A printer has two prices: the one on the box and the one you pay for the next five years. Spending a little more on the first almost always lowers the second.
#ad — buy links are affiliate links and we may earn a commission at no cost to you. How this site is funded. Prices as shown on Amazon as of October 17, 2026; Amazon’s own page is the price of record. Cost-per-page figures are arithmetic on supply prices we read on 27 September 2026 — here is the method.
How much should you spend on a printer?
For a home printer, between $180 and $250 is the sensible band, and almost nobody needs to go above $350. Below about $150 the saving on the box is handed straight back in supplies, which is the one place a cheap printer always gets its money back from you.
A printer has two prices
The box price is paid once. The supply price is paid for as long as you own the machine, and it is set the moment you choose which cartridge or bottle the printer takes. That is why the useful question is not “how much should I spend” but “how much will I have spent in three years” — and the two answers point at different printers.
Here is the gap, on our own arithmetic, at a modest 100 pages a month over three years. Nothing in this table is a guess: it is published supply prices divided by published rated yields.
Three years at 100 mono pages a month, printer plus supplies
Printer
List price
Per page
Toner or ink, 3 years
Three-year total
Brother HL-L2460DW
$179.99
~3.3¢
$118
~$298
Brother HL-L5210DW
$329.99
~1.9¢
$67
~$397
Epson EcoTank ET-2800
$239.99
~0.4¢
$14
~$254
Canon imageCLASS LBP6030w
Not published
~6.1¢
$218
Not published
Our arithmetic: supply price divided by the manufacturer's rated ISO yield, times 3,600 pages. Prices read on 27 September 2026. Paper is excluded, and rated yields assume 5% coverage, so real spend will be higher.
Read the last two rows together and the whole argument is there. The Canon body is routinely the cheapest laser on a shelf, and its genuine cartridge is the dearest page we have priced — about 6.1 cents against 3.3 cents. At 100 pages a month that difference is $218 against $118, which is more than the price of the better printer.
The four tiers, and who each is for
Under $150. Buy nothing here unless the printer is genuinely for a handful of pages a year. This is where cartridge economics live and where a $40 printer becomes a $300 one.
$150 to $220. The sweet spot for documents. A mono laser with a duplexer, or the same with a scanner for about thirty dollars more.
$220 to $280. The sweet spot for color. Bottle-fed tank printers start here, and they are the only cheap way to print color regularly.
$280 to $350. Justified by volume or by a specific need — a bigger paper capacity, color laser output that does not dry out, a far cheaper page at a few hundred pages a month.
Above $350. A business purchase or a photo purchase. Both are real; neither is a general-purpose home printer.
How to decide where to stop
Count your pages. Not aspirationally — look at how much paper you actually got through last year.
Decide whether color is required or merely nice. Most households print black documents and buy color they barely use. The test for that.
Decide whether you need to scan. If yes, that is the thirty dollars worth spending.
Multiply your monthly pages by thirty-six and by the cost per page of each candidate. Add the box price. Buy the lowest total, not the lowest box.
#ad — the price buttons are affiliate links and we may earn a commission at no cost to you. How this site is funded. Prices as shown on Amazon as of October 17, 2026; Amazon’s own page is the price of record.
Cost-per-page figures are our own arithmetic: supply price divided by the manufacturer’s rated page yield, using prices read on 27 September 2026 and yields rated at the ISO 5% coverage standard. They are not measured by us and they are not current prices. Every input, and the working · run the numbers for your own printing
The picks in detail
Spend about $180: the honest floor
Brother HL-L2460DW
If you print black text and nothing else, this is the printer to buy. It cannot dry out, it duplexes, and Brother does not block third-party toner.
Product photograph supplied by Amazon for this listing. We do not have this model in hand and have not photographed it ourselves.
#ad — we may earn a commission. How this site is funded. Prices as shown on Amazon as of October 17, 2026; Amazon’s own page is the price of record.
~3.3¢ per mono page
Based on a Brother TN830XL high-yield toner cartridge rated at 3,000 pages at $98.29, priced on 27 September 2026.
Brother TN830XL high-yield toner cartridge — rated 3,000 pages (ISO/IEC 19752), $98.29 at Brother USA, checked 27 September 2026
Yields are manufacturer-rated at the ISO 5% page-coverage standard, not measured by us, and real-world cost runs higher. Prices are not live: this is arithmetic on a price we read on the date shown, not a current price. How we calculate cost per page.
Dual-band wireless (2.4 GHz / 5 GHz), Ethernet or USB
Subscription
None required
What we like
Toner does not dry out, so it is ideal if you print in occasional bursts
Automatic two-sided printing at 36 pages per minute
Brother has publicly denied blocking third-party toner with firmware
What you give up
Black only - no color at all
Cost per page is roughly ten times a tank printer's
The 700-page starter cartridge runs out fast; budget for a TN830XL
This is where we would tell almost anyone printing documents to stop. $179.99 at list buys up to 36 pages a minute, automatic two-sided printing, dual-band wireless, Ethernet and USB, and about 3.3 cents a page on the TN830XL cartridge.
What you give up is color and a scanner. What you avoid is the trap below this price, where a cheaper body comes attached to a dearer page. Our budget laser picks.
#ad — we may earn a commission. How this site is funded. Prices as shown on Amazon as of October 17, 2026; Amazon’s own page is the price of record.
~3.3¢ per mono page
Based on a Brother TN830XL high-yield toner cartridge rated at 3,000 pages at $98.29, priced on 27 September 2026.
Brother TN830XL high-yield toner cartridge — rated 3,000 pages (ISO/IEC 19752), $98.29 at Brother USA, checked 27 September 2026
Yields are manufacturer-rated at the ISO 5% page-coverage standard, not measured by us, and real-world cost runs higher. Prices are not live: this is arithmetic on a price we read on the date shown, not a current price. How we calculate cost per page.
50-page document feeder, so scanning a stack is one action
Auto duplex printing at 36 pages per minute
Same TN830 toner family as the HL-L2460DW, with the same cost per page
What you give up
Mono only
Thirty dollars more than the print-only model for hardware you may not need
Toner is far dearer per page than bottle ink
Thirty dollars more than the print-only machine and it brings a flatbed scanner and a 50-page automatic document feeder with it. For most households that is the best-value thirty dollars on this entire site, because scanning is the second thing anyone actually needs.
$209.99 at list, up to 36 pages a minute, automatic duplex printing, Ethernet and dual-band wireless, about 3.3 cents a page. Our all-in-one laser picks.
#ad — we may earn a commission. How this site is funded. Prices as shown on Amazon as of October 17, 2026; Amazon’s own page is the price of record.
~0.4¢ per mono page · ~1.1¢ per color page
Based on a Epson 522 black ink bottle rated at 4,500 pages at $17.99, priced on 27 September 2026.
The color figure adds one per-page cost for each of the three color channels, because an ISO color page draws from all of them.
Epson 522 black ink bottle — rated 4,500 pages (ISO/IEC 24712), $17.99 at Epson US, checked 27 September 2026
Epson 522 color ink bottle — rated 7,500 pages (ISO/IEC 24712), $17.99 at Epson US, checked 27 September 2026
Yields are manufacturer-rated at the ISO 5% page-coverage standard, not measured by us, and real-world cost runs higher. Prices are not live: this is arithmetic on a price we read on the date shown, not a current price. How we calculate cost per page.
Among the lowest cost per page of any printer sold for home use
Refillable bottles, so no chipped cartridge can be locked out by firmware
Comes with enough ink in the box to last most households a long time
What you give up
No automatic two-sided printing, so paper costs twice what it needs to
Flatbed scanner only - no document feeder for multi-page scans
Inkjets still need to be used occasionally or the print head can clog
If color genuinely matters, this is the cheapest sensible way to buy it: $239.99 at list for a bottle-fed tank printer that prints, scans and copies, with an ISO color page at roughly 1.1 cents and a mono page at about 0.4 of a cent.
No automatic duplexer, no document feeder, and it is an inkjet, so it wants using every week or two. Our budget tank picks.
The cheapest way onto Brother's business toner family, which is the real reason to buy it: the cartridge is roughly half the cost per page of the household models.
Product photograph supplied by Amazon for this listing. We do not have this model in hand and have not photographed it ourselves.
#ad — we may earn a commission. How this site is funded. Prices as shown on Amazon as of October 17, 2026; Amazon’s own page is the price of record.
~1.9¢ per mono page
Based on a Brother TN920XXL super high-yield toner cartridge rated at 11,000 pages at $204.29, priced on 29 September 2026.
Brother TN920XXL super high-yield toner cartridge — rated 11,000 pages (ISO/IEC 19752), $204.29 at Brother USA, checked 29 September 2026
Yields are manufacturer-rated at the ISO 5% page-coverage standard, not measured by us, and real-world cost runs higher. Prices are not live: this is arithmetic on a price we read on the date shown, not a current price. How we calculate cost per page.
Gigabit Ethernet, dual-band wireless (2.4 GHz / 5 GHz) and Hi-Speed USB 2.0
Subscription
None required
What we like
TN920XXL toner works out at roughly half the cost per page of the household TN830XL
A genuine second paper source - a 100-sheet multi-purpose tray, not a one-sheet slot
48 pages a minute with auto duplex and Gigabit Ethernet
What you give up
Print only - no scanner, no copier, no fax
$150 more than the HL-L2460DW before you buy any toner
A replacement cartridge is a $200-plus purchase, even though each page is cheaper
The business-range machine, and worth the money for exactly one reason: the TN920XXL cartridge is rated at 11,000 pages, which brings a page down to about 1.9 cents. Below a few hundred pages a month you will never recover the extra $150.
$329.99 at list, up to 48 pages a minute, a 250-sheet tray plus a 100-sheet multi-purpose tray, Gigabit Ethernet and a DR920 drum rated at approximately 45,000 pages. Our high-volume picks.
Between $180 and $250 covers almost every household need: a mono laser with a duplexer at the lower end, a bottle-fed color tank printer at the upper end. Above $350 you are buying business capacity or photo quality.
+−Are cheap printers a false economy?
Usually. The cheapest body we cover is attached to the dearest page we have priced — about 6.1 cents against 3.3 cents on a Brother. At 100 pages a month that gap costs more than the better printer did.
+−Is it worth paying more for a laser printer?
If you print mainly text, yes: toner costs less per page than cartridge ink, it does not dry out, and a duplexer is standard. The full case.
+−How long should a printer last?
Long enough that the supply cost dominates the decision — which is the point of buying on cost per page. What actually ends a printer’s life.
+−Should I spend more to get color?
Only if you print color regularly. Then buy color that is cheap to run rather than cheap to buy: bottled tank ink puts an ISO color page at about 1.1 cents, against tens of cents on a cartridge machine.
