Printer Comparison #2 - Make an Informed Printer Purchase

If you missed the first part of this series on making an informed printer purchase, don't fret, zip on over here and check it out. Once you're all caught up you can follow along here with everyone else as our own in-house printer expert helps you compare a Photo All-In-One printer with a Business All-In-One.

Comparison #2 - 'Photo All-In-One' vs. 'Business All-In-One'

Our next comparison looks at the differences between so called ‘Photo’ and ‘Business’ All-In-Ones, featuring the $129.99 HP PhotoSmart C4780 All-In-One Home Printer and the $149.99 HP OfficeJet 6500 All-In-One Business Printer. Again, please do not think in terms of the extra features between the two units. The $20 premium for the OfficeJet gets you faxing and Ethernet, but you don’t get the wireless networking in the base model of the OJ6500, whereas the C4780 does give wireless.

Price of Ink(s)

As before, people really only think about ink in this way, since this is where they feel the pain in the wallet. The HP PhotoSmart C4780 uses the ‘60’ family of inks (as does the D2660 compared in Part 1), where the OfficeJet 6500 uses the ‘920’ family. The 60 Black costs only $14.99 and the 60 Tri-Color is $19.99. High Capacity inks for the C4780 include the 60XL Black at $34.99 and the 60XL Tri-Color for $40.99.

The OfficeJet 6500 #920 Black ink cartridge is $19.99, with its 920 Color cartridges in a ‘Value Pack’ with Cyan, Magenta and Yellow individual inks at $27.99. Again, High-Capacity inks are available in the 920XL for $31.99 for Black, and a total price of $44.97 for the individual 920XL Colors – the XL Colors are not offered in a Value Pack.

Yield of Cartridge(s)

Price of cartridges aside, this is what really counts. With the C4780’s regular inks, the 60 Black yields about 200 pages of text, and the 60 Tri-Color yields about 165 pages. The larger 60XL Black gives about 600 pages of text, and the 60XL Tri-Color yields about 440 pages.

The OfficeJet 6500’s #920 Black ink yields around 420 pages and the three 920 Colors (CYM) yield a combined 300 pages. The larger 920XL Black gives about 1,200 pages of text, where the three #920XL Colors yield a combined 750 pages.

Cost Per Page

With the PhotoSmart C4780’s regular cartridges, it costs 7.5¢ to print one average page of black text, and about 12¢ to print in color. Using the larger cartridges, we find costs drop to 5.8¢ for black printing, and 9.3¢ for color printing.

The OfficeJet 6500’s regular inks run you 4.8¢ to print black and 9.3¢ for color printing, while the High-Capacity inks give you a cost of 2.6¢ for black, and 6¢ for color printing – a significant savings over regular cartridges.

‘A Year of Printing’

The HP PhotoSmart C4780 and regular sized inks to print 5,000 pages will have cost you over $1,100 to run, including the purchase of the printer. Substitute the XL inks for the regular inks, and it will only cost $887.37 to print the same amount. That’s a savings on almost $225.

With the Business-oriented OfficeJet 6500 printer and enough regular inks to do 5,000 pages, costs are a more palatable $839.62. Buy the larger 920XL inks instead, and you can get the running costs down to $728.48 for the printer and 5,000 pages of ink.

The Result

You won’t give up quality of printing by going with either of these machines, but by foregoing the ‘Business’ label of the OfficeJet 6500, with or without High-Capacity inks, you can certainly save a lot of money over the PhotoSmart C4780 – about $300.