What is the average price of printers made for business use?

How much a printer costs depends on a large variety of factors, like:

- Printing technology (laser printers are a little more expensive than inkjet printers),

- Colour printing capability or simple black-and-white printing,

- Automatic double-sided printing capability,

-  Paper formats supported,

- Printing speeds (as mentioned in ppm or pages per minute),

-  Functions, with most multifunction printers putting together scanning, copying, printing and faxing, making the  difference between copier and printer harder to define),

- Connectivity (printers with only USB are cheaper than printers with networking capability, which are cheaper than printers with wireless networking capability).

Even if cheapest printer prices are under the £100 mark, most of the high-volume, productivity printers can cost several thousand pounds, so printers are commonly rented out or leased to small businesses.

Other than these technical features, several key aspects affect the cost of a printer, which taken together make up for the total cost of ownership of a printer.

These costs include:

- Price of printer consumables like paper and ink (inkjet printer ink cartridges cost less than laser printer toners, but can print far, far fewer pages),

- Planned maintenance with regular servicing and replacement of key mechanical parts,

- Unplanned maintenance and repairs.

To cover all these expenses, maintenance service contracts or “managed print services” plans are often proposed as an addition in most printer rental or printer lease plans. In the UK, most printers used by small businesses are leased and managed this way.

The following table list the average prices of office multifunction printers of different types:

Comparing  quotes from several suppliers in printers is usually a good reflex to make sure you are choosing the right device at the right price.