So, you’ve decided that you’ve had enough of juggling paper between the less-than-useful scanner and the constantly jamming printer. Perhaps your customers are still using faxing (as is 82% of the U.S., apparently, which is quite a shocker). All you know is that you need a better, smarter, and more efficient way to process documents. That’s why you’ve been researching business multifunction printer (MFP) models. These devices can print, scan, copy, and even fax paperwork without a hassle, all in one plastic casing. What’s not to love? But you are facing a few questions, the chief of which is probably: “Should I buy a black-and-white or color printer?” Read on to find out.

How a Business Multifunction Printer Handles Color

When discussing whether to choose a monochrome (black-and-white) or color business multifunction printer, it’s helpful to clearly outline what you can and can’t do with each type.

The only significant difference is how an MFP produces colors on paper. This is quite simple: monochrome printers print in black and white (or shades of grey), while color printers give you the (almost) entire gamut of bright colors (and use a separate black).

However, even a monochrome printer works with colors when scanning. If you’re uploading a paper document to the cloud (perhaps while trying to digitize your paperwork), higher-quality MFP scanners do pick up colors and can transcribe them in their internal memories.

So, if your business typically works with documents in color – such as advertising, design, or photo-related services – you might not even need to read further. A color MFP is likely going to be a must.

But, if your office only occasionally uses color printing for external tasks, while the majority of internal paperwork is monochrome, then it could swing either way. And that depends on a few different factors.

Quality of Printing

In general, color printers perform their best when trying to meld and blend colors on the page. They create stunning images and allow you to play with visuals to improve comprehension. This goes double for inkjet color printers since the printing method naturally lends itself to better color blending across the page.

But inkjet color printers do have a slight downside: they don’t work well with text. Since the ink bleeds into the paper, it can create smudges and make letters less sharp. This might not matter much during a first printout, but it gets progressively worse if you print and then copy a document through an inkjet MFP.

So, where does that leave you? A monochrome laser MFP is directly on the other scale of the spectrum. It works nearly flawlessly with text, ensuring that words are easy to read. As an added benefit, laser printing is typically much smoother and faster, especially when you need to print a lot of pages at once.

Which brings us to the next point.

Printing Speed

The speed at which a printer produces colors is generally slower than printing in monochrome. This is because both printing methods (inkjet and laser) have to go through additional “rounds” of prep or processing to produce the colors.

Again, the differences get more pronounced when you consider inkjet color vs. monochrome laser printing. Typically, laser printers easily achieve over 30 ppm (pages per minute), while an inkjet color printer might struggle to reach 10 ppm with the same settings.

Of course, the higher you go in printer quality (and the accompanying price), the faster the printing speeds and the smaller the differences. At the highest end, a business multifunction printer meant for industrial production and enterprise use will typically have the same speed for monochrome and color printing, but the device can easily set you back tens of thousands of dollars.

Cost of the Printer

There are two aspects to printing costs that you have to consider: the upfront cost and the ongoing cost.

The upfront cost is typically easy to determine: just check the retail (or wholesale) prices of the printers you’re researching for the office. Of course, the price correlates with overall printer quality, which affects its performance, such as printing speed, DPI, capacity, and additional printing options such as duplex printing and wireless connectivity.

This part is relatively easy to determine. Focus on what you need at the office and move from there. Do you need to digitize your paperwork? Choose a business multifunctional printer with a good DPI in the scanner. Do you print many contracts daily? A fast monochrome laser printer is your best bet.

However, the ongoing cost of operating a printer can be slightly trickier to determine since it’s rarely advertised as bluntly.

For monochrome printers, you only need one type of consumable, whether that’s an ink bottle for ink tank printers, ink cartridges for inkjet printers, or toner cartridges for laser printers. Since you can only print in black and white, determine the approximate page yield per consumable, making sure to check its manufacturer yield (for example, many cartridges are rated for pages with only 5% text). Then, multiply that by the price of the consumable, and you will get the average cost per print.

Calculating the cost of operating color printers gets a bit messy. In general, assume that the color cartridge is used at three times the rate of the manufacturer’s guidelines, then add the price for black printing.

In practice, monochrome laser printing ends up costing 2-5 cents per page, while inkjet color printing goes into the range of 10-25 cents per page. This can be a staggering difference, but note that your inkjet doesn’t actually use colors when printing text-only documents, so this needs to be calculated separately based on compatible cartridge prices.

Of course, this operating cost also tends to go down as the price of the printer and the consumables goes up. A high-quality MFP with a high-yield consumable can bridge the gap between monochrome and color printing, but it requires a large initial investment.

How to Save and Get the Best Business Multifunction Printer

In the end, whether you decide on a monochrome business multifunction printer or splurge for a color model depends on how often you need to print in color and if you can weather the increased price of the latter. Typically, black-and-white printers can be cheaper while not sacrificing much on speed and reliability, while you may need a bigger investment to get the same specifications for a color printer.

Bear in mind that you can always equip your office with more than one printer and create a document management strategy that better encapsulates your business needs. For example, a high-end monochrome printer can zoom through your contracts, while a slower inkjet wide format printer can produce more detailed advertising imagery. To get a handle on how your company can benefit from each type of printer, it’s sometimes best to consult the pros like our team at Copiers Etcetera.

We have years of experience working in and around Mill Creek to help businesses like yours reach their full potential by streamlining document management systems and providing state-of-the-art printers and other documentation solutions. So, contact Copiers Etcetera to get your questions answered.