How to Choose Between a Colour and Monochrome Multifunction Printer for Your Office

Quick Answer

Summary of Key Considerations

• Monochrome MFPs run on one black toner and give a lower cost per page for text-heavy offices.
• Colour MFPs run on four toner cartridges (CMYK) and cost more per page, but keep client-facing documents in house.
• Compare the total cost of ownership (TCO) across the term, hardware and consumables together, rather than the monthly figure alone.

Start with your colour ratio, which your meter reads already show

Every multifunction printer keeps a meter reading that separates colour pages from mono pages. That number settles most of this question, and it is worth checking before anyone buys.

Offices misjudge it in both directions. Some assume they barely print colour and find a large share of their volume is colour, because the default driver setting was never changed. Others assume colour is central and find the client-facing work is a small share of a mostly internal print load.

Pull the meter reads for the last three months before deciding anything else. It is the same figure a provider should build a quote from, which is why whether they asked for it is one of the questions to ask a photocopier provider before you sign.

If you run a mono machine now, its meter will show no colour at all. Your colour demand sits in print shop invoices, or in a desktop inkjet somewhere in the office, so add those up instead.

If your office runs one machine

Most small offices have one multifunction printer doing everything, so the choice is which one machine. Two patterns cover most of them.

• Colour is occasional. A few colour pages a month, nothing client-facing on a deadline. A monochrome laser printer is the cheaper choice, and the odd colour job goes out.
• Colour is regular. Proposals, reports, listings or forms where colour carries meaning, most weeks. A colour MFP suits, set to print in black and white unless someone chooses colour, so everyday pages are charged at the mono rate.

For a one-machine office the second pattern is the more common answer, because one machine has to cover the week the colour work does arrive. The default setting is what keeps it affordable.

If your office runs two machines: usually one of each

With two machines, the usual shape is a mono device sized for volume handling the everyday load, and a colour device sized for quality handling client-facing work. A mono workhorse plus one colour machine often runs cheaper than two colour printers, provided jobs go to the right one.

That depends on the routing. Print management software can default jobs to the mono machine unless colour is chosen, and its usage reporting shows who is producing colour. The platforms are under software solutions, and the same setup supports secure print release, covered in office print security.

The mono workhorse

Where the everyday pages should go

Letters, invoices, forms, file copies and drafts make up most of what a small office prints. A monochrome printer handles them at the lowest cost per page, so the colour printer is kept for the pages that need it.

When colour is essential

Some work cannot go out in monochrome, and treating colour as an extra in these settings costs more than it saves once outsourcing and delay are counted.

• Real estate. Listings, property packs and window cards, produced to a deadline that leaves no time for a trip to a print shop.
• Proposals and tenders. Where the document itself is part of the impression.
• Marketing produced in the office. Brochures and flyers in short runs, where printing them yourself is the point.
• Documents where colour carries meaning. Charts, plans and coded schedules, where mono loses information as well as appearance.

The cost differences between colour and monochrome multifunction printers

A monochrome laser MFP runs on one black toner. A colour laser MFP runs on four (CMYK: cyan, magenta, yellow and black) and has more imaging parts to maintain. A colour page costs several times more than a mono page in toner alone, and colour-capable hardware costs more to begin with. That is why the colour ratio can move a quote as much as total volume does.

How that reaches your bill depends on the agreement:

• Lease or rental plus service. The printer sits on a lease or rental agreement, usually over 36 to 60 months, and service sits in a separate agreement.
• Managed print. Under managed print services you pay a fixed cost per page, with separate rates for colour and mono, so your ratio maps straight onto the bill.
• Unlimited print. The Unlimited Print Plan charges one flat monthly rate covering mono and colour, with no per-page charge. It suits offices whose colour use swings from month to month.

Across the term the ratio adds up, which is why it belongs in the total cost of owning an office printer or photocopier.

Black-and-white pages on a colour printer

A colour multifunction printer set to print in black and white uses black toner for those pages, and on a per-page agreement they are charged at the mono rate. The catch is a driver left on colour or on automatic colour detection. Then a coloured logo in a letterhead, or a template with a coloured heading, turns every page of an internal document into a colour page. Set the default to black and white.

Print speed on colour and mono printers

Canon's A3 colour imageRUNNER ADVANCE DX C3900 series runs at 22 to 35 pages per minute (ppm), and its A3 mono imageRUNNER ADVANCE DX 4900i series at 25 to 45 ppm. The fastest devices in a range are mono: Canon's A4 mono imageFORCE 710Z runs at 71 ppm against 61 ppm for its fastest A4 colour model, the imageFORCE C611Z.

For a one or two machine office, speed matters most when long jobs queue behind each other. Size it from your meter reads and your longest regular job, and the colour decision usually does not change.

Scanning and digitisation

Scanning speed is set by the document feeder, so a colour MFP can be a fast scanner. The Canon imageRUNNER ADVANCE DX C3930i scans at up to 270 images per minute, and the compact A4 colour imageFORCE C331Z scans at up to 190 images per minute.

If digitising files is a regular job, look for a single-pass duplex feeder whichever way the colour question falls. Scanning straight to email or a network folder is standard, and scanning to cloud storage may need an add-on such as uniFLOW Online.

Print quality, resolution and photos

An office colour multifunction printer handles business graphics well: charts, logos, property photos in a listing and presentation packs. Where print quality is part of the product, resolution starts to matter. Canon's A3 colour imageFORCE C5150 and imageFORCE C7165 both print at 4,800 x 2,400 dpi, which brings short-run brochures and flyers into the office.

For photographs, an office colour MFP produces good results on coated stock, and a dedicated photo printer or a print lab is still the better choice for photographic prints sold or framed.

Sizing the machine

Volume, paper size and finishing decide the device

Once the colour ratio is settled, the specification comes down to how much you print, on what size paper, and what finishing it needs. Colour sits on top of those three.

A3 or A4

Paper size also shapes the specification. An A4 machine covers letters, forms and most reports, and suits most one or two machine offices. The imageFORCE C1333F, for example, is a compact A4 colour multifunction printer at 33 ppm. An A3 device adds plans, spreadsheets, posters and booklets, and usually more paper capacity. Both the Canon range and the Sharp range run from compact A4 devices to A3 machines, in colour and mono. In the Sharp range, the BP-C533WD is a 33 ppm A4 colour MFP and the BP-30M28 a 28 ppm A3 mono MFP.

The setting that costs the most

Uncontrolled colour gets expensive quickly. In our published work with an aged care group across 14 facilities, each facility had chosen its own devices, which left numerous unmanaged colour machines with expensive toner. Colour printing options were reduced by 60 per cent, on management's guidance, as part of the change.

What outsourcing colour costs

Mono-only works if the colour work can go out without holding anything up. For an office producing a handful of colour pages a month that is a reasonable trade. For one producing a client document every week, the larger cost is the turnaround.

A proposal finished a day early so the colour pages can be collected in the morning is a different working pattern from one printed at five o'clock and taken to a meeting at nine. An office sending colour out every week pays the print shop and still carries the delay. The useful test is how often your deadlines and the print shop's opening hours will fail to line up.

Colour and monochrome printers in Sydney, with a local technician

We have run Axia from Frenchs Forest since 1996 with our own technicians, so you speak to the person who knows your machines. Faults are fixed in hours, not days: 3.2 hours on average, with emergency response across Sydney metro under four hours. We have over 90% customer retention. The agreement terms behind the machines are on photocopier and printer leasing in Sydney, and what those agreements should contain is in printer lease contract terms.

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