Question: So I want to print in color, and with the cost of color lasers coming down, I am wondering: laser versus inkjet? When does laser make sense?

It's true that the cost of color laser printers has come down significantly, particularly on the higher end. Most still don't beat inkjet printers in terms of price, but some of their other advantages—speed and volume, namely—can make a high-end laser printer a good investment if you have the up-front money for it. The higher cost per page of a middling laser printer will quickly close the price gap over time between itself and a higher end printer, so the only reason you'd go that route is if you need to start printing right away but only have a couple hundred dollars to spend up front.

Color laser printer prices now bottom out in the $200-$300 range, while higher-end ones are priced at $1,000 and beyond. Inkjet printers, on the other hand, can be had for under $100. But the price of hardware is somewhat less important in dealing with printers than the cost of inks and toner, and this issue complicates things a lot. There are many, many ways that you can approach this, mostly because of the wide variety of retail sources for both ink and toner cartridges. There's also the question of refilling those cartridges, which is a whole other beast.

So we're going to run our own printing thought experiment here. We'll compare the costs of three printers, show our work, and list some features of each kind of printer that might lead you to one as opposed to the other. This way, you can determine what setup would work best for you, and then you'll also be able to run the numbers yourself so you can compare different printer models. We're going to look at three types of printers: a consumer level inkjet (the $99 Epson WorkForce 60), a lower-end color laser (a $369 Brother MFC-9010CN), and a higher-end color laser (a $999 Canon imageClass MF 8450c).

Making the comparison

First, a basic lesson in pigment stats. For both ink and toner, you can usually find figures on the package that tell you how many pages a cartridge can be expected to yield, ranging from 200 pages to tens of thousands. For black pigment, these figures are based on covering 5 percent of each page with solid ink, or between a third and a half with text. This is a ridiculous lowball for an "average" page, but the figure at least allows you to compare yields across brands. For color pages, the page yield assumes you're covering 20 percent of the page, or 5 percent with each color (yellow, magenta, cyan, black).

Forgetting about paper for a bit, figuring out the cost per page means you just have to divide the cost of the cartridge by its page yield. For example, a cartridge that costs $30 and yields 1,000 pages means each page costs 3 cents. To get the cost per page for color, you add up the costs of the three color cartridges, divide that by the page yield of one of them (usually the same across colors), and add the cost per page from black. For example, a group of cyan, magenta, and yellow cartridges that cost $20 each and have a 750 page yield printed on their boxes have a cost per page of ($20*3)/750 = 8 cents plus the 3 cents per page cost of the black ink, which works out to 11 cents per color page.

A good way to compare costs between printers is to work out the ink cost per 1,000 pages. It's hard to say how many of each 1,000 pages you print will be color, because you are not some kind of psychic, but a 750/250 split is usually fair.

Now we'll go back to our three test case printers and compare their costs per 1,000 pages. The inkjet's high-yield black ink cartridges get you 945 pages for $32.79, and the color cartridges get you 755 pages for $20.79. With our 750/250 ratio, printing 1,000 pages costs $54.65.

The lower-end color laser printer's toner cartridges are significantly more expensive, but their pages' yields are not that much higher: black toner rated at 2,200 pages is $75, and each color yields 1,400 pages for $73.50. This gives a cost per 1,000 pages of $73.38.

If you shell out for the high-end laser printer, cartridges are pricey but can print a few thousand pages each: the black gets 6,000 pages and is $156, and each color gets 4,000 pages for $154. For this printer, the cost per page is actually *lower* than that of the inkjet at $53.97. It's not much of a savings, and you'd have to print literally over a million pages to work off the extra $800 you spent on the printer itself, not including replacement parts.

As evidenced by these calculations, laser printers still haven't made it all the way down to the level of inkjet printers in terms of cost over time and use. But on the opposite ends of the initial-outlay-for-hardware spectrum, parity is starting to get there. Almost. Sort of.

Printer Hardware Price Cost per black page Cost per color page Cost per 1,000 pages Epson WorkForce 60 Inkjet $99.99 3.4 cents 8.26 cents $54.65 Brother MFC-9010N Laser $369.99 3.4 cents 19.15 cents $73.38 Canon imageClass MF8450c Laser $999.99 2.6 cents 11.5 cents $53.97

Other considerations

Aside from cost, there are a few functional considerations that can help you decide between inkjet and laser printers. Generally, laser printers are still faster than inkjet because they print by transferring pigment to paper with electric pulses. Inkjet printers, on the other hand, can sometimes still ponder a 4x6 photograph for what seems like days.

Most printers we looked at of both types post a printing rate of between 15 and 30 pages per minute, but inkjet printers go much slower than their quoted rate when printing color items. If you need to print colored documents quickly, but can't justify an expensive laser, a lower-end laser may work for you.

Volume is also a consideration here. Both ink and toner cartridges expire after 18 to 24 months, so if you can't meet their page yield in less time than that, you're wasting pigment. Even if you want to go all-out and get a high-end laser with per-page costs on par with a cheap inkjet, it will all be for naught if you don't print around 3,000 pages a year. But remember that manfacturers really underestimate the page yield on cartridge boxes, so if you're printing dense pages with an inkjet you could be changing out cartridges rated at 1,000 pages every 300 pages or so.

If you do print a lot, though, another benefit of big expensive laser printers is that they can hold a lot of paper. If you're going to be making, say, color photocopies for a college lecture, big trays that hold thousands of pages provide some relief. Some big laser printers can also print on glossy-finish paper, if that's something you need.

We didn't cover cartridge refill costs here, but the only caveat we can offer is that sometimes non-OEM pigment, especially in the laser printer case, can fail to transfer or hang well on a page. It's a hard thing to test without going ahead and paying for a refill, but looking for reviews online for the refill service or product in relation to your printer of choice might help.

As we mentioned earlier, we can't possibly weigh all the costs of every printer and configuration from every retailer on the market. But if we were you, our printer-choosing algorithm would be along the lines of first considering the question, do you need to be able to print quickly and in large volume? If your answer is "no," an inkjet is for you. If your answer is "yes, but I don't have a lot of cash right now," you can get a low-to-middling laser, but be prepared to pay more for your decision over time through toner cartridges. If your answer is "yes, and my budget, like my printing needs, is voluminous," get a big laser printer, because the per-page cost is worth it. Then flex the per-page calculation muscles we showed you earlier to compare the costs of various models and cartridges.