This page is unusual for us: we are not really recommending the printer. We cover it because it keeps appearing in cheap-laser shortlists and because the arithmetic on it is genuinely useful to see.
Cost to run
The LBP6030w takes the Canon 125 black toner cartridge, rated at 1,600 pages. The genuine cartridge was listed at $96.95 at Precision Roller when we checked. That is about 6.1¢ a page.
Set that against 3.3¢ for a Brother on high-yield toner and 0.4¢ for an Epson EcoTank on the same day, using the same method. The Canon is the dearest per page of everything we cover.
One note on that price: Canon’s own store would not serve us a price on the date we checked, so the figure above is a retailer listing for the genuine cartridge rather than a Canon list price. That is disclosed here and on every figure derived from it.
Why a cheap body with dear toner is a trap
Printer hardware is routinely sold at or near cost, and the margin lives in supplies. That means the cheapest printer in a store is very often the most expensive one to own, and the gap grows every month you keep it. A machine saving you sixty dollars at purchase and costing three extra cents a page has given the saving back inside two thousand pages.
There is nothing improper about this; it is simply a pricing model, and it is the reason we publish a cost-per-page figure on every page rather than a price comparison. Run your own volume through it and the effect becomes obvious in about thirty seconds.
What it does do well
- It is small. Genuinely desk-friendly in a way most lasers are not.
- It is a laser. Nothing dries out. Ignore it for six months and it prints.
- It is long-established, so cartridges are easy to find and compatible options are plentiful, which materially changes the arithmetic above if you are willing to use them.
We do not publish cost-per-page figures using compatible cartridges, because their yields are not rated to the ISO standard and we would be multiplying a real price by an unverified claim. It is worth knowing that the option substantially narrows the gap.
No automatic two-sided printing
Worth stating on its own, because on a printer this cheap to buy, paper becomes a material share of the cost. Manual duplexing means either double the paper or a lot of turning sheets over. Both of the Brother models we recommend include a duplexer as standard.
Who should buy something else
- Almost anyone printing regularly. The Brother HL-L2460DW duplexes, runs at roughly half the cost per page, and does not cost dramatically more.
- Anyone printing in color. A tank printer, without question.
- Anyone genuinely printing a handful of pages a year who finds this printer heavily discounted. In that one case the supply cost is close to irrelevant and the cheap body wins — and that is a narrower case than the sales pitch implies.