Industry Trends

The Real Cost of a 'Cheap' Printer Isn't What You Think

Let me be clear from the start: if your procurement strategy for office equipment starts and ends with the sticker price, you're leaving money on the table. I've managed our office operations budget (around $30,000 annually) for a 50-person professional services firm for six years. I've negotiated with 20+ vendors and logged every toner cartridge and service call in our system. And the single biggest lesson? The cheapest printer to buy is almost never the cheapest printer to own.

I'm looking at you, Brother MFC-L3720CDW—or more accurately, at the category of reliable, business-class color laser printers it represents. My argument isn't that it's the absolute best machine for everyone, but that evaluating it purely on purchase price misses the entire point. The real calculus is in the total cost of ownership (TCO), and that's where the game changes.

Argument 1: The Sticker Price is a Distraction, TCO is the Real Bill

When I audited our 2023 spending, a pattern slapped me in the face. Our "budget" inkjet, purchased because it was $150 cheaper upfront than a comparable laser, consumed over $400 in proprietary ink cartridges in 18 months. The laser alternative's toner would have cost about $220 for the same period. That "savings" evaporated in the first year.

This is the core TCO mindset. For a workhorse like a departmental Brother colour laser printer, you must factor in:

• Consumable Yield: What's the page yield per toner cartridge? (The Brother TN-243 series for the L3720CDW yields about 3,000 pages for the high-yield black—verify current specs on Brother's site). A cheaper printer often uses smaller, more expensive cartridges.
• Cost Per Page (CPP): This is the holy grail metric. Divide the cartridge cost by its yield. A $100 cartridge yielding 5,000 pages has a 2-cent CPP. A $70 cartridge yielding 1,500 pages is over 4.6 cents. Over 50,000 pages, that difference is $1,300.
• Duty Cycle: This is the monthly page volume a printer is built to handle. Buying a printer with a 15,000-page/month cycle for a department that prints 5,000 is overkill. Buying one with a 3,000-page cycle for that same department will break it (and fast). The MFC-L3720CDW's duty cycle is robust for a workgroup.

I knew I should run these numbers for our last printer refresh, but thought, "It's just a printer, how complicated can it be?" Well, the odds caught up with me. We didn't, and the CPP on that "deal" was awful.

Argument 2: Downtime and Friction Have a Direct, Calculable Cost

Here's the counterintuitive part that most TCO analyses miss: the cost of not working. What's the hourly cost of your IT person or office manager troubleshooting a printer stuck in sleep mode? What's the cost of a employee waiting 15 minutes for a simple print job? It's not zero.

From my perspective, reliability isn't a nice-to-have; it's a line item. A printer that consistently wakes from sleep, has straightforward network setup, and doesn't require weekly driver re-installs saves hours of salaried time. In Q2 2024, when we switched a problematic device for a more reliable model, our IT support tickets for printing dropped by roughly 80%. If you value that time at even $30/hour, the savings quickly justify a higher initial investment.

This is where features on printers like the Brother MFC series—automatic duplexing, fast first page out time, robust connectivity—pay off. They remove friction. And in business, friction is a tax.

Argument 3: The Ecosystem Lock-in (and How to Avoid It)

To be fair, all printer manufacturers want to sell you their consumables. It's their business model. But the degree of lock-in varies wildly. Some brands use chips in cartridges that disable them prematurely or reject third-party options entirely.

My stance, after tracking 150+ consumable orders over six years: you need the option. You might choose genuine Brother toner for consistency (which, honestly, is what we do for our primary color lasers). But the fact that the aftermarket for Brother-compatible toner is large and competitive keeps pricing in check. It's a hedge. If a printer brand completely walls off its garden, you're at their mercy for pricing. That's a hidden long-term cost risk.

Granted, using third-party consumables can sometimes void warranties or cause issues—I've seen a bad batch of compatibles cause streaks. But having the choice is powerful. It pressures OEM pricing and gives you an emergency fallback.

Addressing the Expected Pushback

"But our needs are simple! We just print a few color flyers a month!" Absolutely. If your volume is very low, a cheap inkjet might mathematically win, even with higher CPP. This worked for our remote sales team, but their situation was specific (under 50 pages/month). Your mileage may vary if you're printing 300 pages a week. The "cheap" option there is a trap.

"This is overthinking for a printer." I get it. Six years ago, I'd have agreed. But after analyzing $180,000 in cumulative office supply spending, I found that 30% of our budget overruns came from reactive replacement and consumable shock on poorly chosen equipment. We implemented a mandatory TCO spreadsheet for any asset over $500 and cut those overruns by more than half. The upfront thinking saves quarterly frustration.

The Bottom Line

So, is the Brother MFC-L3720CDW the perfect printer? I can only speak to the category it excels in: reliable, business-ready color laser printing for a workgroup. It might not be right for a solo artist needing photo-perfect prints or a warehouse needing only shipping labels.

But my core argument stands: stop shopping for printers. Start shopping for a printing solution with a predictable, manageable cost structure over 3-5 years. Look past the sticker. Calculate the CPP. Value reliability. Understand the consumables ecosystem. That $500 printer with a 5-cent CPP will cost you thousands more than an $800 printer with a 2-cent CPP. The numbers don't lie—you just have to be willing to look at all of them.

Total cost of ownership (i.e., not just the unit price but all associated costs) is the only metric that tells the true financial story.