Buyer's Guide: Multifunction Laser Printers

If you're a multitasker, hardware consolidation will be irresistible to you. Why have separate boxes for printing, scanning, copying and faxing if those functions can be bundled in a single package?

Inkjet printer makers were the first to embrace that logic when designing some of their products, but now multifunction units can be found in the laser printer arena, too. That's good news for folks that find single-purpose devices an affront to efficiency and want the kind of speed a laser printer can bring to their print jobs, speeds unattainable by most inkjet printers. What's more, if you add color to the mix, a multi will not only give you color documents but a color copier, too.

When purchasing a multifunction device, you need to keep in mind that all the considerations that go into buying a laser printer also apply to the multi. Your shopping is further complicated by needing to evaluate your scanning, copying and faxing needs. Reducing device clutter is a noble objective, but if your office is spending four or five hours a day scanning documents and images and the same amount of time printing, copying and faxing items, then it might make more sense to take the dedicated route in the name of office tranquility.

What's in Your Wallet?

While multifunction printers can have robust scanning, copying and faxing features, you should always keep in mind that the devices are first and foremost printers. If you make sure the printer component of the device has the muscle and features you need, chances are the other components will meet your needs, too.

As with any hardware purchase, you'll want to decide what you want to pay for your new multi. As a rough rule of thumb, a multi will cost 33 percent more than a similar printer without the additional functions.

A color multi will cost more than a monochrome one, but the differential is not as high as you might think. For example, a Ricoh Aficio SP 3410SF monochrome multi rated at 31 pages a minute sells for around $550, while a Xerox Phaser 6180MFP/N color multi rated at 30 black-and-white pages a minute sells at around $650.

Pricing for multis can be as low as $400 and as high as $7,000 or more. Feature mix and quality contribute to higher prices, as well as speed and duty cycle, or the number of pages that can be safely printed in a month without shortening the life of the device. For example, an HP LaserJet M2727 ($599) monochrome multi will pump out 27 pages per minute and has a duty cycle of 15,000 pages per month, while the LaserJet M5035 ($4,899) prints 35 pages per minute and has a duty cycle of 200,000 pages a month.

A rule of thumb when determining if a duty cycle fits your needs is to take the highest number offered and divide it by two for black and white pages and, if the printer uses four passes for a color page, four for a color sheet. If the results exceed your expectations for a month, then the printer is a good candidate for purchase. For example, if a printer's duty cycle is 50,000 pages a month and you anticipate printing fewer than 25,000 black and white or 12,500 color pages a month, then it should fit into your business nicely. For single-pass color printers, the page count for determining the optimum duty cycle would be the same as it is for black and white pages.

As tempting as it may be to buy a multifunction laser printer (MFLP) at the low end of the spectrum, chances are those home-office-targeted units won't meet your busy office's demands. They're slow, lack the quality needed for business documents and have higher maintenance costs than pricier all-in-ones. The Samsung CLX-3175FW color multi, for instance, sells for under $300, but it prints at 17 pages per minute in black and white and only four pages a minute in color and has a duty cycle of 20,000 pages a month.

Mind Your Toner

As with any printer, the cost of the hardware only begins with what you pay to take it out of the box. Once your business starts using your multi, there are costs connected to operating the unit.

The primary recurring cost is toner replacement so you'll want to buy a multi with the best cost per page spec that meets your needs. Those costs will vary from unit to unit but, generally, the faster the MFLP, the lower the per-page costs. For example, the Oki C5550n MFP all-in-one prints eight color pages a minute at 13.5 cents a page, while the speedier Ricoh SP C232SF prints 21 color pages a minute at a cost of 9.7 cents a page.

Another factor influencing toner costs is cartridge capacity. The smaller the capacity, the greater the per-page costs will be for the unit. For example, a single regular color cartridge (non-black) on the Konica Minolta Magicolor 4690MF multifunction laser ($999) with a yield of 4,000 pages sells for $154, or 3.8 cents a page. A high-yield cartridge for the same unit has twice the yield and costs around $198, or 2.4 cents a page.

Keep in mind, too, that with a color multi, you'll likely be using more black toner than any other color, since black-and-white pages will make up the bulk of the work for making copies of documents and sending and receiving faxes.