with color laser, I personally have used and really like the Samsung CLP-550N and CLP-600N laser printer.  These are not all-in-one, but I really like them for general business printing.

Let me know if you need more details on one technology versus the other.

Spencer
Ink4Less.comm

I have a brother 420CN, and I'm very happy with it. Although the Brother ink cartridges are fairly expensive, there are generic cartridges on Amazon for under $2, making it very economical indeed. I have not yet found another all-in-one inkjet that has such cheap generic ink cartridges.

Epson CX3200
Under £1 for compatible cartridges from EBAY
Easy to repair too

In my opinion, the Inkjet printers are considerably more economical for color printing than laser printers. And amongst those, you should stick to Epson or Canon and if possible, avoid buying the very latest models.

I have a Brother 420CN, and I'm very happy with it. Although the Brother ink cartridges are fairly expensive, there are generic cartridges available on Amazon for under $2, making it very cheap. I have not yet found another all-in-one ink jet printer that has such cheap generic cartridges.