Lasers for Offices, Inkjets for Homes; HP doesn’t Think So…
It’s true that many of us believe that laser printers are ideally suited for offices owing to the sheer volume of monochrome prints, and inkjets for homes for the same reason. But, HP is on a path to vanquish this notion and promote HP inkjet printers for office use with the Officejet / Officejet Pro line of printers.
Bret Bottger, an HP employee states that the printing costs involved with their office inkjet printers is up to 50% cheaper than that of laser printers (comparison with non-HP laser printer and not a HP laser printer interestingly). He is referring to companies that are sized up to 25 employees and not large enterprises.
Some reasons for backing office inkjet printers over lasers include:
• Lower cost per page (CPP) than lasers
• Lower energy use than lasers
• Professional print quality
• Faster print speeds than low-end lasers
• Lower purchase price than low-end lasers
• Complete set of office features
• Choice of fill-level in ink cartridges and specialty papers tailored to individual office needs
• Brand strength and reliability
To prove that HP isn’t shooting arrows into thin hair, they refer to a test commissioned by them that showed that HP Officejet had a net saving over Samsung’s ML1620 monochrome laser printer. Their colour prints were cheaper than Samsung’s monochrome prints.
Why are they comparing a HP inkjet printer with a non-HP laser printer? We would like to know the results when they compare a HP inkjet printer with a HP laser printer. I do not believe that the results would be much different either. HP has the rare distinction of having the most expensive cost-per-page for all the HP printers we have seen by far.
To conclude, smaller businesses might be benefitted by inkjet printers rather than laser printers, but it all comes down to the volume of printing. The universal thumb rule is simple, if your printing is volume is more, laser printers are ideal else, head towards inkjet printers.
About the author:
Abhinav has been blogging about printing and related technologies on CreativeCloud for several years. He is also a project manager for a large technology company.
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