Brother HL-L3220CDW Cost Per Page And What It Costs To Run
The Brother HL-L3220CDW is a print-only color laser printer with automatic duplexing and Wi-Fi, but no Ethernet or touchscreen, running at 19 ppm. It sells for $230, and running costs land at $4.15 per 100 pages in black and $20.26 per 100 pages in color.
Step outside lasers and the numbers look different: the Canon PIXMA G3270, an inkjet tank printer that also copies and scans, costs $0.38 per 100 pages in black and $0.97 per 100 pages in color to run, and sells for $249 — barely above the Brother's price. It gives up auto-duplex and prints slower, at 11 ppm.
For all-black printing, the HP LaserJet Pro 4006dw is a mono laser at $400 with toner running $2.23 per 100 pages, cheaper to run in black than the Brother, and it prints far faster, at 47 ppm against the Brother's 19. It adds Ethernet for a wired office and a touchscreen the Brother lacks.
Within Brother's own lineup, the HL-L3280CDW ($300) and HL-L3295CDW ($400) add Ethernet and a touchscreen, and the MFC-L3720CDW ($400) adds copy, scan and fax — all three match the HL-L3220CDW's running costs, part of a tie for 9th of 13 color laser printers on both black and color cost per page, shared by five machines in that segment.
The running-cost floor in the color laser segment belongs to the Canon Color imageCLASS LBP674Cdw II, at $2.86 per 100 pages in black and $17.26 per 100 pages in color, with Ethernet, Wi-Fi and a touchscreen plus a much quicker 35 ppm engine. It sells for $681, well above the Brother's $230.
That black rate traces to the TN229XLBK cartridge, $96 for 3,000 pages, with a $188 drum rated for 20,000 pages factored into the per-page wear — a cost the sticker price alone doesn't hint at.