A3 Colour Multifunction Printer with a Booklet Maker

£2,649.00

saddle stitch and fold, for an office that produces its own booklets and is currently paying a print shop to do it

Office equipment is sold on headline numbers that almost nobody can use. A printer quoted at 40 pages a minute is quoting a single sided black page from a warm machine, and the cost that matters is pence per page over five years rather than the price on the box. Every listing here states the real running cost, the monthly duty cycle the machine is actually built for, what the consumables cost and how long they last. Where a cheaper machine would do the job we say so, because the money in this trade is in the consumables and we would rather you knew that from us than worked it out in year two.

Specification

Use: an office printing between 2,000 and 20,000 pages a month depending on the model chosen. Monthly duty cycle is the maximum a machine can physically do, not what it should do. The recommended monthly volume is usually about a tenth of it, and buying to the duty cycle rather than the recommended volume is how an office ends up replacing a printer every eighteen months.
Specification: a heavier duty build with a higher monthly duty cycle and a longer service life, for a machine that works all day rather than occasionally
Capacity: a 250 to 2,300 sheet paper capacity depending on trays fitted, a 100 sheet duplex document feeder, and a monthly duty cycle stated alongside the recommended volume rather than instead of it
Consumables: separate toner and drum units, which is cheaper over five years than an all in one cartridge. High yield toner is available on every model here and the yields are published at 5 per cent coverage, which is the industry test and is optimistic for anything with a logo on it
Connectivity: gigabit ethernet, wireless, AirPrint and Mopria, plus scan to email, scan to folder and scan to searchable PDF as standard rather than as a licence
Running cost: published in pence per page for mono and colour at both cartridge yields. Cost per page is the number to compare, not the price of the machine. A cheap printer with expensive cartridges costs more over three years than a dearer one with high yield toner, and the gap is usually several times the price difference on the hardware. Every printer and copier listing here publishes pence per page in mono and colour at the standard and the high yield cartridge.
Sustainability: Energy Star certified, with a stated sleep and recovery time and a toner recycling return label in the box. We state the actual certification rather than the word sustainable. For paper that means FSC or PEFC with the chain of custody number on the wrapper. For recycled content it means the percentage. Anything described only as eco friendly is described that way because there is nothing to certify.
Delivery: two person delivery, positioned and unpacked, with the packaging taken away
Weight: approximately 140.80 kilograms
Warranty: three years on site, next business day response
Default settings: we set duplex and mono as the defaults on installation, which is the single largest saving available on any print estate and costs nothing
Secure print: available on every model, and worth having wherever documents contain personal data
Trade: Trade account customers get thirty day terms on approval, a published price file, next day delivery on stocked lines and a named account manager rather than a queue. Ask for it, because we do not upsell it.

What arrives

the machine on its stand where one is supplied
a starter toner set, and we state what a starter yields rather than calling it full
the power lead and a network cable
a quick start card and the full manual by download
a cost per page sheet for your volume

Setting it up

Two hours including networking, driver deployment and scan to email. We configure scan destinations, set duplex and mono as the defaults, and lock the colour settings if you want them locked, which typically takes 20 per cent off a print bill on its own.

Which one to buy

Buy on cost per page and recommended monthly volume, not on speed. A machine rated at 40 pages a minute and one rated at 30 will finish a ten page document within a few seconds of each other, and the difference over five years is entirely in the toner. Cost per page is the number to compare, not the price of the machine. A cheap printer with expensive cartridges costs more over three years than a dearer one with high yield toner, and the gap is usually several times the price difference on the hardware. Every printer and copier listing here publishes pence per page in mono and colour at the standard and the high yield cartridge.