Printers are sold as machines and bought as a supply contract

What follows is the working version of printer engine architecture: the decisions in the order you actually meet them, with the reasoning attached.

Two engine families with different economics

Inkjet printers spray liquid ink through microscopic nozzles, which gives excellent photographic output and requires the nozzles to stay clear. Laser printers fuse powdered toner onto paper with heat, which is fast, tolerant of neglect and less capable with photographs. Inkjets suffer when idle because ink dries in the nozzles, while laser printers are largely indifferent to sitting unused.

Toner is more expensive per cartridge and covers far more pages, so cost per page frequently favours laser for text. Neither is better in general, and matching the technology to how often you print is the decision that matters most.

Where the print head lives

Some inkjets place the print head in the cartridge, so every replacement installs a new head and a clog is solved by buying ink. Others build the head into the printer, which reduces consumable cost substantially and turns a permanent clog into a machine failure. Integrated heads therefore suit heavy regular printing, while cartridge-mounted heads suit intermittent use that risks drying.

Tank-fed printers use fixed heads with refillable reservoirs, and their much lower running cost is paid for by a higher purchase price. Which architecture a model uses is usually discoverable from the parts list and from the price of the cartridges.

Reading a page yield figure

Yields are measured to an international standard using defined test pages at a stated coverage, commonly around five per cent of the page. Five per cent coverage is a modest amount of text, and any document with images or heavy formatting will use far more. Yields therefore compare cartridges fairly against each other while overstating what most households will get.

Starter cartridges supplied with a new printer often contain considerably less than a standard cartridge, which is disclosed but rarely noticed. Cost per page is the comparable figure, calculated as cartridge price divided by rated yield, and it varies by an order of magnitude across the market.

Duty cycle and recommended volume

Maximum monthly duty cycle describes what the mechanism can survive in a month without failing, measured under favourable conditions. Recommended monthly volume is the far smaller figure describing what the manufacturer expects for a normal service life. Buyers commonly read the larger number and buy a machine that will be worked at several times its intended intensity.

The gap between the two figures is often a factor of ten, and it is one of the more honest disclosures in the category.

Choosing a printer whose recommended volume comfortably exceeds your actual use is the ordinary route to a machine that lasts.

Maintenance items and hidden costs

Laser printers have fusers, transfer belts and rollers with their own rated lives, and replacing them is a scheduled cost rather than a fault. Inkjets have waste ink absorbers with a counted capacity, and some models stop working when that counter is reached.

Cleaning cycles consume ink, and a printer used rarely can spend a substantial fraction of its ink on maintaining itself. Third-party and refilled consumables exist at lower cost, with variable quality and occasional firmware resistance from the manufacturer. Adding these scheduled costs to the cartridge cost produces a total that frequently exceeds the printer price within the first year.

Deciding what you need

Estimate your genuine monthly page count, split between text and images, before looking at any model. Calculate cost per page from published yields and current consumable prices, and compare that across candidates rather than comparing purchase prices.

Check whether the model has a fixed or cartridge-mounted head against how often the printer will sit idle. Read the recommended monthly volume rather than the duty cycle, and treat the difference between them as the manufacturer being straightforward. This site does not test printers, so long-term consumable cost tracking and reliability surveys are the evidence that completes this picture.

The takeaway

Work out the cost per page before you look at the price of the machine, because that is the number you will actually pay.

Anything you cannot buy a spare part for is a rental with a long term.