Factors Influencing Label Printer Pricing

At LaserLabels.net, we're dedicated to providing our customers with the most accurate and up-to-date information about printer pricing, but it can be hard to know where to start. For example, there are many different variables that will influence the price of a label printer. Below are some major factors that influence the price of label printing machines:

The features offered by a particular model - More features equal higher cost.

The technical specifications and quality of prints - Higher resolutions and faster prints equal more cost. 

Brand name printers - If a company has been around for decades or is known for their quality products, they'll charge a premium price. 

The cost of electricity - Power usage fees are higher for older machines.

The cost of the ink used - Higher quality labels give a lower per-print price. 

The type of label used - Semi-transparent labels, such as Avery Dennison's "Print Command" labels, will have a higher cost because they take more ink to print.

Printer manufacturer - If a certain model is expensive, it may be because it is made by a well known company that has more experience in making printers.

Manufacturer warranty - It's important to note that most printer manufacturers will offer a warranty against a specific number of defects. When the warranty is up, the machine goes back to its original manufacturer. A new model from an unknown company that offers better technical support may save money in the long run if you decide to keep it after the warranty expires .

The printer's cost when new - Printer prices tend to drop over time. If a manufacturer is willing to sell their products at an extremely low price when they first start making them, they may not offer as much technical support and you may be stuck replacing them sooner than you would otherwise have needed. (Some manufacturers keep their printers in the "on sale" section of their website.)

Price per machine - A low price per machine does not necessarily mean you'll save money in the long run. If you want 100 labels and your price per label is only one cent, you'll be forced to print more of them to break even. After all, it's not really a cost-saving technique if it costs you 10 times as much.

Printer cost - The price of the printer is only a partial factor in the overall cost of printing a label. This is because you have to pay for all the supplies too, such as ink. The most important factors are what type of label you're using and how many labels will be printed. Here are some values you might consider:

Semi-transparent label :  75 cents each.

Transparent labels:  60 cents each (capabilities vary on these).

Print Command labels :   20 cents each.  

Data/Part-Number labels: 50 cents each (capabilities vary on these).

Transparent or semi-transparent labels should cost less than half of the other types of labels. In our example, you would be printing 75 times as many prints as you would with the data/part number label and they will take 10 times less ink too. The semi-transparent labels are even worse. They will take a full 75 times as much ink and you will have to print them 75 times as many times.

Weighing the Cost of Printer Usage

When deciding how many labels you'll need to print, there are two main factors to consider: the number of products and the size of each individual label. If you have 1000 different products, but only want one label on each, that would be 1000 total prints. If you wanted 50 labels per product, it would be a much smaller number: 50 prints. Each additional label printed reduces your cost rate per label (the inverse is true too). So you'll want to weigh the cost of ink against the amount of labels that you need and then choose the model that will minimize your total cost.

Ink is expensive. A 4oz bottle of HP label printing ink will cost $35 and yield approximately 650 prints. A 1-year supply would cost $770, meaning that each label costs roughly ten cents—not including the cost of the printer. If you were to buy a printer in order to save money on your printing supplies, it might seem like an obvious choice to use one with less ink requirements per print, such as Avery Data/Part Number labels or Print Command labels.

Print Command ink is, for the most part, black ink. You will get significantly better results with semi-transparent labels that use green and blue inks like Avery Dennison’s Print Command and Avery Dennison Envelopes .

Avery Data/Part Number labels are perfect for printing barcodes, text and numbers. With a cost per label of 25 cents, this would be much more economical than printing out individual barcodes on data/part number labels or Print Command labels. 

Ink usage may not be the only cost you're concerned about though. If you're only going to print 1 label per product, it will take a long time to break even on the printer itself. If you're using a high-end label printer, it may not be economical to run it at full capacity. In this case, it would make sense to print the labels on blank labels with a heavy duty, low-cost label printer.

One common mistake businesses make is trying to save money on their labels by purchasing cheaper ink. While this may seem like an effective way to reduce costs in the short term, the total cost of ownership will almost always be lower with high quality printer and supplies.

There are many different models of label printers available and they all cost between $500 and $6000 dollars new. The prices vary widely because of major differences between brands and models: longevity versus cost per label, among others.

If you want a really good label printer with the capabilities of some of the more expensive models, you would have to spend over $10,000 or at least save over $5,000 by switching to a different brand. On the other hand, if you only need a standard printer to print labels for one product and are willing to buy refills of black ink (second most expensive ink) rather than new printer ink cartridges, then it will be much more cost efficient for you to purchase an inexpensive label printer.

Some printers are more efficient than others because they can use different types of ink and print in high-quality color.

Conclusion

This may be a little confusing when you first learn it, but the key points are:

1) The most important factors in determining whether or not a label is going to be cost effective are the total volume of labels and their size. You'll want to print more than one label per product if your price per label is low. If you're printing two or more labels per product, choosing a lower cost ink may be appropriate.

2) The type of printer itself does not matter as much as you might think, especially for small businesses. If you're running a business with just one or two types of products, make sure that the printer can spit out whatever type of label that you want.