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Competitive Hands-On Test Report: Five All-in-One Printers with Factory-Equipped CISS (Ink Tanks)

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Cost Per Page (CPP) and Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)

Overall, Cost per Page and Total Cost of Ownership for this group of test units can be very low depending on monthly print volumes. However, purchase price is roughly double that of comparatively featured printers that utilize traditional ink cartridges. Nevertheless, not including the unreliable CISS add-on kits, Cost per Page and Total Cost of Ownership for this group of test units is the lowest that we have ever determined. That said, the $31 spread at a monthly print volume of 500 pages per month is enough to purchase another set of ink bottles sufficient to last 4,000 color prints or so.

Overall Ranking (On a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being the best)

  Brother
DCP-T300		 Canon
PIXMA G2000		 Epson L220 Epson L365 HP
GT 5820
Installation and Setup 3 1 4 5 2
Maintenance 3 2 5 4 1
Software 3 2 5 4 1
Print Productivity 1 4 4 3 2
Print Quality 1 1 2 2 1
Image Permanence 1 1 2 2 1
Feature Analysis 1 2 4 3 1
Printer Transportation 3 2 4 4 1
Total Cost of Ownership 5 2 3 4 1
Score* 21 17 33 31 11
Overall Ranking 3 2 5 4 1

*Lower is better. **Highest is best.

Conclusion

The HP GT 5820 produced the best overall scores (Rankings) in this study. While it was not the best at everything, printing performance, ease of use, feature set, and low Cost of Ownership provided the best overall balance. We expected a lot from Canon, a formidable company, and the Canon unit generally delivered with solid overall scores and the lowest Total Cost of Ownership in this group. While we were pleasantly surprised with the features and performance of the Brother DCP-T300, its Total Cost of Ownership is the highest and its build-quality the lowest. Finally, the second-generation Epson units displayed remarkably improved performance over their predecessors, and in spite of being ranked last, overall performance was still solid. The Epson units’ biggest weakness is left over from the first-generation Epson CISS printers—that is, ink tanks that have the potential to result in the most spilt ink.

In conclusion, we feel that as long as users provide a modicum of common sense during the ink-filling process and printer-transportation processes, the highly economical CISS ink-tank systems are most suitable for personal and light office use due to their USB-only connectivity and/or lack of no automatic duplex printing.

And hopefully, the days of the wildly inconsistent and unreliable CISS add-on kits are mercifully over.

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