Never bought office equipment? You may be surprised just how difficult it is to find out what it is going to cost you.
How much should you budget for your new multifunction device? Are you overpaying for the office copier?
Without knowing what is a fair price, and what isn’t, purchasing office furniture can be a nightmare. While it can be difficult to pinpoint exactly how much your new technology will cost in advance, there is no reason you shouldn’t have an approximate idea of what your final quote will look like.
How Much Does a Copier Cost?
Since multifunction devices (MFDs) or copiers can come in a wide variety of sizes, that means they also fall into quite a wide range of prices. Manufacturers measure their devices by the print speed or Pages Per Minute (ppm). We have used these measurements as benchmarks as it is a reasonably straightforward way to categorize the “size” of a device.
Here are the four main categories of devices we find our customers using as well as their approximate costs.
25 ppm MFD – $4000 to $7000 (4000 to 7000 prints per month)
30 ppm MFD – $6000 to $10 000 (7000 to 9000 prints per month)
40 ppm MFD – $9500 to $13 000 (9000 to 12,000 prints per month)
50 ppm MFD – $12 000 to $16 000 (15,000 to 20,000 prints per month)
Check out the full article titled How Much Does a Copier Cost for a look into which device category might best fit your needs as well as a deeper explanation on what impacts the final price.
How Much Does A Desktop Printer Cost?
Just as with standalone MFDs, desktop printers can come in a range of sizes. However, unlike with MFDs, not all desktop devices are multifunction. Typically, desktop devices fall into two categories:
- A small multifunction printer (MFP) with a range of functionality including scan, fax, copy and print.
- A printer designed to have only one primary function… printing.
Some desktop printers and MFPs are designed with the small or home office (SOHO) specifically in mind while others are merely scaled-down versions of commercial office copiers and printers. Whether a device was designed for the SOHO or a commercial application can significantly affect its purchase price.
SOHO devices are typically inexpensive to purchase but have a much higher total cost of ownership. Commercial devices, on the other hand, can be quite expensive to acquire but typically have lower toner and maintenance costs as well as a longer life expectancy.
As we are no longer dealing with a single price range, we find it easiest to think about desktop device pricing as a matrix rather than the traditional sliding scale.
| Small or Home Office |
Commercial |
|
| Printer | $250 to $600 |
$1000+ |
| Multifunction Device | $500 to $800 |
$2500+ |
For a full account as to what impacts the price of desktop devices and which category would suit your office best, read the full article How Much Does a Desktop Printer Cost?
Looking For the Cost Of More Office Products?
You can find more about the cost of office technology used to write this page in our blog series What Does it Cost. The series focuses exclusively on the cost of our office furniture and technology. Or, if you can’t find the answer you are looking for, just reach out and ask! I promise we will get you an answer shortly.
