Phaser or LaserJet? HP and Xerox duke it out

The ink was barely dry on the Xerox announcement of its LaserJet 4700n killer when Hewlett-Packard came calling with a rebuttal. Xerox's product strategy, covered in an earlier blog post, is to offer low-cost consumables but sell the printer at a higher cost. Here is a summary of HP’s criticisms of the Phaser 8860. Xerox shot back with its defense and lobbed a few granades into the HP camp. Xerox uses solid ink technology that evolved from its acquisition of Tektronix some time back. HP swears by color laser technology. Both are aiming at the mid-market for color printing.

If you're considering a new color printer the dialog makes for interesting reading. Here’s a rundown on the he said/she said:

HP: Solid ink leaves a thick coating on the page. The image scratches easily and cracks. It doesn’t fold well. Images tend to bleed through. It is a legacy technology acquired with Tektronix that never really took off. No one else uses it.

Xerox: Other manufacturers do not use solid ink technology as it is proprietary to Xerox. IDC reports over 50,000 units sold in North America alone.

Under normal office use, the prints from a solid ink device will not come off the paper. We have conducted extensive durability tests with this product for everyday office docs, such as brochures and folded output, and our tests show that the durability meets or exceeds our customer’s expectations. [I tried folding a sample printout in the press kit. The image does feel a bit waxy and does break apart a bit on the crease line if you fold it over and back again.]

Writing [on a printout] can be challenging for certain types of pens. For typical office documents, such as memos, excel, charts, graphs, writing on the paper itself does not pose a problem. In certain cases, areas of very high coverage may be a challenge.

Counterpunch: Some typical color laser devices also face this challenge due to the increased wax content of toner, especially in areas of heavy fill on the printed document. Also, solid ink is not water-soluble and will not run or bleed. In addition, customers will not experience registration errors or banding artifacts common with some color laser technology.

Extra dig: Color laser technologies are most often manufactured by a third-party company.

HP: The 8860 uses substantially more energy than a color laser due to the need to keep the solid ink in liquid form.

Xerox: The Phaser 8860 uses 12.6 kWh / week (according to EPA test procedures). The HP 4700 uses 4.9 kWh / week.

The average charge in the US for electricity is approximately 10 cents per kWh. he power requirement premium for a solid ink printer is $0.77/week or about $40/year. The savings on consumables costs, the 90% less waste generated, and the total environmental impact of the supplies more than make up for the increased charge for power.

HP: It takes the 8860 13 minutes from initial turn on to be ready to print but less than two minutes for a LaserJet 4700.

Xerox: The typical amount of time for solid ink to warm up is 13 minutes from a cold start. However, Xerox recommends that the Phaser 8860 be left on. Xerox’s Intelligent Ready technology automatically … tracks usage patterns. The printer cools down when users typically stop printing each day, then warms up and is ready to print at the time users typically begin printing each day. The Phaser 8860 produces the first page out as fast as 5 seconds in its ready state.

HP: The 8860 prints 30 ppm in draft mode but 10 ppm quality mode. Therefore it is more comparable to the 22 ppm CP3505 ($899) than the 30 PPM 4700n ($1,599).

Xerox: The Phaser 8860 prints as fast as 30 ppm in Fast Color mode and 16 ppm in the default Enhanced print mode. Prints speeds for the High-resolution/Photo Mode are as fast as 12 ppm. However, ppm tells only part of the story.

Counterpunch: Performance is also measured by how fast a document is completed. Most print jobs in the office are less than 3 pages in length. With a 40% faster first page out time combined with an exceptionally fast network-ready print controller, the Phaser 8860 will deliver most office documents faster than HP’s 3505.

In addition, the Phaser 8860 printer offers duplex and network connectivity standard and would be better compared against the comparably equipped CP3505dn version priced at $1,199 as opposed to the $899 CP3505n.

HP: The average use pattern for CP3505 class machines are roughly 1,000 to 1,500 pages per month. The 4700 class machine is 2,000 to 2,500 pages per month.

Xerox: We analyzed TCO data, based on a four-year period with an average monthly print volume of 4,000 pages, for the HP Color LaserJet 4700dn, HP Color LaserJet CP3505dn and Lexmark C780DN. We looked at the following comparison points: Price of the device, average monthly print volume of 4,000 pages, assuming that 70 percent of the documents include color coverage at the industry standard 5 percent; toner yields; and supplies cost, including toner, ink, fusers, maintenance kits, etc.

We used HP and Lexmark provided data as available on their web site. For each device we then determined how many fusers, maintenance kits, print cartridges, ink packages, etc. that customers would have to purchase over the four-year period. We also gave credit for toner, fusers, etc. shipped with the device. Service is not included.

Our data shows that the total cost to operate the HP Color LaserJet 4700dn for the four-year period is $15,028, the HP Color LaserJet CP3505dn is $16,539, and the Lexmark C780DN is $18,194 versus $7,099 for the Xerox Phaser; 8860. By choosing the Xerox color printer, the buyer could save more than 50 percent over the competition.

Using an average monthly print volume of 2,000 pages over a four-year period, our data shows that the total cost to operate the HP Color LaserJet 3505dn is $8,804 versus $4,779 for the Phaser 8860. A customer can save over $4,000 by choosing the Phaser 8860.

HP: Xerox’s calculations use the sum of the three color sticks to come up with 1.5 cents per page and conclude that the cost equals the price of mono. But on a color page you must use black as well as cyan, magenta and yellow so the true cost is 3.1 cents.

Xerox: The Phaser 8860’s monochrome cost per page is in fact 1.7 cents and the color cost - taking into consideration all four colors – is 3.2 cents per page.