Brother HL-L3280CDW Ink Cost Per Page And Cost To Run
The Brother HL-L3280CDW is a color laser printer that only prints, though it packs in Wi-Fi, auto-duplex and a touchscreen. It sells for $300. Running costs land at $4.15 per 100 pages in black and $20.26 per 100 pages in color.
That black rate traces back to the TN229XLBK cartridge, $96 for 3,000 pages, with the $188 drum rated for 20,000 pages piling its own wear on top. Across the 97 printers InkTax tracks by black-and-white cost per page, the HL-L3280CDW ranks 50th. Among the 13 color laser printers, it ties for 9th on color cost per page, a rate four other models also hit.
Move within Brother's own line and three siblings land on the identical $4.15 black and $20.26 color rates: the HL-L3220CDW, the MFC-L3720CDW and the MFC-L3780CDW. The HL-L3220CDW is cheaper to buy at $230 but has no Ethernet and no touchscreen. The MFC-L3780CDW costs $500 and adds copy, scan and fax.
Outside Brother, the HP Color LaserJet Pro 3201dw is the closest rival: $400 up front, but $3.59 per 100 pages in black and $18.94 in color, cheaper to run on both counts, and it goes without a touchscreen.
The running-cost floor among the 13 color laser printers InkTax tracks belongs to the Canon Color imageCLASS LBP674Cdw II: $681 up front, but $2.86 per 100 pages in black and $17.26 in color, with the same duplexing, Wi-Fi, Ethernet and touchscreen as the Brother.
A reader willing to leave laser behind can look at the Canon PIXMA G3270, a tank inkjet priced at $249 that undercuts both ink costs — $0.38 per 100 pages in black, $0.97 in color — but it drops auto-duplex, Ethernet and the touchscreen, and tops out at 11 ppm.