The cheapest color laser printer in the world has a big flaw

How cheap can a brand new color laser printer be? Turns out very much more affordbale than previously thought - and in some cases, almost competing in price with inkjet printers.

The cheapest color laser printer we've seen available today is the Lexmark C3326DW with a price tag of £79 (around $101/AU$148), after an instant cashback that nearly halves its price.

In comparison, the cheapest color laser printer in the US is the Lexmark C3224dw at $139 (around £108/AU$203), meaning that on paper (pun intended), Lexmark models seem to be the perfect color laser printers.

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The C3326DW has a rated printing speed of 24 pages per minute, far higher than any inkjet printer in this price range. It also has USB, Wireless and Ethernet connectors, making it a great printer for SMB users as well.

Add in automatic duplex printing, a large paper tray, a tiny footprint and a fast processor and it genuinely looks like an amazing printer deal.

Hidden extras

However this might not be the case when you see the price of the consumables needed.

That's because the printer comes only with starter black (750-Page) and color (500-Page) cartridges. Purchasing a full set of high capacity printer cartridges (2500-page color and 3000-page black) will cost you about five times the price of the printer itself.

So while the C3224DW comes with a very cheap entry point, its total cost of ownership and cost per print is actually achingly high, probably one of the most expensive on the market.

In other words, it would be cheaper for businesses to buy a new printer every time they run out of toner; great for your accountant, not so great for the landfills and the environment.